Those feelings sounded familiar but it took me a moment to figure out why. I'm definitely not a public figure myself. Here's the thing though: when I was six years old, my family moved to a rural area where most residents had roots going back several generations, and we were total outsiders. Immediately, most people knew our names and where we were living and what we were doing there, but we hardly knew anyone. And more subtly, over the years, we continued to be outsiders in many ways, partly because of our rather private habits, but partly because the long-time residents already had their own habits of doing things together, calling on one another, etc., and new people just weren't readily included.
After high school, I moved away for university and didn't come back (except to visit) for fifteen years. When I finally moved back to the area, it was even more peculiar, because all my former acquaintances knew exactly who I was, and I didn't have a hope of putting names to all these very familiar yet not quite identifiable faces. While I had been off filling my head with new knowledge of the wide world, meeting hundreds of new people, and so on, the people back home had been going on with their relatively unchanged lives, and some had even kept up on the news of wanderers like me. It was nowhere near an equal footing. And then my husband, the new guy in town, charged into everything with his bold personality and very quickly knew more people in my hometown than I did. Bizarre.
 

I read that the ancient Chinese believed there are three selves: the public self that all can see, the private self for family and friends, and the secret self that's just for you.

Many of us who put ourselves out there all the time lose number 2 and forget about number 3 entirely.

When I feel like that's the case, I do what you're doing: work on stuff in the backyard and only run into mirrors by accident!
 

Does that mean you DON'T want me to stalk you anymore?!?!