Oh to be a Pro Blogger

It takes a lot of hard work to make a lot of money. This is the case whether you make money in mid-town Manhattan wearing a suit and tie or you commute from a recumbent to semi-recumbent position in your bed (my personal office of choice). Those of us who heeded not the wise, wise words of Dooce "My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET." Us idiots, we know the massive negative effect blogging can have on your life. You have a lack of freedom, can't publish what you are thinking for fear of being connected to those thoughts that you do, in fact, think in your heart. You have to keep in mind your audience, i.e. am I a summer camp counselor or do I work in Residence Life with minors during the summer and would it be bad for them to know that I could potentially be a sexual human being due to sharing of posts from sex blogs? And sometimes you have to resign from your job because you make a dumb youthful mistake without the benefit of the time afforded by the leisurely past-time of letter-writing, including (but not limited to): uncapping the pen finding the notepad summoning up an envelope and the saliva white-outing and waiting for the white out to dry re-folding to fit it into the envelope looking up the address a 20-yard walk a 36 cent stamp putting on of pants BUT, that's not what this post is about. Earlier this week I replied to a pro-blogging post asking what the biggest mistake people made regarding blogging...most people it was not doing it soon enough, or often enough, not having faith in their own integrity and interest as bloggers (writers+people) that someone wants to hear what they had to say, even if it is your own mom (Happy birthday Mom!) Now that I have truly adopted the life of a blogger in the past 18 months at this here blog as Elle, now that I am part of the dialogs going on at my favorite sites and articles and am becoming part of the second-lowest faction of internet blogging elite, the technorati if you will, an avid Twitter-er and aggregator of information: my hits are up. Quantitatively, a more regular blogging schedule and a tiny bit of authority that I've earned from length of time and variety of topics has accumulated a healthy readership (for a personal blog). But qualitiatively, I am an active participant in the online conversations, a subject of posts every once in a while, and have even gotten the attention of a favorite author who I 'blogged about. I've also met some professionals who I would never have gotten in touch with otherwise: case in point is Susan at Hug The Monkey). I'm pleased that I've been able to be as much of an open book as I have on this blog for the past year. And while I got myself in trouble and learned the hard and dumb way, I find that I'm liberated in so far as I don't want to work for companies who can't handle me being who I am. I have strong opinions that I can't always camouflage into the apathy so endemic to fellow members of my generation. Am I the person I seem to be on this 'blog? What do you think? A blog entry, just like a photo, is just one moment of one angle of a person. Occasionally it's an insightful art student with her finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. Sometimes it's an angry bitter ex-girlfriend. Often it's an overwhelmed adolescent who just misses her mom and dad and wants people to know what she's up to. And those it's that combination that makes this blog what it is. Could it be more "targeted" towards a "niche"? I know you guys--my loyal and exclusive following--are only getting glimpses and flashes of memory and experience, and that this blog seems to be just as much about the person I am as the world I live in, but I have grown to truly value the attention you pay me with your time and comments. I value the blank space that this blag has become to me, a place to empty my brain so I can move on. And even if you stop reading, I know my mom, dad, and twin sister will still remember to check up on me every once in a while. I don't get paid to 'blog, and that's not because my 'blog isn't interesting. It's because that's not the goal of it. If money was all I cared about, you know I would not be at art school, would not be reading blogs all day. But that's the luxury of being in school, that working part-time and going to class full-time allows just enough time to explore the interwebs and find my place in that realm, as this identity, and to some extent to my identity as a whole. I'm not relying on that right now to make me a living, but one day blagging via satellite phone in the wilderness and posting images or selling evidential sculptures could make me a living, too. Where do you stand on the subject of blogging as occupation? It's relation to citizen journalism, user-created content, and on-demand media?

Google Reader's my religion.

There is no better way to aggregate the many sources of Really Simply Syndicated information than Google Reader. It's a web-based RSS feed aggregator that can be used to put all of your blogs in one place and will "pull" new data as entries are published. I can even share my favorite items with my friends and see their shared items (if they use Google Reader and I've got their e-mail in my address book). Until yesterday, though, I could only share entries from within my Reader, meaning blogs I am subscribed to. Luckily, I found a sweet little javascript workaround here that lets you share any blog entry, even if it's not on one of your regular haunts. Enjoy! And let me know if you use Google Reader so I can check out your shared items!

First 'blogs were written

I'd like to propose that Sei Shonagon, the Heian-era Japanese female court lady, was as a blogger. In the book of her collected works, The Pillow Book, she lists insights and goings-on in no order more thoughtful than that in which they came to mind. How like Carrie Bradshaw, or any contemporary young 3rd-gen feminist woman is Shonagon in her book! This is an example that I think is lovely, the 10th-century equivalent of "and he woke me up looking for his car keys, how annoying!" Hateful Things, Sei Shonagon A lover who is leaving at dawn announces that he has to find his fan and his paper. "I know I put them somewhere last night," he says. Since it is pitch-dark, he gropes about the room, bumping into the furniture and muttering, "Strange! Where can they be?" Finally he discovers the objects. He thrusts the paper into the breast of his robe with a great rustling sound; then he snaps open his fan and busily fans away with it. Only now is he ready to take his leave. What charmless behavior! "Hateful" is an understatement. Equally disagreeable is the man who, when leaving in the middle of the night, takes care to fasten the cord of his headdress. This is quite unnecessary; he could perfectly well put it gently on his head without tying the cord. And why must he spend time adjusting his cloak or hunting costume? Does he really think that someone may see him at this time of night and criticize him for not being impeccably dressed? A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. He drags himself out of bed with a look of dismay on his face. The lady urges him on: "Come, my friend, it's getting light. You don't want anyone to find you here." He gives a deep sigh, as if to say that the night has not been nearly long enough and that it is agony to leave. Once up, he does not instantly pull on his trousers. Instead, he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening his sash. Presently he raises the lattice, and the two lovers stand together by the side door while he tells her how he dreads the coming day, which will keep them apart; then he slips away. The lady watches him go, and this moment of parting will remain among her most charming memories. Indeed, one's attachment to a man depends largely onthe elegance of his leave-taking. When he jumps out of bed, scurries about the room, tightly fastens his trouser-sash, rolls up the sleeves of his Court cloak, over-robe, or hunting costume, stuffs his belongings into the breast of his robe and then briskly secures the outer sash -- one really begins to hate him.

Mmm, global warming

A moment ago I stepped outside of my building and was struck at the warm, humid air. Here I am, leg-warmers, scarf, and tights, and yet it is most certainly no cooler than 70* F outside. Warm, muggy, with a pervasive dampness, this global warming thing is not really working for me. I keep waking up sweaty and clammy it's so temperate in my room. If this is what is in store for the future, I'm going to have to ditch the layered, artsy look so characteristic of a MICA fibers major. The other day we got our senior packets with our applications for graduation from MICA, details about ordering class rings, beret and gowns, graduation announcements, et cetera. I modeled the gown and beret on stage, and it was so bizarre to be in the same place we all were three-and-a-half years ago, shiny-faced and innocent. Little did we know then what wonders awaited, what trials were ahead of us. I mean, to be fair, we're still not aware. I'm still worried about insurance, where I will live, where my stuff will be. In other news, I continue to suck at the internet. The quickness with which one can post, twitter, comment, e-mail, is far shorter than the amount of time it takes to fully consider what one is doing. Luckily, no jobs to lose or money at stake, but feelings and people are not to be belittled. At the same time, one of my former campers just came out as being gay using a Facebook post, and I have got to say that of all the people who continue to closet themselves and hide their true identities, I know that the true powers of the interweb can be used for "good" as well as "evil." So many older people are less honest with themselves and their families and friends, for so long, and I hope she has escaped much of that unhappiness, even as she is choosing a life path that is still somewhat unconventional and will no doubt not always be easy. Plans for the day are contacting my Performance Garment partner (blog here) to talk about going to take photos of us playing around in a clothes shop.

Motvational Quote of the Day

Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing. Heather B. Armstrong of Dooce.com. I've been thinking about starting a historically-based blog on being dooced (that is, losing one's job for what one has written on their weblog), as sort of a warning to bloggers out there and support for those who's online and off-line lives have converged in that perfect-storm sort of way that causes you to reasses your values and existence. And, you know, find another employer. In case you're curious, here's a link to my previous entry On Doocing.... The entry lists 19 bloggers as of March 2007, so obviously it needs a little updating. I think it's also an art piece I'd like to work on, maybe a commemorative quilt or graveyard quilt?

New study by Pew Internet

Pew Internet just published a new report (by Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden) that discusses the ways in which teens organize what information is on their various profiles on social networking sites to keep privy information far from the prying eyes of parents, teachers. Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace As I continue my readings on blogging I can't even fathom how I let myself post indiscreetly so long (two months?) ago. While one can post impulsively, it takes one little click to share your most private thoughts, and when exposed to public space they can have considerable power that sort of contradicts the ease of sharing.

Blog organization

So, now that this blog has a substantial number of entries (75), I've got to consider whether or not the current 'list everything you talked about in that entry' sort of tagging is going to work in the long-term. (Do you like how I start paragraphs with 'so?' Why or why not? Effectively make you feel like we've just picked back up in the middle of a conversation, or trite and lame?) Yes, the long term. I am not the most long-sighted of all individuals. After all, each day I have some sort of crisis of self, and I can't POSSIBLY even think about the blip it will be eventually when the world is ending oh g-d my life is horrible! How do I divide my ponderings as Elle in a way that not only makes sense to me, but that summarizes what my life and this journal are about? Also, I'm thinking of typesetting my entire LiveJournal as a book and printing it into a physical entity, to see how that reads.

Funny thing about online journals...

I'm writing this entry as positive reinforcement for continuing to not read the journals of people with whom learning that information is either unneccessary or would be not good for me to read. It's a funny thing, there's the designated dialer, to protect you from calling an ex out of loneliness, desperation, and often inebriation. But, on the internet, with people's innermost thoughts and feelings at an easy-to-remember address at which to follow your impulses, you can find out things you really didn't even want to know. And there isn't a way to un-do the knowing of things. It's a whole pandora's box opened up when you read another persons' journal. I can hardly deal with the goings-on, subsequent doubts and celebrations, regrets, denials, wants, longings.... I can hardly handle my own life 24/7 sometimes, so what is the point of taking on someone elses thoughts, baggage, misconceptions, and theories? I can be really prone to act on impulse. Am I finally growing up enough to beat my impulses, to think in the long-term, to know that reading so-and-so's accounts of their perfect life is 1) subject to whatever they chose to write and not neccessarily a reflection of reality, and 2) not good for me. Which sort of speaks to the need to remember why people blog, why people journal, what the publicity of online journals does to effect the writer's entries. Any related blog theory ideas or articles would be much appreciated at this point.

A recent e-mail from my aunt: Life is full of disappointments, sorry to say, and hopefully this will be your worst. You know what "they" say, it's better to have loved and lost...then never to have loved at all! Life is a risk...we all have to be brave enough to take them and learn from them. Some day, we will talk about Jeff and you will learn how many times he has loved and lost, but never gives up the quest to find the person he can make a life with. It's funny, because at this point I'm getting over the loss of romantic love, I'm starting to get over the ideal/idol complex of that person (J) being The One, moving on in some pretty significant strides. But, from where I sit right now, I would have made a damn fine RA next year, and I continue to be stunned in the turn of events. If Residence Life defends itself from me by asking me to resign as a course of action, if they choose to do that as opposed to defending all the good I've done in this job, and that I still have a ton to offer residents, then ResLife isn't making the right decisions. ResLife needs to be about students first, and not about keeping it's pristine reputation. The one thing this job truly lacked for me was a feeling of understanding and humanity on a regular basis...sometimes I feel like it's more of a business (business of making parents of under-classmen at MICA happy with their students' living situations) than an art (the art of helping students develop as individuals by advising on conflict resolution, educating, programming effectively, and enforcing policies). I screwed up, in more ways than one, but it's not my fault if a resident makes a poor decision for the last time. When does bureaucray and appearances take a back seat to doing the -real- work, the kind that cannot be measured or administered like disciplinary actions? When does a resident have to defend making the same mistake over and over, and everyone knowing about it? As a department, when does Residence Life genuinely choose care of students over care of the department? I know the two are intertwined hopelessly, but people make mistakes. Residents do, residents get second, third, fourth chances. When does Residence Life realize that RA's are just as much works-in-progress as our residents? The thing that frustrates me the most is that I've worked so hard on building personal relationships with my residents in the past two months, in really understanding them, opening up for them a little and recieving the same sort of opening up from them. Whatever blog posts I made that may have tarnished reputations, my own and those of others, appear to be long gone. Not a single resident of mine has guessed accurately why I was asked to resign, not by a long shot. In the course of thirty hours, where the public at large had access to various and sundry entries for which I would later be dooced, 18 people TOTAL spent more than 0:09 (nine seconds) on my blog's site. I just find it hard to believe that if a resident points out a poor decision made by an RA (that didn't threaten lives and was an honest mis-take) while being met with over something that they did wrong (incense, drinking, pot, throwing things off of balconies, whatever), that Residence Life can't take the position of "That's his/her poor decision, and they have to answer for it just like you have to; Now, let's talk about the better choice(s) you coul have made." Maybe if Residence Life at MICA allowed my mistake, allowed me to own up to it to my residents, say what I did and what I should have done, maybe ResLife at MICA wouldn't be seen as the sort of "police force" it's construed as on a whole. RCA's here are trained not to ignore situations or not report incidents, but it shouldn't be because of being threatened into doing it, it should be for genuine care of well-being of the residents. Eighteen people read my blog after I posted the link on my Facebook profile, and before I un-published some unsavory entries. I know the names of at least six or seven of those. That's 12-13 (consider they each found it so fascinating they told a room-mate: 24-26) residents who "read" my screw-up(s). Out of a few hundred freshmen, at least 45 of whom are my residents and know me well, and another couple dozen who I know well even though they aren't in my community, which really makes the bigger impact? Why can't we be human as RA's, so that our faults and successes are both paid attention to, as opposed to being beacons of light, on which one speck of dirt is an abomination of a distraction? What would happen if ResLife had a blog? What would happen if the list of the incidents, minus names, was posted each week for all to see? I'm just questioning some of the lack of open-ness that's going on here, because 1) It's not like residents are completely imperceptive as to staff dynamics/conflict on staff when it's not brought up to them, and 2) Maybe if Residence Life operated in a thoroughly resident-centered manner, in ALL things, we wouldn't have a whole lot to hide. They'd always do what was best for the residents. A little overly simple, perhaps, as there are certainly cases where it's student versus student(s), but, again, what's so bad about transparency? The reason blogging is so worthwhile to people of my generation is that by giving information openly, there are a lot of gains to be made. Attention, better understanding, releasing feelings. Pretty soon, there will be no un-tarnished MySpace or Facebook for potential employers to look at; this sort of over-sharing instantly is something so characteristic of this generation, and pretty much everyone will screw up eventually. It seems to me that in Student Affairs (in general, not just MICA) rules and procedures are put into place to protect the physical and mental health of residents/the student body and encourage healthy growth and development. But should it be at the cost of the physical and mental health of student-staff? Considering my role as a student leader, doesn't MICA have just as much invested in my well-being as that of a acting-out/misbehaving resident? I guess I just wish someone had told me that by becoming an RA, I would have to cope with everything really well, and that chances given to other members of the student body would no longer be available to me as a member of student staff. I still woulda done it, I still may have even fucked up, but at least I'd have been a little better prepared for being asked to resign. Or maybe not. Maybe it's similar to love in that nobody can warn you how much it's going to hurt, or how you couldn't even have helped screwing up, so full of passion were you ('omg! I did a good job at policy enforcement! I'm not a failure!'). Everyone can try and warn you, but it'll blindside you just the same. And you won't be the same person in love as you were before it. And you won't be the same person after losing something so precious as you were when you "had it all." Whew. And, I'm spent. I'm sure I'll feel very differently while at grad school for these things, and maybe I'll understand my superiors better, but I'm still sort of in shock, truth be told.

February 12, 2007

Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll -- New York Magazine an article by Emily Nussbaum was my most recent assigned reading for the purposes of this blog and the independent study I have begun it for. To summarize, the article establishes that Generation Y and Z are growing up comfortable with their every thought and image as public domain. That is, the positives of sharing your status, relationship status, images of you at the last party (tagged by your friends), interests, conversations...outweigh the potential negatives of the situations. Yes, it's possible to be politically incorrect, to make social faux pas at the speed of information, but through MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, and Blogger, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of young people are becoming politicians--that is, they understand the power and consequences of words, but are also prepared to use them for their advantage. And most of the time, the social advantages are greater than the potential harm. There are, of course, risks to this sort of open-ness. The idea that a future employer or college may be able to see every early-teenage blunder, immortalized in one's and zeroes. The risk that comes with sharing so much contact information freely-stalking, being called by the un-popular kids, whatever. So, why does this freak our parents out? They just don't get it. They don't get that we were born writing bad adolescent poetry on a keyboard. Real journals don't hold the same interest to us as they did to generations before them. And, in crafting identity both in person and online, we are able, to some degree, to transcend youthful impulse and vacillation. We can be whomever we want to be online. To a certain degree. There are, of course, also costs to being a different person in-person (or "IRL," in real life) than online. But, social networking sites are here to stay, and as painful as it may be to look back on one's internet history/footprints that exist on Geocities or the Way Back Machine, in a few years a whole new generation will be able to gain insight to their forebears, sans the messy hand-writing. I can't say that I'm not looking forward to seeing what they think of us.

On "Finding Voice"

Regarding finding my voice... and the blog Blog Core Values. So, the blogging "voice" doesn't exist.  Or rather, we write, we read, or "see" words, instead of hearing them.  The author uses the word "telephonic," the longing for something that is as ephemeral as the powerful feelings we have sometimes.  But, text, html, blog survives voice, body, phase.   I'm failing at blogging every day.  I wait till night, when I've got a whole day to blog about, but do I really want to write about the day I just spent?  How I didn't finish the dishes, how I read and read but couldn't put fingers to keyboard.  I've committed myself to this independent study, but I've got to admit that I've comitted myself to this for me, not for my instructor.  This is a selfish desire to be introspective for myself, and put it out there for all to read. It is actually the loss of selfishness, I think, that led to the end of my relationship with Justin.  I became obsessed with HIS life, HIS existence, HIS work, not my own.  This isn't a tendency far from my lineage.  My mom is a Sacrificer.  She Sacrifices.  And that's noble and good but at some point there's nobody else there but you, and you've got to be happy with yourself when you are on your own. Right, so, back to "finding my voice."  Stop looking for instant identity.  It will take a little while for my personality to come out in this space, and that's to be expected.  Everything I've read in "You've Got Blog" has taught me that.  So, tonight I'm going to keep writing till I'm near-empty.

Blogging for winners

So, I've been reading Rebecca Blood's book on blogging, and also "We've Got Blog" (2001), a critical reader on blogging and how blog culture is changing the internet and our world. And I'm very excited because I'm ahead of SO many bloggers, in that I've been weblogging for public eyes since I was about 13-14 on the popular site LiveJournal as the user lenablair.  But, now that I've been reading all of this theory and criticism and am sort of experiencing the subtle yet numerous differences between LiveJournal and Blogger, I'm experiencing anxiety over writing.  Others apparently get bloggorhea with the ease that entries are posted, but I've been constipated more and more as I've gotten older, spent less and less time in front of a computer. Thus, I've grown to understand that I am an experienced weblogger, but have not, historically been conscientious.  I wrote to get ideas out in this unique forum, my friends' "Friends pages."  In a friends' page one is given a glimpse into the thoughts, feelings, and happenings of one's friends/acquaintences/"friends."  But, I still haven't quite figured out how Atom, RSS feeds, and XML fit into this all, that is, I'm so used to having all the most recent entries of ALL of my friends blogs show up sorted by time and date posted, that I'm not sure how to really delve into reading non-LiveJournal blogs and becoming a part of that community, since it seems to be more based on this earlier idea of the weblog, which was more of a filter for cool new sites on the web or news stories, as opposed to this sort of common public diary. So, I need to tackle these technical aspects:  I need to keep writing entries, write seeds of entries, even if I keep them private till I feel like (or never) develop them.  I've got to read other blogs.  I've got to find other artists that aren't computer-based in media and figure out how they work out blogging.  This is actually a foremost concern because I find myself having less and less time in front of my laptop, and it's not as easy to post impulsively. Then, I must work to find my voice.  What is the tone, content, and personality people will associate with my blog?  How can I reveal more of the more interesting aspects of my life while still using Blogger like LiveJournal to catalogue banalities of daily existence? But, if anyone knows anything about how I can make a friends page with my LiveJournal friends and RSS and Atom feeds on it, I'd be super-super excited to know.

Commentaries on first set of readings

Surftrail: Blog Theory articles. Mark Bernstein writes a couple blogs that have some tips/advice that I think might help me in development of this weblog.  The first is a simple top 10 tips for what he later refers to as "Writing the Living Web."