Typing posts up is exhausting and takes my mental energy away from where it needs to be (e.g. my thesis, maybe), so I’m not going to be making any more gigantic posts about theory – or, well, I won’t be pushing myself to do so, at least until my dissertation is over and done with. Life is too short to hold oneself to academic standards for writing that is non-peer-reviewed – and, let’s face it – that isn’t generally even considered by a hiring committee for a traditional academic job, or tenure review board.
Tag Archives: blogging
On public writing / writing for the public
(In January 2018, I found this in my drafts folder from August 2016; I’m posting it now)
I’m currently in the midst of reading Public Poetics: Critical Issues in Canadian Poetry and Poetics, and I just finished Sina Queyras’ contribution – “Public Poet, Private Life: 20 Riffs on the Dream of a Communal Self”. I really like it. It’s vulnerable and defiant, a quasi-autobiographical account of her struggles with engaging with a public voice. It touched a chord in me.
PRIVATE – KEEP OUT: On digital / writing platforms and internet security
In one of my courses this semester (“introduction to digital humanities”) we are asked to make biweekly blog posts to “think aloud”, rant, engage in debate, etc. Several of my classmates balked at this (citing issues of security and privacy, mostly), and others were excited, especially with regards to the ease and informality of web publishing. Plus the tantalizingly dangled carrot of getting known in internet circles, publishing work on well-read sites, possibly leading to alt-ac* jobs in the future.
None of these debates and hesitations over issues of security and privacy ring especially new to me, as I hold them myself. When I first started blogging, on ye olde LiveJournal back in 2003, my journal entries were locked to “friends-only”: only other LJ users with accounts that I had approved could view my posts in their friends feed. Neither security nor privacy seemed to be a huge issue; the terms of service seemed legitimate to my grade-10 mind, and besides, I was fifteen: who would hack me? Or so went my thoughts.
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