Things I Should Not Be Doing

• Sitting in office hours, playing this game
• Mixing up dates on my calendar. Seriously, I feel like I'm developing some scheduling-centri version of dyslexia
• getting frustrated at my ill sister to the point that I had to say (in an attempt to get her to focus and abandon a little of the melodrama): "Just write a note and tack it to the refrigerator about what we should do if we find your body."
• looking this forward to this, and its soundtrack by Karen O
  

The Great Twitter Experiment or...

...the Trouble With On-line Identity

or

...Climbing the Ladder 140 Characters at a Time

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So, as I mentioned previously, I'd been quietly encouraged to think about starting a Twitter account. It's seen, in the current university climate I'm in, as a way of promoting one's self to the broader world. And I, suffering from a whole range of insecurities with this new job (though not just related to the new job), could think of no truly compelling reason why I shouldn't. If having an account might help a bit, so be it.

Except that I forgot about the delicate dance that is juggling dual (or dueling) identities. I mean, if keeping my voice distinct here while not ponying up revealing details was problematic, what would it mean to welcome into the now budding constellation of voices one that has only 140 characters to convey itself? I like to think there's a flavor to how I communicate - or at least some consistency to each medium. I mean, there are things that I've adopted as rules for e-mailing students; there are things I do and don't allow on Facebook. There's the whole host of hoops involved in posting here.

Throw into the mix the fact that, this week, an ex who I think may be well and truly crazy now - the kind of crazy you imagine when you're splitting up with someone to make you feel better about it, the kind you make jokes about while locking the doors and thinking about firearms - actually found not just the Twitter feed I'd created but, worse, my private, non-work-related e-mail address. I am, I think it is safe to say, a private person. The possibilities raised by this - ignoring the visions of said ex doing her Glenn Close impression, manically turning off and on a light while thinking about boiling my bunny - are more than a little distressing.

So, Twitter? How do you help one of those voices? And how do you help someone who is fundamentally private market themselves.

The answers, respectively: you don't, and you're not sure yet.

But there are other benefits, even with my meager following and my slightly less meager feeds followed. For one thing, I'm able to keep a little bit of track of what the public intellectuals I have so admired and wished to be like are thinking about. And thus far, what I've seen suggests one of the following possibilities:

1. Public intellectuals are assholes, and Twitter exposes this
2. Twitter makes assholes of even public intellectuals
3. I only like public intellectuals who are assholes

Twitter, for the public figure, seems to demand focus on the thing that made you public. And that, sooner or later, comes across badly. If you're not careful, Twitter helps you to believe your own press in the same way that getting interviewed by a network might. I should note that this experience hasn't made me like these people less intellectually. It has just made certain that I am no longer in any hurry to communicate with them. I mean, if you're going to show what a twit you are, at least take your time doing it, I say (hence, the blog).

At the same time, I've found some people and sites that don't do exactly what I do, but that have information and interests that intersect. Twitter has become a useful scratchpad for me that way - rather than trying to talk about what I'm doing, I'm starting to use it as a means of archiving things that seem interesting to me, in hopes that I can come back and draw some meaning from particular postings or groupings of them. And that it might help someone who's reading is great. Even better if it might get them to send a little something back my way.

Wednesday Night Fortune

One of the benefits of the move is the decent Chinese available for delivery (it's not great, but then that's sort of how I like my Chinese food). And in the midst of all the little attacks of insecurity that have been plaguing me of late, my fortune was - for a change - not some trite aphorism but actually advice:

Welcome change.

Good advice, though probably not what the delivery person wanted me to read.

The Reading List

Still making sense of the week and the push towards Twitter from colleagues and various sundry other career-related sources. So, while I get my head on straight, here's what's being read or in the chute to be read:

• Quantum Lyrics - A. Van Jordan
• The Interrogation - J.M.G Le Clezio
  
• Naked Economics - Charles Wheelan
  
• Shoplifting from American Apparel - Tao Lin
• Push Comes to Shove - Wesley Brown
• The Painter of Battles - Arturo Perez Reverte
• Smashing Open the Door - Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno
• Let Fury Have the Hour: the Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer - Antonino D'Ambrosio

So if you've read any of them, or you're dying to talk about any of them, let me know, and I can put some period posts up about them as I go. And, of course, if you've got some great recommendations, I'll take those, too!

New Job, New Media?

Guess I really wasn't thinking about some of the bigger differences going.

In a meeting last week, one of the things that came up was the desire for faculty to find ways to use all these new fangled media devices to promote themselves - and hence, the U. - better.

"Consider running a blog," someone said. I snickered and tried to look aghast. But worse, they want us to do things like Facebook (Okay, I'm already there) and Twitter (which I'm less than convinced is useful for me to promote myself, and hence, the U.). I don't think I'm at the point in my career where I have profound things to say every hour. Honestly, there are days where I find myself stretching to complain in this blog.

Really, though, what I wanted to ask was: what's the model you're thinking about here? Because it seems to me a half-assed attempt to use something like this only looks bad (I was going to say makes one look like a whole ass, but isn't the phrase "half-assed" implying that a "full-assed" attempt would be the way to go? I don't know...). Is there any evidence that prospective students are using presence of a Twitter account to make their decisions? Are grant givers factoring it into their assessments on whether or not to give funding?

Because on some level it feels like that, best case, we've become convinced we need Twitter because we hear the word so much. Thoughts? Is this happening elsewhere? In particular disciplines?

Many Forms of Panic

I am in my office, reading a book of poems I ordered to help lessen the trauma of reading all the books that will hopefully catch me up so that I can appropriately mention names at parties, and many forms of panic begin to visit my lonely office vigil.

First, the colleague the chair talked to in the office next door about her loud study sessions. I've heard much about this in the last week, though as a music listener, I'm largely unfazed. Does she, with all her tenured might, think it was me?

Second, a parade of faculty down the hall, muttering about a conference room. Am I missing a faculty meeting? Why can't I find it in my e-mail? Who can I ask without exposing my horrible skills as a new colleague?

Third, the realization that my old lecture notes are all in a format that Microsoft Word for Mac refused to admit exists. Will I spend my whole term reinventing the wheel of my thoughts?

Excerpts from the Weekend

"I don't understand how you could not like networking," she said. "Meeting people is fun."

"Networking isn't meeting people. Meeting people is meeting people. Networking is meeting people with the express hope of bettering yourself. I find that more than a little sad."

"It isn't that calculating. Anyone can do it."

"Given many homeless people your business card?"