flaneuse.org

I hope this is not too much information for anyone, but any rest in apt 407 has suffered lately for wont of space (can you tell I’ve been reading Austen?). Willa has discovered the luxuries of a pillowtop mattress — to our loss. An antique iron bed, barely a full size, is not enough for two adults and a territorial cat, without adding 80lbs of black labrador. Not only that, but her bedtime is earlier and as I write this, she is snoring away, her head on the pillows. We need a crane at night to get her out, and one in the morning to get me up. This is a family that values its rest, clearly. : )

My 102 class has to pair up and lead a class discussion, including an assigned reading, in a topic important to them — and of their choice. We were brainstorming topics today, and something caused me to reflect on the topics I would have listed in the Spring of 1992, when I was a second semester freshman…

A lot of them were the same: abortion, gay rights (although not to the degree of marriage — I don’t think things had progressed enough to even open a dialogue about gay marriage, especially in Colorado), a national election (which happened in ‘93 and I saw Hilary Clinton speak on behalf of her husband and even shook her hand, although that’s not enough to get me to vote for her), lowering the drinking age, should some drugs be legal, etc. But our first Gulf War was mostly over and positive, as far as we knew. The first Bush was in office and he seemed ineffectual but harmless. Heroin was the big new thing, and several of my friends OD’d — one who died. Suicide as well, I knew one who was lost to it. And feminism, always feminism.

Mostly the issues were the same, the names (of the drugs and the people) slightly different. Is that a bad thing? Shouldn’t things have impressed further at this point?

So many people have posted congratulations, here and on my Facebook page — which is really nice, and makes me realize how connected I am with people, all over the place. It is a smaller world. The technologies we have get us information about each other, and keep us in the loop in ways that just weren’t possible before. What’s really fun is that at least two good friends also got engaged, and so there are other people in the planning stages of pre-wedded bliss. I say that at least a little sarcastically — there are many Bridezillas and we all have different ways of viewing marriage, and different ways other people can derail them. Anything that brings together family and friends and means so much comes with pressure too. Having been married before gives things a different twist — I feel much more open to nontraditional or alternative ways of being married, and know how much the wedding really means to the marriage overall. Don’t get me wrong –  it’s a great day, but I’m not sure it’s the pinnacle of the relationship. At the very least, expecting it to be puts on a lot of pressure.

And there ain’t nothing wrong with eloping — to a Vegas chapel, NYC city hall, Iceland, or the other side of the moon. You never know what might spell happiness best…

This semester, I want my freshman to write five times a week on their blog. I think it’s an important habit — writing regularly — and something I want them to get into and learn from. We (in terms of researchers) know that writing helps us learn or define something we know; writing gives structure to our thoughts and feelings. Moreover, writing on a blog means that someone else can read it — it might become important, people might get interested in what I have to say. Here’s the kicker, though. I often forget to write on my blog — and it seems totally wrong to ask students to do what I am not doing. To that end, I am pledging to write on my blog five times a week.  This means that not only will there be more to read, but that I will get into the practice of regular blogging again (I blogged almost daily as a doctoral student). This also means putting myself out there a little bit more — some of the posts are bound to connect with my life, so you will (perhaps) hear a little bit about wedding planning, my resolution to exercise and how that’s going, my weight loss strategies (which currently are to drink coffee instead of eating, so not good) and many many more Willa stories.

So look for this space to be filled a little more regularly.

**Oh yeah, I guess I should have told my audience that Chris proposed right before Christmas and I said yes, so I will be giving marriage another try.**

and at what point is it just ducking the issues? I’m at a faculty workshop and learning a lot — and finding it very useful. But, like any group, there are schisms in beliefs — some people swear something, and others swear the complete opposite. And some just bitch that there are problems at all.

A wise woman told me as a teacher to avoid the lounge at the school where I taught; it was permeated with negativity, a natural place for people to congregate and complain about the world without doing too much about it. Every profession has people who bitch. But at some point, you have to stop complaining (myself included) and decide either to act or to ignore.

Just a thought.

Dr. Phil today is about girls who post pictures of themselves drunk and passed out as a part of a Facebook group that I think is called something like “30 reasons to call it a night.” I’m not surprised that this group exists, nor that people post pictures to it (for some reason, I think this particular group is just girls, which ups the dangerous Internet angle Dr. Phil and other shows like). He and other people are trying to convince some of the members of the group that posting their pictures could cost them their job, among other things.

And I have to say I agree. I know MySpace and Facebook began and are ostensibly sites for teens and those in their twenties. I can understand students who see these spaces as for play, for connection and networking. But Facebook, in particular, is tied to who you actually are and any information about you on that site is public. Period.

No, it shouldn’t matter to your employer what you do in your personal life — but posting on public sites (which Facebook undoubtedly is) makes the personal public. And when it comes to teachers, even having an online presence can put school districts off hiring certain people. I have to recommend to my students to take down their pages, or to make them private. This is the world that we live in — the line between personal and public twists and turns so much that sometimes it gets lost altogether.

Yes, I have a MySpace page and a Facebook one. Those were conscious decisions, given my research interests in the ways new technologies impact literacy practices today. I use Facebook much more often because it is an actual community, spans many different physical locations, and lets me communicate with friends all over the world — literally. But I don’t post pictures that are objectionable (see the story about the Oregon mayor whose photos of her in lingerie on Facebook have surfaced). And I don’t go looking for my students. If they want to add me as a friend, that is great and I will add them.

And yes, I don’t read their pages regularly — because, depending on their year and personality, they may or may not want me to know what they’ve been up to. : ) But Facebook keeps you updated through the home page and I’ve even been told about conversations and posts about how much reading I assign in my classes. Personal and public, student and teacher.

It’s a brave new world.

I make the same resolutions every year:

1. Lose weight

2. Start an exercise program and stick to it

3. Write more, of all kinds but (now) particularly the kind that can get me tenure

4. Take more time off

5. Be more organized

Notice anything about these resolutions? At least two of them are mutually incompatible. If I exercise more and write more, how am I taking time off? How does that work? Also, how do I get more organized, when the time that takes is significant? Case in point, I spent more than an hour sorting through THOUSANDS of messages in my inbox that I have to respond to. So, from the very beginning, I am caught in a catch-22 that seems insolvable. I could jettison all of the others for this one:

1. Be happy

But then, will I get tenure? Get fatter and fatter? End up in my office buried under paper, screaming where no one can hear me? I kid a little, but I am also a little serious. New Year’s resolutions are all about changing everything. Being happy is all about being happy with what you have — or does change bring about happiness? At what point are you truly happy and when have you passed that point and are just obsessing about things?

A dilemma.