Reinventing the Internet

As has become embarrassingly clear over the past year, I'm not at all sure what to do with this space anymore. This is not an uncommon phenomena, in fact, my blogger mentors have all been through one or more mid-blog crisis: Alison slowed down, Ryan shut down and then reinvented his site.

Other things have happened, too, since 2003. Flickr happened. Facebook happened. All my friends moved away, and I stopped teaching. My life got a lot less interesting, or at least less blogable. (The ethics of blogging while teaching are debatable, too, and I don't care to debate it.)

Things got really private for awhile. Blogger deleted all my posts from 2003-2004, and I was crushed, and then I got over it. Tumblr happened and I couldn't get into it. LinkedIn happened, and that was good for my professional career. Facebook expanded to older (than me) generations, and suddenly Moms were friending me. The iPhone happened, and I was connected ALL THE TIME. Twitter happened and I was like NONONONONO and then, finally, ok.

Other people in my immediate circle are still successful at blogging. I enjoy Mindy's updates about her life and about her daughter, and I imagine what an amazing baby book it will make. Babies across the globe will one day have access to their early years in detail that is mind boggling to me.

For the most part, my family members either do not understand or are justifiably concerned about our (our = the world's) growing internet presence. I share their hesitation and try to stay private/censored/professional as much as I can, while staying true to myself and enjoying the ease of connectivity and a public outlet for creative ideas.

I am not the first one to question the merits of staying connected to people I would otherwise grow apart from, and I have on many an occasion cut contacts ruthlessly and without remorse. Would I go out of my way to say hello to you in a crowded space? No? Then I wish you well, and you do not need to have access to my personal profile. Do we have any past interactions that make regular updates feel "a little weird"? Goodbye, friend, and go in peace.

The point is -- and after all these characters, I do have a point -- you see, Twitter would have cut me off LONG AGO because, like Mr. Moore my 9th grade English teacher, it is all: Get to the beach! -- the point is that ponycrusher will stay, until blogger decides to cruelly and unusually erase everything I have written over the last five years. The point is, I'm stretched in more internet directions, and that is ok. It is good to be concise. It is good to let the picture speak for itself. And it is good to, every now and then, post the diatribe that ties several ideas together. It is good to document. And good to know when to let it all go.

I Had a Good Thing Going Here

It is not hard to pinpoint when the bloggy break started. It started when I discovered google alerts and started tracking certain keywords to aid me in my work. And then I discovered things from those alerts that I surely was not meant to see -- college livejournals stressing over an upcoming acronym interview; somebody trashing a bad interning experience.

And then I got all paranoid about little nothing small-audience blogs like this one thrust quite unknowingly and unwillingly into inboxes everywhere, because of a keyword. Someone inadvertently reading about the ONE TIME I was dissatisfied with a job, a co-worker, a volunteer.

And it turns out that if you don't have anything nice to say, usually you don't have much to say at all. Gofiggure.

I am trying to change that. ANONYMOUSLY.

artist ISO medium

The thing about blogger is that when I get the urge to write about something, so often now I start to shape things as a blog; I imagine the paragraph breaks and the links I will make, and I'm writing it in my head even as it is happening, seperating myself from the event and shaping it in the past-tense viewed over the glowing computer screen.

Which may be why the last two experiences I tried to write came out all wrong, so much so that I had to delete them before posting.

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-You promised me you'd show me some of your writing.
-I know. I will. I just forgot. I'll have to find something from high school, it's safer.
-I know, right? When I showed you that poem, it was from an assignment I wrote with my students, so I was in teacher mode and censored myself because I knew they'd probably read it. That's easy to show you. It's like, "yes, this is my writing, but it's not really my writing."

*

And then I realized that I haven't really been writing for some time. I haven't even tried. But if this isn't it, then what is?

To the Victor...

This post should be subtitled "I Win at Internet" or "Why the Hell is my Sidebar Way Down There?"

Not only do I crush ponies, I also crush small dogs, comments, and pesky css code. When in doubt, just add more </div>'s

Relocated

So here's what happened.

Some students did a google search for a girl's name and found pictures I had posted from class. While my site tracking revealed that the googlers from HISD computers had only looked at that particular photo gallery and not at the rest of the (damning) evidence that their teacher is, yes, a REAL LIVE HUMAN BEING, I thought it prudent to hide the evidence anyway.

That being said, I'm not about to sacrifice the only medium that keeps me writing on a regular basis.

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More proof that I absolutely must go see Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind in this NYTimes article about digital deletion (you might need a password, but it's worth it).

Dating in the information age means that more of my boyfriends than not have had e-mail, instant messenger, cell phones, etc., and yes, I've probably google-searched them. I've had serious confrontations over the "relationship status" box on Friendster ("what do you mean you're 'single'????"); sent scathing, relationship-ending emails; de-buddied and re-buddied ex's in my buddy list to avoid seeing their away messages; and cried about it all on my weblog.

It's all incredibly documented, and instantly deletable. Zap. Clean slate. What the article fails to mention that that it's also instantly regretable, which is why I recommend a 24-hour "waiting period" before you do something silly, like delete yourself from Friendster.