Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

e-traces

Where have I been? Working, that's where. Graded two sets of assignments, wrote and filed two fellowship applications, crammed a massive amount of Polish for a quiz (for some reason I cannot remember numbers, cardinal and ordinal, for any length of time. I have learned them at least four times, and I keep having to relearn them), wrote and practiced a conference presentation that I'm giving next week. Last night I finally slept soundly after several nights of tossing and turning with anxiety about how I would finish all this stuff.

My friend C. is thinking of removing all of his blog from the web. I wish he wouldn't, of course: reading it over from time to time is sort of like talking to him. But lately I've been wondering about the traces we leave on the Internet or on servers all over. I think about this sometimes when I am tempted to make a snarky comment in response to emails from some of my friends who work in local governments. "Remember, the [insert state] Secretary of State considers email to be a public record." I'd be embarrassed if some time in the (far) future other people read my petty, mean comments.

And of course, I self-censor in blogs, too. I don't write about college/departmental brouhahas or problems with family or friends. I got some very helpful feedback from a professor this week about some other people on campus to contact about my dissertation, and I can't put it on my dissertation page because it's a very frank (and sometimes unflattering) assessment of their abilities and connectedness.

Like C., I suppose that when the pleasure of writing online stops, then I'll stop writing online. Until then, I've missed it lately and hope I'll be able to write more often.