This blog is just a baby…
but I have been blogging in various other places on the internet for seven years, today.
I just didn’t know if y’all knew that.
So my relationship with The Online Journal is quite a bit different than most people who jumped on the jolly blog bandwagon later in the game. That’s not a statement of judgment either, just a statement of difference.
Many grown adult people woke up one day and said to themselves: “hmm… a blog sounds good!”
I didn’t know what a blog was when I started writing here. I actually refused to use the word until about 2007. I preferred the term “Online Journal.” Which is really the difference. My online life is not entirely separate from my physical life. I didn’t wake up and say “I think I’ll write about myself ad naseum and then publish it on an online space.” I was 18. It was the last few months of my senior year. I didn’t have a whole lot to say, but I picked up steam. My journal made me real-life friends in college. It continues to make me non-real-life (and that’s not a statement of judgment either) friends today. And strangely, writing this blog has helped me become better friends with people I barely spoke to in college
My online life is never far separated from me. I could never stick to a topical blog. I could never “professionalize” my blog into something I could put on a job application. I couldn’t privatize or hide or “friends only” anymore than I could privatize or hide my real life.
When I switched over to WordPress, however, I did push myself to do more than blather randomly about whatever was ailing me, to not routinely discuss work (since I had a Big Girl Job), and also to keep my life rated PG-13.
That’s it though.
Employers can find me here. Coworkers. Classmates. Teachers. Family members.
I don’t really care.
Hello, employers, coworkers, classmates, teachers, family!
I think this came up in my Library Management class last semester, but I’ve adopted it as a personal blog credo. Common wisdom states that your blog can get you fired, your Facebook pictures can get you fired, your Twitter status can get you fired, so you should keep your online life under wraps. Otherwise you’ll get fired. My professor took a slightly different stance: if you have a blog, and your blog shows that you are personally invested in the job you have/are seeking, and you come off as a good person who doesn’t snort coke every morning before getting on the bus to work, then your blog is just another way for your employer or future employer to get to know you. If you are an honest, good, respectful, interesting, amusing person online, then why would that be a problem in the workplace?
Anyway. I hope I’m coming off as honest, good, respectful, interesting, and amusing. And personally invested in the job I am seeking (books.books.books.books).
I have been doing this for a long time.
April 16, 2003
….take Brandon, the reason for my ranting. He’s this complete know-it-all type who likes to spout off about any topic whatsoever at any given time. Well, we were backstage, in the wings, and he comes up to me, like real close and our shoulders are touching, and I was freaked out…..
April 16, 2004
Oh my god.
An innocent three hour shift at the library gone wrong. It’s TOTALLY packed with high school students.
Some of them are in costume.
April 16, 2005
…then I do stupid shit and feel like I’m just getting more and more immature… like my reluctance to search for a job, or a car, or pay my apartment payment, or go back into a store to figure out why they overcharged, crying in the UC bathroom because I couldn’t buy a frappucinno…
April 16, 2006
There are bits and pieces of my life that make my heart soar, and bits and pieces that make me cry daily, and it all adds up to a big fucking DILEMMA (internalconflictinternalconflictinternalconflict) There are facts and there are idealizations and there are hopes and there are fears and there are realities… and I can’t figure out what is what sometimes…
April 16, 2007
…10. I have probably 40 pages to write before the end of the semester. Which isn’t too much for zee novelist that I like to consider myself to be, but class writing is considerably more painful than nonclass writing. Especially with 8-10 of those pages are Shakespearian research paper.
April 16, 2008
My mom is cool because she grew up in Ohio. Every summer she went to Girl Scout Camp or stayed with my great-grandma in Evansville, Indiana. Except for the summer she worked at a shoe store.
After her Senior Prom, she went to Cedar Point…
April 16, 2009
Where exactly does one LOSE a pair of sneakers? I hope someone tied the laces together and threw them over a telephone wire.
Happy 7th Birthday, Online Jessica.
