Captain's Blog

Star date: February 4, 2010

We are in the fourth week of the semester and my head is a maelstrom of technological terms, concepts and ideas. On the first day of classes it became apparent, much to my dismay, that I would be required to keep a blog for two of my 4 classes. I am no stranger to blogs, having started one after the birth of my son. But considering I'm a DTC major, it seems pretty obvious why it was required for me to keep a new one.

I spent the better part of this week dividing my reading time between Dennis Baron's A Better Pencil and Lisa Nakamura's Digital Race. I went to bed last night with the intention of letting my thoughts about blogs, FB, MySpace, AIM icons and the like steep overnight before I sat down to compose this entry. Little did I know it would wind up haunting my dreams causing restless sleep and still no real idea of what to write.

I never considered writing to be something that was hard for me. Until now. Even though I have a FB account and periodically update my status, blogging was more of a means of communicating the milestones of my son to friends and family who were far away. Not that they aren't interested in what's going on with me, but he (my son) is what's usually going on with me. It never occurred to me to blog personal thoughts or emotions of my daily life. I've always been aware of the risks involved in a public blog, even FB status updates. I'm not dumb enough to vent about people (unless it's some random person nobody knows) or my job because...why? Does anybody really care what I think? I haven't posted an entry to my/my son's personal blog since September (shame on me). The pressure to write something intelligent on my personal blog didn't exist in the way it does for this school blog. Most of the time (including now) I feel like all I do is ramble. I write the way I talk, pouring thoughts, words and sentences as I might say them out loud in conversation. I became aware of following the "rules" of Netiquette only after a friend pointed it out to me in an email...long before I ever had a blog or FB account. They didn't do it because I was breaking the rules, but more as a way to keep me in the loop. Even then I thought it was dumb. I found email, IM, text and blogging to be impersonal compared to face-to-face interactions and it wasn't until someone told me THAT WRITING IN ALL CAPS WAS SHOUTING that I made sure not to write in with the caps lock on, even though I rarely used caps to begin with when composing emails or texts.

For the most part, blogging is sorta fun, depending on the subject matter. I can certainly appreciate the risks involved from an educational standpoint (correct spelling and grammar) and a privacy standpoint. Regardless, I can positively say that no matter who is blogging and what they're blogging about, the content can impact people in different meaningful (or meaningless) ways. We are all authors in our own right. Hooray for us!

http://www.thelaceyreport.blogspot.com
http://thumpers-hole.net/wordpress
http://cupcakeblog.com