Something I thought about:

  • Like a lot of other people, I’ve been thinking about social media and what I want from it. I loved Twitter back in the day — I met many fabulous people through it who became IRL friends. I wouldn’t have made it through the move to Switzerland or through the pandemic without the community I found there. At the same time, I loved the Livejournal community, and while we all left the site, we stayed in touch through Facebook, Twitter, newsletters, etc. It isn’t the same, but people are still around. So I revived my Mastodon account and found that a lot of academics are trying it out and that several friends are also experimenting, and I’m seeing how it goes. I don’t have a huge Twitter platform. I use social media mostly for connections / community, and so for me, I’m looking at the quality of interactions rather than the size of the audience. That’s absolutely a privilege. I don’t rely on Twitter for my income or research or anything else. I still have my account there and will keep posting for now, but at this moment, I like the smaller space with more quality interactions.

Something I did:

  • Sent child back to school after two weeks of school vacation.
  • Triage (I had way too much on my plate after school vacation and had to ruthlessly prioritize).
  • Handed the first-year lit section back to my colleague, who has returned from a year of research abroad.
  • Switched gears with creative writing students — a day of looking at revision and then introducing short fiction.
  • Dissertation revision.
  • Returned to Mastodon and started to build my community there.
  • Got my bivalent booster.

Something I read: