November 5, 2022

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: