Jill Walker has two interesting blog posts back-to-back, the kind of posts that ask to be cited in the vague and foggy book project on blogging and the “writerly life” I have in a corner of my brain. The first is yet another post on the whole pseduo-anonymous thing. She points out again that one of the (apparent) appeals of the pseduoanonymous blog is the play of it all, the “I’m going to take a picture of my eyes and make vague references to a region of the country; can you guess who I am? Have you seen me at the store or the coffee shop?”
In particular, this bit struck me:
I think what fascinates me about the hide-and-seek of pseudonymous blogging is that that is what we all do when we blog. In psuedonymous blogs the blogger gets to play with that. Real-name bloggers like me – well, we may only blog 1% of our lives, but people still seem to think they’re getting the whole picture – I’ve been asked at many a late party or conference how I can stand that people know me so intimately.
I very much had this experience (relatively) recently in Omaha. I received a ride from the hotel I was staying in to the conference by a Creighton professor who was also attending the conference and who I had not met. We exchanged some pleasantries, and then she explained how it was strange meeting me face to face since she had read both this blog and my unofficial blog and she felt like she knew me already. When of course, she didn’t; or at least she only knew a part of me.
Anyway, the second post on Jill’s blog of interest to me this morning was about a meme on what’s the last word in your dissertation. Kinda cute, I thought, so I pulled my dusty copy off of the shelf and looked:
discourse
I’ve decided to take this as an omen.