Evolution

This particular blog was created a few years ago as a place for me to post creative writing stuff. All of the energy was being put into promotion, talking with other writers, and trying to push myself into the whole "successful small press writer" niche that I know folks who have accomplished. (Ugh. that sentence construction sucks, but I'm not rewriting it). Because hey, we have FB and other social media, and we can have casual everyday conversations (kind of microblogs) there. Right? Right? 

Heck, I've been an early adopter of blog technology and stuff for a long time. I had a blog back in the mid-90s (shakes fist at the cloud to get off my lawn) that was so procrastinate-y that I managed to write thousands of words that could have been my dissertation.  It still kind of exists; it just got changed into a mommy blog and then abandoned. It's still cute. There are photos of my babies on there-- the babies who now are 19 and hogging up my couch and not paying income tax. 

Back in the late 90s, when The Matrix was still a cool movie franchise, and my friend group and I spent a whole day watching the Star Wars movies three times AT AN ACTUAL THEATER, sandwiched with cool restaurants and margaritas, we used to have bulletin boards where we would chat with "friends" we met there about random topics, unrelated to the ostensible subject the board was designed for. I had a good friend on the "David Bowie's pants" thread, and we would regularly team up to tease one other poster who was known for being sort of cranky (I can't remember their usernames.... it's been 20 years... but there was something about flames? or bombs? in his username, like he would be "explosive" woooo. So hence the teasing). And it was fun! 

And then, circa 2009 (ish?) FB was invading campuses across the nation. I was teaching in Louisiana, and students thought I was still cool (I had some fun RYP things back then. Even a hot pepper rating for a while 🌶️ and now we think that's kinda gross, even though as a chonky middle-aged woman I wouldn't mind qualifying for one again). And they begged me to sign up. It seemed sort of innocuous. Fun. I did learn a little too much personal info about a few of them and developed a policy of not being friends until after there was no chance they could be in one of my classes again......

And so. Almost 20 years later, we find the landscape of today. Right-wing fascists have absolutely taken over Twitter (I will deadname that site forever. They don't get to hide from me.) We know more about some people than we ever, ever wanted to know. For a while, FB was kind of holding firm, not being a total hellscape, even though it was definitely making me shop too much, but then, the algorithm decided I was really into conservative X-tian merch and probably guns, and also Celtic knot jewelry and started showing me random ads. One of those three is kind of true. So I started getting all these ads, and try as hard as possible, I couldn't stop them from showing up in my feed. 

It might be some kind of negging strategy, but JESUS I don't need that. So, since summer, I've been mostly avoiding it. I took it off of my phone, and only log in now periodically via laptop, like the Goddess intended. 

I went on there this past week, and immediately was upset by politics, (which granted, is rational right now, but sheesh; I already know these things are happening). I also almost immediately purchased something... which I have been kind of cutting back on after seeing the horrific documentary on Netflix called Buy Now..... where I immediately deleted all of my cheap Chinese product purchasing apps. So I binged, like a true Aholic does. You can't have one because it turns into more, and the next thing you know, you're waking up on a wet lawn covered in Twinkie wrappers, and packages from China will show up in a few weeks filled with fast fashion. 

And now cue the announcement from Mark Z. (who now looks a lot like the meme that was going around of him last year that someone had fancied up to look prettier. He took the advice of the world, and honestly, I kind of don't love that for some reason.) FB is rolling out AI "people" to chat with us. And no longer using fact-checkers, who were definitely the problem here. /s.  And more. So, I'm probably not going to post there anymore, and I probably won't full-scale delete my account forever, but my pop-ins are rare and getting rarer. Read the article above because honestly, it's even grosser than I realized. 

I'm also trying to wean myself off Instagram, because it also makes me shop, in spite of all the cute bird (and hippo!!) content. And because I love my VR headset workout and Beat Saber, I am still worried about the influence of certain companies on my life but also doggedly pretending it'll be ok. 

I do read too much Reddit, especially the Leopards Eating Faces group, which I am calling social media methadone, because it's not fun, but it keeps me from getting the DT shakes. I tried Bluesky for a hot minute, but then I accidentally agreed to follow like 100 people I didn't know, and my feed filled up with their content, and I don't really know how to extricate myself from that problem. And right now I'm not really motivated to do that on there. It gets a "meh" from me, dog. 

But also. It's a full 10 days away from the semester's start and I've already finished all of my syllabuses AND learning management platform prep and am almost done with the full first week of lesson plans. And I finished playing the newest Life is Strange game (mostly two thumbs up), and played enough Stardew Valley to get bored with it again. I might even read some actual printed books later. I have barely shopped, enough so that I suspect Paypal and Mastercard are going to start emailing me sad "Where are you?" emails. But like. Who knew not scrolling through hundreds of hours of doom and ads and people trying to stealth sell you candles was taking up too much time? 

Anyway. I'm about to start a new semester where I will be actively trying to stop students from writing with too much Chat GPT and doing a cool conference and committees and fun parts of my job, so I don't know how much I'll really write here, but I think our shunning of MySpace was probably premature and we should all navigate back to less actively chaotic evil platforms. So this particular blog is going to be where you can find me ranting in a non microblog way, as long as my carpal tunnel doesn't flare like it just did and make my left hand typing almost impossible.... 

Also-- Grammarly keeps trying to change things and sometimes it is right but sometimes HELL NO LEAVE ME ALONE. 

Anyway. One last meme I found when I was looking for the template to create my bad viral template of the above Anakin/Amadala post.

Come see me here sometimes. We don't need social media overlords who were creating that platform to diss hot chicks who were mean to him..... we can chat in other places too. Really. 

I miss y'all, so if you do stop by, leave a comment. Back the way we used to in the 90s. When a certain future world leader was just a TV show personality we could ignore. ::hysterical laughcry::

What I did this Spring....

This past Spring Semester, I taught a British Lit II class of dual enrollment high school students. I know what you're thinking "British Lit? Wait... don't you do American Lit?" (If you weren't thinking that it's okay; who even knows the distinction outside of my own head?) 

OMG I really adored this class. It reminded me of how much I love the literature that lured me into the life of teaching and studying literature in the first place. I guess I had forgotten over the years that fascination with the Literature anthology that would have me skimming through the parts the teacher never assigned, discovering the works of T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings (I know-- American, but there's a whole Paris thing in there too). Dorothy Parker, W.H. Auden. I thought about how I tried to take flowers to Aphra Behn's grave back in 2002 at Westminster Abbey the way Virginia Woolf told me all women writers should do only to be flummoxed by the fact that there weren't ANY of the ubiquitous everywhere else in London flower stands near the church. 

And I had this small group of young women who sat in the far right corner of the classroom whose faces lit up every time I talked about a woman writer, or the suffragettes, or Shakespeare's sister. It was, according to several of them in their notes about the semester, the first time many of them had ever been taught literature of people who look like them in an English class. And I had a comment from several of the boys that they had never had anything that spoke to them in a way that made them want to read more on their own outside of class before (this one student enthusiastically wrote about the V.S. Naipaul story we read). And another young man wrote about how he'd never thought of what it took to be a writer before, and how he wondered if he could do that too. Since many of these students at this school are first-generation college students, it means SO MUCH to me to be able to help them understand more about their own paths to future success. 

And one of the young women wrote an incredible poem that I encouraged her to submit to poetry contests because it honestly blew me away. The chance to be THAT MENTOR just gives me absolute chills. 

The students were incredibly sweet to me and gushed about how fun and interesting the class was. I really had the best experience with them and can't wait to get to teach this content again in the future. And maybe I'll get to teach Brit Lit I (and maybe American Lit too!) soon. I love teaching writing. I've been doing it for 20+ years. But getting to teach about Prufrock and giving the students a peach (gummy heart) before their final exams and daring them to "disturb the universe" was what I LIVE FOR. 

Here's hoping for future chances to do more of the same. Fingers way crossed.