Starchless blogging
Walking the tightrope between personal and professional blogging can feel downright death-defying. It also complicates simple things, like “do I put my blog’s URL on my listing on a library-related website?”
It would be disingenuous of me—worse, dishonest—to claim that CavLec is wholly divorced from my professional life. Ninety percent of the librarians I know (whether I have met them in person or not), I know because of the blog. The converse also holds; any given librarian who knows me probably met me through the blog. So yes, I do find myself using its URL in informal professional contexts.
Still and all, CavLec won’t ever appear on my CV. It won’t go into The Binder I have to submit early next year to get my contract renewed (and you don’t even want to get me started on the topic of The Binder). I don’t mention it in the canned bios I give conferences and publications. I quite simply don’t want it considered as any part of my actual job. Ever.
I find that that’s where the to-blog-or-not-to-blog firewall is settling in. I talk about my profession on CavLec. I mostly don’t talk about my job, except insofar as I pursue my profession while doing my job. Lots of things have happened at MPOW that even the most faithful CavLec reader doesn’t know about. Sometimes this is a distinction without a difference, but all in all, it seems to be working out fine for everyone concerned. Because, really, who needs the skinny on our latest search committee or task force?
Keeping that firewall in place protects some freedoms that I value. One of them is the freedom to be silly, not to take myself seriously, not to take my work seriously, not to take the profession seriously. Not all the time, anyway. I don’t have to be all starchy and buttoned-down on CavLec. Just as well, because wearing starched shirts makes my skin itch, and producing starched writing makes my brain itch.
The Family Man Librarian got a mite annoyed with me and fellow CiL2006 bloggers for excessive adulation with a side of teenybopper absurdity. Well, I plead no contest. Going fangirly over colleagues is unquestionably silly and “unprofessional” (scare quotes because that’s a word I loathe). I refuse to admit, however, that silliness is unequivocally a bad thing, and as I’ve said before, I’ll fangirl where I please.
Hasn’t librarianship been starching its shirts long enough? Don’t we have enough of a reputation as stuffy naysayers? Shouldn’t we want to call attention to the best in our profession? And doesn’t humor get attention?
Sure, it’s possible to go overboard. The day I go on being silly about someone after that person asks me to stop—well, that’s just rude. The day I refuse to call one of my heroes out on something because s/he’s my hero, y’all just go ahead and shoot me like a worn-out horse. The day I turn pit-bull on somebody who disagrees with one of my heroes, ditto.
But I’ve no plans to stop being excited when I meet someone I admire. The best thing about this profession is the number of people in it or affiliated with it that I admire. And if I express my admiration in goofball terms, honestly, where’s the harm? Starch is for shirts, not blogs. Not this blog, anyway.