I've been at a conference this past week, is why the absence of posting. It was a good conference; I caught up with friends, saw a new city, played with gigantic helium-filled silver mylar balloons, drank my fair share of the city's beer supply, and ate a lot of McDonalds. Plus, I gave a paper at this conference, and it was very well-received. I was proud of how I delivered it--I tend to be a bit of a mumbler, so performing an academic paper properly is something I've worked on a lot. And not only did my paper go well, but I saw a lot of stimulating papers by other scholars, had many good academic conversations, met lots of fascinating new people, and got lots of good advice from other students, professors at other schools, and even a publisher or two. And furthermore my first academic publication came out this weekend. It's a very minor publication, to be sure, but it is neat to see your name in print, all professionally typeset and everything.
It was really a great conference; it is every year. I'm always amazed how this one particular annual musicological conference can be so productive, when the "main" musicological conference can make you want to drill a hole in a vital organ. It's actually not too hard to figure out the difference, but here I run into one of the main problems with my blog: it is neither anonymous nor non-anonymous. I don't quite feel comfortable delivering honest opinions about things that intersect so directly with my "career." If it was anonymous, I could dish all I want, albeit in vague, coded terms. If it was under my real name, I could brag more annoyingly about accomplishments, and attempt to attach to the real me whatever intellectual capital and good publicity a blog can produce. (Heh.)
My friends and family read this, and if you read this blog and don't happen to know me, it takes about ten seconds of googling to figure out who I am. Recent linkage from blogs read by a lot of people in my field has meant that I'm getting many visitors I don't personally know. I'm okay with that; I have to be. I feel confident enough in myself that I figure that people knowing me better is a good thing. And yet, a lot of the postings here are personal enough that I prefer not to actually have my name attached directly, at least for the time being. My theory is that I would just rather not have people be able to google my real name and find Barnet Bound. It would not be a disaster if somebody made the connection, as I run a fairly clean ship, but I like to cut down on undergraduates and future employers making the direct link. Probably when I go on the job market this fall, I'm going to stop blogging here, and move to a new address under my real name. Maybe I'll split it in two: an anonymous blog full of gossip and scandalous stories--since my life is obviously that interesting--and a named one that pretends to be a real grown-up. We'll see. Whatever will be, will be.
2 comments:
As a fairly faithful reader of your blog, I can't tell you how startling it was to see a photograph not unlike one I took last week. Of course now I am likely to spend a great deal of time wondering if I ran into you at the conference or even heard your paper! (I don't think I did).
I couldn't agree more about the difference between this conference and the main one. Something like the difference between "community" and eh...the running of the bulls?
I'd normally not post anonymously, but since I also posted about the same conference, I wouldn't want to give away your identity to anyone. ;-)
Okay, now I am very curious who you are! It is a small society, after all. :)
I know what you mean. Even the same people who are nice at one meeting get all edgy at the other. I hope that as the "good society" gets more successful and mainstream, we don't lose the nice stuff!
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