20190322.0430

The end of the month is approaching, and I am thinking about what I will do in this webspace next month. I am not certain I want to return to the things I've done before, whether adding to my hymns against the Stupid God or reading and responding to issues in one newspaper or another. I am certain I need to move away from the freer essays I've been doing this month; I am running out of material with them, as has become clear to me as I've written the past few of them. (Again, I try to write them ahead of time so that I can have and maintain a buffer against being unable to write as I would like to write. Not that I can ever write as I would like to write, whether in terms of amount written or of quality.)
One thing that I might do, and I have not done it yet, at least not in the specific instance, is to read and respond to posts on a particular social media network: LinkedIn. There have been times when I have required my students to have presences on it, mostly when I was still fresh from my work in The City, where it had been a useful tool. But it has not carried as much currency outside The City as it seemed to do within it, at least not where I am and have been. I still have a profile on the platform, though, even if I do not check on it as much as I ought to do to maintain an image of myself as a professional on it. My thought is that, by spending time on the platform to read what's posted to it enough that I can respond meaningfully, I can elevate my professional profile, which ought to help me and the nonprofit that employs me.
The thing is, if I do such a thing, I'll need to cross-post what I write here to there; it will do me little good to make the comments where I am not seen, and this webspace attracts little attention. The other might well attract more, particularly if I end up working with the kind of polemic thrust I am prone to adopt--but that attention may not work to my benefit. I know it is said that no publicity is bad publicity, but I do not think I am at the level of professional attainment or privilege that allows me to shrug off bad press. (I rather suspect that some of the comments left about me online influenced decisions against hiring me in another life. But I need to do more to leave that behind me.) I do not think I ought to be as openly confrontational as I have been, at least not in my professional spaces, cyber- or otherwise.
I still have a few days to decide how I shall proceed, so I'll not worry about it more at the moment. But it is something I will need to decide soon; the month draws closer to its end, after all.