It’s been awhile since I’ve updated this apparently very sporadic series of posts on the development of my Domain, readywriting.org. A lot of has changed for me and my digital presence in the past nine months. And so how I’ve approached my personal domain has had to change as well.
In December, the last time I wrote a post in this series, I had a blog at InsideHigherEd.com. In January, I didn’t anymore. So, my idea of my domain of being just a kind of landing page went right out the window. I also started teaching in January, which took up a lot of my time as well. It was the perfect storm of avoidance strategies: confusion over purpose combined with a lack of time and mental energy.
Quickly and unexpectedly, my domain became my new blogging platform. I didn’t have much time to think about what that meant, and in a way, it was amazingly freeing to me. I didn’t feel the pressure of having the built-in audience that came with being at IHE, alongside the built-in expectations. It didn’t have to be a “blog” about “higher education” – it could be whatever and about whatever I wanted it to be.
So I wrote 2700 words about Bob Ross and another 2500 about wearing a two-piece swimsuit and another 1000 words about my favorite band. I also wrote about work stuff and personal stuff and long pieces and short pieces, but largely, I get to write whatever I want in whatever form I want and however long I want.
I get to figure out who I want to be online again.
Once the summer rolled around, I got to play around more in making my domain and playing in WordPress. I created a custom menu to link my various digital identities, as well as create a number of subdomains:
- A random poetry translation generator, co-developed with my colleague Kris Shaffer, based on my research from my recently published book.
- An archive of my old Blogger blog.
- A space to play with Peasy.
I’ve really embraced the potential of subdomains for my site, as a way to create a variety of spaces for myself. It’s made a huge difference this semester as well in my teaching, to help students think through their own digital identities and digital strategies, as well as in my work with faculty. I can empathize with their struggles with the technology, as well as how overwhelming (and at times, frustrating) it can be.
But I still haven’t tackled the CSS on my site. That’s next. When I have time.
Image Moduli Creatures licensed CC-BY 2.0
