Dear reader… hit the restart button

…[UPDATED 4/5/17] Somewhere along the way I lost my blogging voice. Why? I asked myself that more than once. One factor for sure: I loaned it out too often and for too long at the behest of others -- groups, organizations, campaigns, causes, individuals. My blogger's voice lost track of whose it was. This March I took a leap and committed to the #sol17 March blogging challenge hosted by the Two Writing Teachers blog and writing community where I wrote 31 days straight, a blog post a day and commented on 9 (or more) other posts every day. 

All blogging challenges include a commenting requirement, usually a minimum of three. The additional commenting load was from volunteer to welcome and support a group of new participants because I knew the extra commitment would stay me from dropping out. It worked and was also a lesson about blogging that I had forgotten: the conversation matters as much as content. Authentic exchanges, the sifting of opinion and information, as Jacques Barzun defined conversation, what makes the content matter. Along with regular posts, I want to bring that back to my blogging.

Am I ready? I think so. I know I can but will I?

break is over—back to the #edblog beat & #adjunct blogging

…with something no matter how short or recycled. Not that it was a 100% break what with the persistent ubiquity of social media and email. The combined effect of information/project overload and sandwiching a holiday into a grim news news cycle had me dropping out wherever I could...

The time it allowed reading ed blogs and getting up to speed with my new colleagues on the Education Bloggers Network was well spent. There are 200 now. Just today I posted to the EBN Basecamp area explaining my ideas on configuring personal or open blog/social media networks. Most of the bloggers there are in K12 education. Some currently teach in both K12 and education courses in higher ed, most likely as adjuncts in the latter. I've been bookmarking their blogs on Diigo as I come across them. 

Anyway, when one of the members teaching in higher ed asked me about my field, I made my reply more of an introduction since I hadn't really posted one yet. Here it is, somewhat edited and with the obligatory apologies for tiresome redundancies:

My field is now "retired" with digital ankle biting and online community media as "retirement hobbies." I notice I am not the only ed blogging retiree here. [Aside: Is blogging the educator version of "old soldier" fading? Or just the persistence of longstanding habit?]

I started in English (UL Lafayette) and then Comparative Literature (ABDammit, UC Davis, representations of city space in literature). My move from multi-language lit to social media/web curation traversed teaching Spanish, developmental writing/study skills and 1st composition, ESL, GED, local Family Literacy and after school programs while doing web pages, email newsletters and groups and then onto blogging and social media. That's just the last 25 years...and leaves out non-academic teaching and other workplace byways,

Short version: precarious faculty is my home base / hub blog for what I consider an independent information network that takes in other blogs, aggregation platforms and social media.

#adjunct realities: crossing domains, navigating networks

PoSR graphic ©1978-2014 Sally A Applin & Michael D Fischer 

…or why I keep having such a hard time keeping up on this blog I now have three fat posts in drafts. The quick catch-up one got fat in a hurry thanks to Vegara v. California, #WeAreNNMC,  #yesallwomen, and a fund-raising campaign for Mary-Faith Cerasoli that is suffering side effects of retaliation and bullying (yes, sometimes #adjuncts abuse other adjuncts ~ power relationships trump solidarity and humanity here too). With the bullying/retaliation and a uses of twitter post, that makes three.  Any one of the so-called quick catch-

Such is our polysocial reality, mine in particular navigating and crossing back and forth across interest domains and social media. Turns out too that PolySocial Reality (PoSR) is a cross-disciplinary sub-domain that