After I somehow managed to delete my old blog, which I had had for years and throughout college, I have finally decided to start blogging again and have that beginner’s mind to my new one. Since I am a furious notetaker, I will also be posting my unedited notes (except for spelling) here and have a a medley of journalism discussion and whatever ensues from the sheer need to write. So here goes:
February 6, 2008
11 pm
I’ve turned off the email, the radio, and the random response reaction to calls and online communication. I have done it, I am taking rule of this island, I have stopped being the immigrant and gone native. I am differentiating signal from noise and stopped this madness of overabundance in information. What better time to do it than now. Every instinct inside me has been telling me that it’s time to reflect (dare I say it) to write it down and later decide on the sharing aspect of it all. The world will always be there waiting to listen and to respond in whatever way it will.
I have avoided this reflection because I have sought to avoid distinguishing between information that I would share (and with whom of course), information I would keep to myself and information that I would send off that special friend (the details of which I will keep to myself). But avoidance is not really taking responsibility for the act, it is taking no responsibility for choosing not to act. Even worse is realizing that overabundance may in fact come from the same fear of deprivation and that by having too many choices, too many options I am equally stunted in action with only a sense of having acted by creating these options for myself. But focus and filtration, now there are my two words.
The world has conspired tonight in some way to put me here. I have listened to Henry Jenkins speak about online media literacy and resiliency and the crafting of identity, but even now as I write it’s difficult because as a journalist I’m used to writing for an audience.