I'm BAAAAAAACK!

After a long, unplanned, and rather eventful absence, I'm back. I got scared off of blogging by a sudden exponential increase in hits (I never really expected or wanted anyone to actually read this thing) following a link from Inside Higher Ed and temporarily abandoned cyberspace.

During my time away I was productive. Not academically of course. Instead, I spawned. (Holy SH*T, I'm a MOM!) The spawn is now 3 months old. What have I learned as a new parent? That I am way less paranoid than I thought I'd be. Also I don't have much patience. Also, I'm in love. But more about the spawn later.

Now that I'm a postdoc and a few months away from my first faculty placement, I think it's time to rethink how to approach my anonymity and the purpose of this blog. In the world of academic blogs I follow, many are pseudo-anonymous, some are totally unidentifiable, and a few are totally transparent. I've always operated this blog as a pseudo-anonymous forum, primarily because I started this as a graduate student and my main goal was kvetching about Dissertation Hell. And who wants that kind of stuff attached to their permanent record? Also because it is mostly a collection of random posts, many of which are personal. But I have a lot to say about my academic field and some of these thoughts are actually pretty good; maybe I should lay claim to them. OTOH, I also have a lot to say about my waistline, the Spawn, politics, general annoyances, and my cats. And I don't need that kind of stuff cropping up when I am on the job market again.

I'll be sorting this out in the next few weeks. I may opt to start anew and abandon this forum entirely. Why? Well, because I can think of way better blog names. If any of you are still reading and have thoughts about anonymity and blogging, especially academic blogging, please share.