Dear Secret Santa 2014,
Thank you for visiting my blog.
I hope this post will help you to figure out
what you would like to give. If not, I
hope that it will at least provide you some idea about what I am like as a
person. Maybe if we ever meet face-to-face,
you could tell me that you were my Santa. Then again, after reading my blog, you might
decide that you do not want to meet me.
Ever! Either way, I am grateful
that I am currently in your thoughts.
To begin, I thought we could start by looking at our
commonality: Twitter. You might have
seen that my Tweets follow a specific format: quote, summary, URL, source(s). Most of my Tweets are replies; I very rarely
Retweet. I don’t Follow (or Tweet about)
international celebrities. (This reduces
the proportion of bots in my Followers list.)
Further, my Tweets tend to fall into four categories:
- Higher education;
- Politics/government;
- Identity issues (particularly ethnicity, gender, and sexuality); and
- Etymology.
While some subjects, like the environment, focus on one category (politics/government), others cross multiple categories. For instance, when discussing sexual assaults on campus, the categories of higher education, politics/government, and identity
issues are recalled. When discussing racism, politics/government and identity issues are similarly recollected.
Beyond this, I’m aware that some information is very clearly missing from
my Twitter page. Outside photographs and #nzmusicmonth, my feed is a personal desert.
It would be near impossible to glean from Twitter my marital status (widow)
or whether I have children (yes). You might note that I am aiming for the PhD, but you couldn’t tell that I enjoy cooking, Game
of Thrones, and dancing. Plugging
the 2014 feed through a micro-filter might have got you my performing arts,
our US-Caribbean trip next week (I'm typing surrounded by clothes, my feet on a suitcase), and the IronMāori registration. Most likely not. I really dislike talking about myself on
Twitter.
This is because I don’t know how to present the personal there without feeling a little fake. Offline,
I’m someone who either says nothing or overshares. This means chitchat with people aged over 10
and under 70 is very difficult. I like
that people are different to me, but my boundaries are significantly different
to others. There are things I say that others find confronting, and there are things others say that I just don't understand. To manage
on Twitter, I’ve favoured collation, Tweeting things I’d like to remember viewing. I can understand why some would find my feed very
boring. But the alternate is to tell
people exactly what I think. And I’m not
sure that’s a good idea.
140 characters are fairly limiting, so hopefully you’ve gotten to
know me a little more through this post. Please feel free to read
other parts of the blog and Google me.
Although not yet an open book, I'm becoming more so each day. And for a Santa like you, that can only be a
good thing.
I hope your Christmas is full of love and light. Thank you in advance for my pressie. And safe travels!
Yours faithfully,
Me
