Something About Pretty Much Anything

Darren Barefoot: “For example, if you Google me in the near-term, you're probably going to read out about Flowers for Al and Don, this strange flower-buying campaign that I'm running at the moment. A potential employer might conclude from that that I'm queer as a three dollar bill. If they did, and didn't hire me as a result, then fair enough (well, not really, but that's not the point here). Even though I'm straight, I probably don't want to work for somebody who makes judgments like that.”

Darren has, whether he knows it or not, the counterpoint to Betsy Devine, who argued that if you're going to blog about your personal life, don't do it on a page that is the first result for your name or is linked from a page that is the first result for your name.

Darren again: “If you're going to view your blog as more than just a professional portfolio (and you seem to be so far), I wouldn't worry about what you write about. Write about what you want. You may want to include professional commentary--I do occasionally--but it doesn't have to be at the centre of what you write about.” In this bit he's talking to his colleague who wants to blog about more than just her work, but is worried about the implications of doing so. She wants to be a generalist without compromising her professionalism, but I agree with Darren: you should be able to write about what, on condition that you agree not to be consequence-free. If you write, you can expect people to both read it and respond to it, and you may not like the responses you get, but you will have to accept not so much what they say but their right to say it. I didn't like AccordionGuy's response to my recent rants, but I accept not only his right to respond but the possibility that the responses of that type (the ones that call bullshit on me) are necessary and for my benefit.

Being a generalist is what Just a Gwai Lo is all about. The subjects that aren't covered are either for privacy reasons (health, work, friendship issues), because I'm uninterested in them (I'm making an effort to be interested in things that will benefit me down the road), or they're covered on my other weblogs. I've been trying also to find something to specialize in, but that's a battle I don't think I can win. Although he may not think so, Chunshek paid me a high compliment when he wrote on my Okrut profile the following: “You can talk to him about pretty much anything in the world, and he'll have an idea about it.” Something about pretty much anything is pretty much what I know. And if not, I can learn it.