Career Moves IV

oday's blog is a continuation on the subject of social media and career promotion.

We're up to Twitter. So for me, Twitter just feels, um, limited. I love, adore, delight in words, words, and more words. I don't find it a challenging game to force myself into a minimum of letters--it doesn't make me feel successfully competitive when I am successful at staying within the lines. Instead, it feels like a crime.

Makes me kind of sad, really. People forcing their most important moments into 140 characters and spaces. You can call it art. You can say it is beautifully spare and minimal. Contemporary. All chrome, glass, and neutrals. But I call it "limiting."


I had the same problem with the word limit at the much more generous Facebook. And that was the main thing Google+ had going over Facebook. Yeah, you could write a note on Facebook. But notes were weird. They were like getting up on a stage.

On Google+ you could keep on going way after you could on Facebook, realize it, and tie it up, Folks. But you could have those few extra dots, squiggles, and lines of meaning.

Did you think that was enough to sway me to Google+? Nope. I just can't like it there. Is it some loyalty I feel I owe to Mark Zuckerberg who never misses an opportunity to hurt his own people? Can't be, right? I mean this is the gal who organized a one-day boycott of Facebook if the social media space refused to take down the violent Intifada pages. I have proven my commitment to activism.

(Note: There was a deadline and Facebook met the deadline, so I canceled the event. Which was really, really dumb. I should have changed the date to "anytime" or something. What I did was make the whole thing disappear. Facebook didn't archive the page which means that we the public do not have access to all the viral activity there. I can't show it to the world or even to potential employers. I can't say: I did this. *dumbkopf* *smacking myself upside the haid*

Worse yet, within hours, the pages were back. *sigh*)


But back to MZ. I don't feel loyal to him. I just don't feel a need to switch. I'm comfortable on Facebook. Any place else seems foreign in comparison. No matter how bright and colorful and unlimited. Dumb, right? Well, there it is. Could there also be a bit of the anti-Google in me? I do sometimes worry at Google's supremacy in the world. It feels almost like a mitzvah to knock it down a notch or two.

That leads me to here. My blog. I talked about blog narcissism back in 2009 So, you know my tentative feelings about sharing feelings. But something I read the other day in an excellent blog by Carol Tice on 113 Things You Can Do to Grow Your Freelance Writing Income — Now may be changing the way I think about blogging.


Number 111 on Tice's list of tips is: "Remember your blog is a writing sample. Have a clean design, show you understand social media, and write every post like it’s a $1-a-word magazine assignment."

Now that was a tip I could implement with ease. I can write in my blog. In a sense, unemployment is freeing: I finally have the time to exercise my writing muscle.

Of course, poverty means taking the time to do things the old-fashioned way, like grating cheese to save the shekels it costs to buy the already-grated stuff. On the other hand, there is nothing like hand-grated cheese and the satisfaction of having been the one to produce the same. There is joy and immediate gratification in "just being a housewife."

The kids come home to a gourmet lunch and say, "I love you, Eema," whereas when I'm working, it doesn't make sense to cook complicated items. Why should I when I can cook something fast and easy they all enjoy? And I am amply suited to do just that. Thank God. Though I confess my sewing borders on sadomasochism--a topic to save for another blog, maybe, if I dare.

Meantime, I am here a lot, at Judean Rose, experimenting on what works to generate a comment and a following and what does not. I get the luxury of indulging my creative writing bent just for me. And it's good for my career, too.



A person needs calm and space in which to write. That makes writing a luxury for me. Calm and space are items that sometimes seem well out of reach to me.


Sometimes I dream about it: having time and space to write. As much as I want. Well, short of a sugar daddy (ha!) or a grant from some discerning org, time and space to write remains the provenance of the wealthy. And anyway, who'd want to read the thoughts of a poor person?

But please spare me the comments about poor being relative and how rich I really am and so forth. You know what I mean. Don't force me to pretend for your sake. Your silence on this issue feels supportive in this case.

Please DO leave comments about the use of social media and weighing friendships versus business moves.