Me, the brand

I spent a significant portion of the weekend and almost all of today working on building a website and professional portfolio. It is the final project for my Multimedia Journalism class, and it's one of the most useful assignments ever. I need these things for future job applications and to get my name out there anyway, but having it be an assignment gives me a deadline and the motivation to make it really good. It will be published in about a week and then you can find it at www.kathleenmmorrison.com* (hire me!).

Next step after the website? My own cereal. 

Anyway, it's weird to write about myself so much in such a clinical, professional way. It's worse than a resume (which I have also re-done in the past week, in addition to LinkedIn). And it's been weird trying to figure out what is important to include, especially when it comes to linking to my other online ventures. I wrote some months ago about how new age journalists have to have a significant online and social media presence, which is great, except it also needs to be "clean" and professional, which is not.

I've back and forth for a long time about what to do about my Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as this blog. I still am not totally sure what to do. A classmate of mine solved the problem by making a "fan" page of himself – you know, the ones you 'like' instead of 'friend.' I don't think I'm quite at that level yet, especially when I only have four online clips to my name.

The thing is, I actually have something to show that I can produce a lot of content on a fairly regular basis -  including text, photos (many of them spruced up or changed entirely via Photoshop), links, opinions, dialogue, a custom layout and more.  It's right here. This blog.

Unfortunately, I don't know if my accounts of Penny's adventures or my inner feelings or the latest ridiculous thing on the internet is really up to par to put on my fancy schmancy, gonna-show-it-to-potential-employers website.

Which makes me sad because I like this blog. I like a lot of things I've written on it. And even the posts I think could have turned out better are an opportunity to figure things out about my writing. Which, as I keep having to remind myself, is why I started this thing in the first place.

So even though my Facebook and personal Twitter are going to stay private, I'm keeping this blog public. I like having my thoughts out there to be read. I like seeing what paths strangers take to stumble upon one post or another (a lot of people have been finding me lately by googling various things about Maine Coons – although one person searched for "Men Coon" which is pretty hilarious to imagine as a real thing). This is the writing I look forward to after the hard, intense struggle to find the right words for a professional feature or profile or news bit. If potential employers happen to find it and are offended, well, I probably don't want to work with someone that uptight anyway, right?

And for anyone keeping track, after my website goes live, my online presence will include:
a) Facebook
b) two Twitter accounts - my personal one and a newer, professional one
c) this blog
d) LinkedIn
e) a professional website
f) a professional portfolio - basically articles, etc. that I've written, compiled in a blog
g) YouTube
...plus, of course, all those random non-social media accounts like eBay and Beluga and StumbleUpon and various online shopping venues.

Jesus, that's a lot of me out there.

* Deciding on that domain name is actually the first time I've really struggled with the whole changing-your-name bit of marriage, but that's a story for another post.

Facebook vs the world

Brian and I watched The Social Network one night last week. The same day, I checked my own facebook two or three times, "like"d some things, posted a link on Brian's wall (a little Valentine's gift hint), and was told a story about two old family friends who connected via facebook and then had a (as the story-teller put it) "fairy tale" romance.

I never thought I would hear the words "facebook" and "fairy tale romance" in the same sentence.

Now this week I am essentially giving up facebook (and other internet distractions) for five days in an effort to break my intense time wasting habits. And it is hard.

All this is to say it is absolutely insane that one man and one corporation has so much control and influence over our daily lives. In the communication course I TA'd for last semester I doubt there was a week in which facebook was not mentioned at least once, including the day we discussed a news story in which a man PROPOSED by asking in his status update and his lady accepted by LIKING IT and writing about her excitement in her own status update. Just yesterday we talked in another class about a study asserting that the facebook 'relatonship status' is literally changing the way we as as society go about courtship and casual dating - people are having the "defining the relationship" talk much sooner because they feel pressure to have their relationship 'official' on facebook. Even when Brian and I got engaged (thank you snookums for not doing it on fb!), people were saying to me within a day or two, "Change your relationship status to engaged!!" as if until it was official on facebook, it couldn't possibly be true in real life.

I wonder if we should just skip the marriage license altogether and just change our status to "married" right after saying "I do."

This train of thought leads to some even more absurd pondering. What if, someday, babies are popped out of their mothers and immediately given a name, a social security number and a facebook?

I know The Social Network is of dubious veracity, but there are undoubtably some nuggets of truth in there, and I am just amazed by the story (sidenote: and I think it is a really really good movie). Zuckerberg, this incredibly socially awkward (did you see him on SNL?!) guy stumbled on some innate truth about us as people in this moment and it just exploded.

When I got a facebook I always assumed it wouldn't last past college. Back then, it was only for college students. Now, even with everyone and their grandmothers on it - literally - I can't imagine getting off. Even Brian, who is ardently anti-facebook, keeps his technically active just as a way to reach out to people he might not be able to contact otherwise. It has gotten to the point where if one of my facebook friends fails to upload pictures of some event, I am mad. What do you MEAN, I can't stalk the wedding of this random person from high school that I wasn't invited to anyway?!?! This is utterly irrational behavior, and yet, I challenge most people to admit they haven't felt that way at least once.

I said Zuckerberg found an "innate truth" about us. I think that's true. I don't think we ever realized how much our society feels the need to share, to be heard and seen, before facebook. But I also think the facebook phenomenon is shaping us, changing some innate truths about us. And not just in the way that we look at a picture and say, "OMG, new profile pic!!" In some deep way I really think facebook is affecting our culture and even the world. Only time will tell how much.


Operation Unplug Update: I have been doing pretty well, but not amazing. I watched a little extra TV with Brian on Valentine's and today snuck in some etsy time to send wedding ideas to one of my best friends. I've been missing reading my blogs the most. Unfortunately I discovered the Angry Birds app over the weekend and that has replaced a good bit of the time I would be getting back via this experiment... Must work on that.

The Facebook Conundrum

I've been struggling lately with what to do about my facebook and twitter accounts now that I'm a real person in the real world, not a ridiculous college student softly cushioned in the Millsaps Bubble.

Most of my peers have heard it a million trillion times: You have to keep your facebook, etc "clean" or potential employers WILL find you and they WILL hate you and you WILL be fired/not hired.

Lately I've been getting a somewhat different story from my professors, who are much more tech-savvy than last semester. These professors are saying you HAVE to have a blog and you HAVE to tweet and you HAVE to facebook and you HAVE to read every news site and blog and tweet out there and you HAVE to make all those things news-centric and compatible to build your brand or you WILL be left choking on the dust of others.

And I get it and I'm excited by it and it is one of the things that I really like about journalism today. I have already admitted to being a social media whore. I spend just as much time planning posts for this blog as I do actual assignments for a grade. (Just kidding, Mom and Dad! I was exaggerating for comedic effect! I spend over 86% of my time thinking about, doing and reflecting on homework!)

But for me, the blog/facebook/twitter me has always been somewhat separate from the professional me. They are both sides of me and they both co-exist happily inside me, but I just don't know if they co-exist as happily outside of me. Here's the thing: I like news and journalism and following news and journalists on twitter and sharing cool articles on facebook and writing my responses to the changing media world on my blog.

Buuuuuuuut.... I am twenty-two. I also like wine and I like to tweet about it. I like to dance my ass off and make ridiculous faces and put pictures of such things on facebook. I like to write the word "ass" (along with other colorful words) on my blog. I am not ashamed of any of this. I like telling funny and/or embarrassing stories about some of the ridiculous things that occur around me. I don't want to give that up, but I also don't want my potential employers to hate me and fire/not hire me just because I tweet more about wine, Penny and bacon than international crises.

I want to be professional. But I don't want to lose my online self - a self I enjoy expressing - in order to be so.