When Twitter and Facebook are not enough, and my blog is too much.
More:
http://deannazandt.com
@randomdeanna
If you’re sitting down to write a poem, the first thing to do is to forget that you’re sitting down to write a poem. And not to censor yourself in any form when you’re writing. Later on you can censor yourself all you want. It’s called editing, and it’s necessary to take that poem from this originating explosion into the crafted art that’s going to allow it to live alone.
— Bob Holman (via bobholman)
Part 1: Free to be you and me (well, sort of)
Recently, I saw this wonderful graphic about introverts being passed around.
While there are some points that apply to everyone — “don’t reprimand them in public” is just a generally sound piece of advice — the rest do hit home for a lot of introverts, including me. If you know me, you’re probably thinking, “I’m sorry, what? You’re one of the most outgoing people I know!” In person, when someone said this to me, I laughed and told them, “Just because I’m an attention whore doesn’t mean I’m an extrovert.”
I haven’t tried this yet, but my Uncle Robert emailed it to me yesterday and I just haaaaad to shaaaaaaare. YUM.
—
Yesterday, thinking about a refrigerator full of strawberries and the need to do something about them, I started ruminating (actually it would have been pre-ruminating, kinda like mentally salivating) about what to do. The meds I am currently on dictate I be very careful with my diet and sugar. Here is what I came up with. It was very tasty, very strawberryish, and probably somewhat healthy. We had it for breakfast today which obviously validates its authenticity as a healthy addition to you day’s food intake. I also believe for the traditionalists out there that you can use real sugar, real whipped cream, real sour cream, and real cream cheese. In any event you must use real strawberries. If you substitute blueberries, for example, for the strawberries, you need to call it something else.
1. This blog was renamed to deannazandt.tumblr.com yesterday. If you’re following via Tumblr, you don’t have to do anything. Just a PSA on the change. I re-claimed randomdeanna.tumblr.com and put up a “I’ve moved” message over there.
One thing that kind of blows is that I’ve lost all the Twitter/Facebook share counts for all my posts here, because of the URL change. I’LL NEVER KNOW HOW MUCH THEY ALL LOVE ME. (or don’t)
2. My Twitter handle was also changed to @deanna yesterday. YAY. Some interesting things I discovered:
For the record, in case anyone’s wondering, too— when you change your name, you don’t lose your followers because you’re just changing the name of the account, and not creating a new one.
(Update below.)
My word. After many moons of campaigning for acquiring this abandoned Twitter handle, I finally scored @deanna. Yes. (If you see a name has not been in use for a long time, you used to be able to ask that it be released into the available pool. I don’t see that option on the help page anymore. And I just looked at the contact page, and it’s not an option anymore. Boo!)
So, I’m looking to change @randomdeanna to @deanna, but I’ve got a lot of questions about this, and want to hear what others think, or what their experiences may have been, when changing names. I know that I’ll keep the followers I have now, and I’ll re-get @randomdeanna so that I can direct people to the new handle.
Pros:
Cons:
Your words of wisdom would be most appreciated, dear friends!
UPDATE, 4/20/2012. I’m going to change it to @deanna after all. Not just because of the baller-ness of having one’s first name, but because it’s also finally time to retire the “random” part of my professional/public persona. (I refuse to use “personal brand,” btw, thanks to what Tara Hunt told me in an interview for my book — “People don’t need personal brands, just personalities!”) When I’d asked some close friends/colleagues for specific advice about all this, it was Baratunde Thurston who pointed out that maybe “random” isn’t the best place for me to stay adjective-wise as I’m on an upward trajectory. I agree.
It was a name I’d chose at random (har har) years ago when signing up for some service, back when it wasn’t okay to even really have innocuous services be attached to your Real Name. Back then, Someone Might Find You on the Internet, which was scary. Now, of course, that’s not as true for most people and services. And while I’ll continue to certainly have a lot of randomness to my personality, getting rid of the “random” moniker also an intentional effort to be more focused in my activities in general. Priorities include: writing, speaking, writing, drawing, writing and more writing.
Thus, I’m going to be changing “randomdeanna” to “deanna,” “deannaz,” and “deannazandt” across a number of services, including this blog, which will be renamed deannazandt.tumblr.com. This will break lots of links, but hopefully I can salvage all that with time and patience. The big switch is happening over the weekend, April 21-22, in part because my astrology says that’s a good time to start new things. Hey, I’m still a little random at heart.
Had my own Damn You Autocorrect conversation last night…
My experience, as a two-gendered trans woman, is that cis geek feminists can be more accepting; but i’ve also encountered “I know enough” attitudes from cis geek feminists which make things more difficult for me. By “‘I know enough’ attitudes”, i’m referring to attitudes where the cis person in question believes themselves to know all about trans experiences; that there’s nothing left for them to learn, no manifestations of cis privilege they’re not aware of, and no cissexist attitudes / behaviours left to challenge. i also regularly encounter cis geek feminists using such language as “I’m sick of tech conferences being sausagefests” and “Why should I be excluded from tech circles just because I have a vagina?” Using ‘sausage’ as a synecdoche for ‘man’ and ‘vagina’ as a synecdoche for ‘woman’ is highly problematic, from a trans perspective: not all men have penises, not all women have vaginas; some women have penises, some men have vaginas. In online conversations where i’ve made it clear i’m a woman, people don’t say to me: “Oh but do you have a penis? Because if you do, you can totally join the boys club!” (Indeed, if it somehow comes out that I do still have a penis, i can end up being lectured on how that means i’m not really a woman - because we all know womanhood can be reduced to “having a vagina”, amirite? :-P And although it’s true that in person, i can often be read as “a cis guy in a skirt/dress” - and receive male privilege thereby; cf. this old blog post of mine - it’s psychologically hurtful and damaging to be thus constantly misgendered as a result of cissexist assumptions about “what a woman looks like”.) So i guess my own perspective is that i’d ask cis geek feminists to be wary of becoming too complacent in thinking that they’re “already sufficiently accepting” of trans women. — Alexis
http://flexibeast.dreamwidth.org/
— Are geek feminists more accepting of trans women? | Geek Feminism Blog
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” ― Anaïs Nin
Reminded myself of this quote tonight, from Marianne Wiggins’ “Almost Heaven.” Every time I read it, there’s another layer.
