After a lot of thinking and a whole day away from internet connection HERE is my (very late) digital literacy narrative. I’m hoping that what I lack in punctuality I will make up for in honesty and quite cute pictures of my dog.
I found this assignment extremely complicated to write. Reading, writing and internet are the three most important things in my life, and in many ways each of these things have saved my life in their own little way.
When I first wrote my timeline it was almost all about books. Three pages of a love letter to novels and fiction. Fiction is my greatest love, and reading is my greatest passion, but in the end my timeline barely mentions my love of books. As you’ll see if you read my timeline, I share a lot of my life online, and sometimes I feel as if my passion for novels is the one thing I can keep private. It’s completely unconnected from the internet or anything to do with ‘digital literacy’ and as I tried to trim down my excessively wordy first draft of my timeline I decided to put my love of The Great Gatsby and Nancy Mitford aside for now. The box in my head titled Twitter is very far from the box titled Fitzgerald. And I think as our world gets increasingly digitalized and put online it’s important to keep some things offline, on your bedside table with a mug of tea and a nice new pair of pajamas.
So then what is in a timeline that’s supposed to be about reading and writing but doesn’t actually contain anything about reading? Well, quite a lot actually. From the age of 14-19 I had a pretty complicated time (if you scour the internet enough you can find out why), and as my real life grew smaller and smaller my online life grew bigger and bigger. As you’ll see in my slightly over-emotional timeline posts, I really love the internet, and I really love writing, and I’ve managed to find a way of combining the two to create a small corner of the internet that I’m pretty proud to put my name on.
I found the process of making this timeline quite a complicated one. I liked the website Tiki-Toki without loving it. My experience on Wordpress definitely translated to Tiki-Toki and I found it very easy to operate but I felt it definitely had some faults. One of the things I liked least was how small the boxes for typing the entries were. Having such a small box meant I didn’t focus so much on what I was writing and I noticed after the first few entries that my writing was becoming sloppy and tired, more like writing a tweet than writing a journal entry or a blog post. I ended up writing all my posts on Pages and then copying them across as I found it easier to organise my thoughts this way.
I also found it hard to gather all my thoughts on the internet together. My online world has become pretty big and as I googled myself I found entire little pockets of things that I’d written or made and completely forgotten about.
I’m quite used to writing online and writing blog posts and I chose to write this assignment in the same voice I would use elsewhere online. So it’s quite personal and it’s quite relaxed in tone, and while this may not be as professional I feel it’s definitely more honest and more true to the narrative of my life that’s already online.
There’s obviously a lot that’s not included on this timeline. But hopefully what I have included can give you an insight into my history of reading and writing online. I didn’t even get started on my writing offline but I’m pretty sure you’re all better off without seeing pages from my 13 year old self’s diary.
I hope you enjoy what I wrote, and I hope it makes sense.
Wow! Reading this timeline was absolutely amazing. First of all, it was an exceptionally thorough timeline that really presented the whole picture of your incredible relationship with writing and the Internet. Second of all, your story is absolutely inspiring. Your wonderful use of writing as both a personal outlet and a way to connect with people on the Internet is a joy to hear about. And I am amazed by all the amazing ways your worked has been published! When you do your presentation there is no way to be able to fit every detail into five minutes, but I am very excited to hear about your transition into your Scarlett Curtis blog, both emotionally and from a technological standpoint.
Great job! I cannot wait to hear your presentation!
-Alex
I am incredibly impressed with how thorough your timeline is and how inspiring your story is. Something you wrote that I found particularly interesting is that “the box in [your] head titled Twitter is very far from the box titled Fitzgerald.” I believe that literature and new media can be as separate or together as one pleases and I find it fascinating that as someone who has a great passion for both of those things, you prefer to keep them very separate. I really enjoyed reading both your reflection and your timeline and I am very eager to hear your presentation!
To echo the previous two comments: well done. Your timeline is far more thorough than I thought would be possible in so few events. After going over all the key moments in your timeline during class last week, I’m impressed with how well you were able to condense it while still retaining all the important instances that make you who you are today. One particulary interesting insight you made was how hardly anbody lives the life we see them in online, how most of us are, “sitting at home in [our] ugly pajamas eating ice cream and scrolling through Facebook.” It reminded me of a short story by Anton Chekhov called “The Lady With the Dog” in which he muses about how everyone lives two lives, and that the one they show to the public is far different from who they really are, and what they really do.
Lastly, I can’t not bring up this beauty: “I think the shock that came over her at the idea that one of her students would actually think you needed a license to use a pen was close to the shock of discovering your dead father has returned as a ghost and is dancing around the kitchen in a dress”. What a terrific comparison. Thank-you.
It’s great you made the distinction between your online and offline life so early and I believe that you’re right (it is very important to form a separation between the two). Though I love the internet and communicating through it, like you talk about, I do also feel sometimes limited and restricted by it. I feel like you could have spent more time reflecting on the subject matter of your timeline rather than the process of making it itself, but in all it was still very interesting to read.