juggler

Gone from summering to autumning, with its attendant lists, charts, and color-coded calendars. In the air this autumn 2010:

Exams: Digital Rhetorics (major); TA Education and Training (minor); and Critical Theory (minor).

Juggler Boy c/o freeprintablecoloringpages.net

Teaching: WRT 255: Advanced Argumentative Writing

Internship: Reflections Journal

GSO: CCR Rep & University Senator

This blog hasn't been a record-keeping space as of late. I am keeping many records elsewhere, in spaces here and there,
micro-records, traces of my passing by. Several of my favorite
bloggers have gotten out of the game, and I find myself hard
pressed to keep up with those who still write prolifically. Has
blogging lost its exigence? I feel like it can still be a vehicle
for communication and exchange - one that offers a longer ride than other venues online.

When it's up and running, that is. Like any vehicle, it needs its routine scheduled maintenance - gotta keep those balls in the air. And by balls, I mean obligations, tasks, lists, calendars - and your own vital force - all of these existing simultaneously, that's what the juggler's aiming for. Sometimes you drop one, sometimes you drop all of them. Sometimes it seems damn near impossible to pick them up again, and contrary to your hope that the longer they lay there, the easier they'll be to lift (because, you rationalize, "I've rested"), they actually seem to get heavier and more burdensome the longer you avoid reincorporating them into the rotation.

So picking them back up as soon as you can, that's the key, it seems. Keeping it going, forging ahead, surviving. How different the face of survival looks to so many of us now - we don't have to defend ourselves against death and starvation in a physical sense; a whole different set of demands determine how life is sustained in electronic habitats. Now the objects that many of us juggle are glowing, alive and morphing, making them all the more difficult to handle and consuming that much more time and head space as we struggle to strike a balance between all of the identities we're juggling. Even distinguishing the boundaries around different facets of our identities - personal, professional, private, and public - is an exercise in juggling as more of our lives take place online and these boundaries blur into each other with each new electronic space we inhabit.

I'm among the ranks of the jugglers, keeping my eyes on my objects and paying attention, as any good performer does, to how my audience responds to my performance as a juggler. Along the spectrum of any activity, you'll have those who excel and those who do poorly, but juggling life objects seems to be one activity in which most people's ability will oscillate and change over time. I've tossed a few new objects in the mix to expand my juggling repertoire - here's to keeping them all in the air, orchestrating their graceful revolution, and throwing a comic wink at the audience(s) every now and then.