Sing a little

Recently I have been thinking about "high stakes" situations in which to theorize about compromise, or agency. It seemed to me that the stakes had to be high on some kind of universal level in order to be worth thinking about or to be impactful in any kind of lasting way. When I read Hull and Katz's "Crafting an Agentive Self: Case Studies of Digital Storytelling" last semester, I loved the idea that digital story telling could perhaps help a marginalized young person (which to an extent is all young people, whose needs and skills are never valued, only 'crafted') to craft a sense of agency for themselves. But I worried that it would be only that: a sense of agency. One of my concerns perhaps was that the stakes of "succeeding" at DUSTY were too low.

Schizo

I had a strange sort of epiphany today. I decided to go public with my blog by posting it on my facebook. I also decided to finally change my profile picture to something that more closely reflects my identity (whatever that means, see my previous post "Identity"), as opposed to that picture of the Columbia Basin gorge. And I engaged in a pretty interesting blog-off with Kaseido/John.

When I first set up this blog, I didn't know what it would be about. Still don't, really. But I knew I didn't want to be constructed as female. I loved the idea of being able to be anyone or anything on the internet. But that's not what happened. My blog wandered, directionless, and my online identity floundered, essentially meaningless and context-less. I couldn't escape being me.

Identity

Last week I started a D&D game with some fellow grad students. Three of them I know and have socialized with before. Two, including the DM, I had never met in person. I was approached by the DM about what type of character I'd like to play. I'm fairly new to D&D, only ever having played a few times with the older version in 2003/4, so I had a vague idea of who I wanted to be. Negotiating that sort of vague and nebulous identity with the DM via facebook prior to the game, while being simultaneously aware that I would be meeting him in person and having to relate with him on that level was really interesting to think about rhetorically, after I stopped panicking about it.