Shortly after my retirement from UCL in 2013 one of my daughters, Rebecca, suggested that I launch my own website, and maybe do a blog or two. ‘It will give you something to do’, she said. Given her expertise in website design this seemed a sensible option. And so, I think, it has proved. At least it has occupied my attention.
CVs don’t have traction when you retire, which admittedly feels odd. You no longer need either to record any ‘accomplishments’ or to promote yourself or impress institutional personages. So Rebecca established a personal website for me, containing a brief overview of who I am (or was, and am continually ‘becoming’), a list of my publications (which I have updated fairly regularly), a series of blogs, and access to another innovation for me, my twitter account (see www.grahamscambler.com). It is worth reminding ourselves at this point just how ‘new’ social media are. The World Wide Web was only invented in 1989, becoming public in 1994; Wikipedia and iTunes surfaced in 2001; LinkedIn, 2003; Facebook, 2004; Reddit, Flicke and YouTube, 2005; Twitter, 2006; Smartphones, Tumblr, 2007; Spotify, 2008; Instagram and Tablet, 2010; and Pinterest and Google+, 2011.
I have been kept out of mischief certainly. And I have found my engagement useful. It gives any interested parties topical notification of my published work, which has been almost as lively post- as pre-retirement; in this limited sense, it substitutes serviceably for a CV. It also renders my unending supply of tweets accessible, for better or worse. But perhaps it is blogging that I have taken to most enthusiastically (a fact that I have blogged about!).
So, if forced to summarise, precisely how have tweeting and blogging impacted on my retirement? A kind of division of labour has evolved. Twitter facilitates making/renewing contacts, companionship and, occasionally, compassionate support, academic sharing and political interventions (for some tweeps, I detect, this novel and innovative brand of ‘friendship’ is personally critical). As for blogging, I have oft repeated that it permits ‘thinking aloud’ (‘thinking allowed’). In other words, it’s an outlet for work/thought ‘in progress’. It does, or should, go without saying that such a facility has a far greater appeal to, and freedom for, retired babyboomers like me than it does to current employees in fear of the mercenary ‘nicking’ of ideas, contacts and exploitation, and – as understandably as sadly – ever looking warily over their shoulders to management.
I have noticed over time that my turnover of blogs – numbering around 330 at the last count – is inversely related to my rate of publishing books, chapters or papers. In other words, blogging occupies and maybe expands those intervals or spaces between largely self-imposed publishing deadlines. But the dialectic between the two modes of transmission of ideas is interesting, and not only because I can test ideas in blogs prior to developing them for publication. I have noticed that blogs can directly or indirectly lead people to my published work; but it also seems that interest in my blogs can be, and not infrequently is, fuelled by my manuscripts in print (blogs are easier and cheaper to access of course). Moreover I suspect the fact that I’m (still) publishing lends additional authority to my blogs.
Shortly after my retirement from UCL in 2013 one of my daughters, Rebecca, suggested that I launch my own website, and maybe do a blog or two. ‘It will give you something to do’, she said. Given her expertise in website design this seemed a sensible option. And so, I think, it has proved. At least it has occupied my attention.
CVs don’t have traction when you retire, which admittedly feels odd. You no longer need either to record any ‘accomplishments’ or to promote yourself or impress institutional personages. So Rebecca established a personal website for me, containing a brief overview of who I am (or was, and am continually ‘becoming’), a list of my publications (which I have updated fairly regularly), a series of blogs, and access to another innovation for me, my twitter account (see www.grahamscambler.com). It is worth reminding ourselves at this point just how ‘new’ social media are. The World Wide Web was only invented in 1989, becoming public in 1994; Wikipedia and iTunes surfaced in 2001; LinkedIn, 2003; Facebook, 2004; Reddit, Flicke and YouTube, 2005; Twitter, 2006; Smartphones, Tumblr, 2007; Spotify, 2008; Instagram and Tablet, 2010; and Pinterest and Google+, 2011.
I have been kept out of mischief certainly. And I have found my engagement useful. It gives any interested parties topical notification of my published work, which has been almost as lively post- as pre-retirement; in this limited sense, it substitutes serviceably for a CV. It also renders my unending supply of tweets accessible, for better or worse. But perhaps it is blogging that I have taken to most enthusiastically (a fact that I have blogged about!).
So, if forced to summarise, precisely how have tweeting and blogging impacted on my retirement? A kind of division of labour has evolved. Twitter facilitates making/renewing contacts, companionship and, occasionally, compassionate support, academic sharing and political interventions (for some tweeps, I detect, this novel and innovative brand of ‘friendship’ is personally critical). As for blogging, I have oft repeated that it permits ‘thinking aloud’ (‘thinking allowed’). In other words, it’s an outlet for work/thought ‘in progress’. It does, or should, go without saying that such a facility has a far greater appeal to, and freedom for, retired babyboomers like me than it does to current employees in fear of the mercenary ‘nicking’ of ideas, contacts and exploitation, and – as understandably as sadly – ever looking warily over their shoulders to management.
I have noticed over time that my turnover of blogs – numbering around 330 at the last count – is inversely related to my rate of publishing books, chapters or papers. In other words, blogging occupies and maybe expands those intervals or spaces between largely self-imposed publishing deadlines. But the dialectic between the two modes of transmission of ideas is interesting, and not only because I can test ideas in blogs prior to developing them for publication. I have noticed that blogs can directly or indirectly lead people to my published work; but it also seems that interest in my blogs can be, and not infrequently is, fuelled by my manuscripts in print (blogs are easier and cheaper to access of course). Moreover I suspect the fact that I’m (still) publishing lends additional authority to my blogs.
I tweet daily, as indulgent as any addicted adolescent. But I have accumulated several thousand followers on my personal account, and 12 thousand plus representing UCL’s ‘Sociology Network’ (which I founded prior to retiring), and a 1000+ intervening as ‘Mole Valley Politics’. So for what it’s worth, my tweets travel.
I tweet daily, as indulgent as any addicted adolescent. But I have accumulated several thousand followers on my personal account, and 12 thousand plus representing UCL’s ‘Sociology Network’ (which I founded prior to retiring), and a 1000+ intervening as ‘Mole Valley Politics’. So for what it’s worth, my tweets travel.