The mind is working overtime to create it!
- Bag awesome domain.
- Read WP tutorials
- Create multisite
- Struggle with damn menus to get them to show on top level site
- Work through weeks I missed on CT101
- Follow each week and do as I am told for once
I am familiar with the syllabus but I am choosing to go through it again with a focus on creating a domain of my own and working through what it means to evolve the ‘story of me’ in this new space for myself. I have always had help with the spaces I own or have used spaces that are designed by others. I want to struggle with this being my own ‘sys admin’ for a bit, create my personal cyberinfrastructure one step removed from third party design. I have not done so up till now because I have had an inkling that Stephen Downes is right when he says,
I have no illusion that hosting my own domain and server and all the rest of it will free from such fecklessness [of third parties]. It simply moves it back a level.
But this does not mean that I should not go through the creation process to learn how to move it ‘back a level’ even if, due to laziness, I decide to go back and hangout in Tumblr until Yahoo ruins it beyond recognition.
So, my game plan is to experiment with this domain and deepen my knowledge of digital storytelling tools. The secret plan? to get to the end of this and find a voice as an artist,
I had no idea what kind of artist I was or even wanted to continue becoming. I just knew that I loved making art. I also knew the feeling that making my work gave me. That feeling has never left me, in fact, it is the same one that I know from my childhood. What I wasn’t doing was connecting that inner bliss with understanding my personal goals and intentions
I know exactly what Ryan means in relation to my writing. I cannot not do it. My love for my own ‘drive to express myself in more ways than I could count’ has seen me through some really tough times. Yet, I never defined myself as an artist. When I started DS106 last year, I was just learning how to use fun toys and make artefacts. I was not making art. I became fascinated by the question ‘what makes a story?’ I am curious as to what is the minimum we can offer in any medium to earn the label ‘storyteller’. I am a psychologist, an academic, an open educator, a wife, a step mum, a dog lover….but and artist? Meh.
That feeling I get when a sentence is crafted just so or when that animated gif is so awesome I could watch it loop forever? I think that is where my artist lives and may be it is time it came out to play in the open.