At a staff meeting, administration admonished us to make our online presence less searchable. "Use a pseudonym," I paraphrase, "because we've heard some terrible stories about things people have done to teachers online. It might not even be you; it might be something somebody else tags you in."

For a moment, I considered it. I thought, Yeah, my online presence isn't meaningful enough to me for me to care about. I could pseudonym.

​Then I realized just how beyond help I am for that.

I don't want to be anonymous. I have no interest in being anonymous online. I may not go as far as @elibosnick does in using my real name, but the vast majority of my online names are "jeffnords" or a variant of it. I have many reasons for this.

• I LIKE THE ACCOUNTABILITY. I like how I'm careful about what I post because I know it can always be traced to my real identity. The fact is that everything we do online, pseudonym or none, can and will be used against us at some point. I prefer, with every keyboard click, with every selfie, to know that it can be traced to me. It keeps me accountable for what I do or say. 
  
• IDENTITY CHANGES. In the early days of the Internet, I used pseudonyms. But within a couple years, each pseudonym would seem archaic. The hardest lesson for me in this was my "Fairfax Mission" experiment, when I went under a pseudonym for my own music in the hopes that I'd have collaborators; since those collaborations never took place, I now have a YouTube channel with an archaic URL and a bunch of CDs that barely credit their sole contributor. I wish I'd just went with my name for those early musical projects. 
• PROFESSIONAL EASE. Using my name makes it easy to network and show people my work, no matter the field. And professionals like this. I like being able to go to an educational conference or a musical show and not need to navigate a pseudonym or two. It keeps my life more holistically unified. Besides, every profession expects you to use your name anyhow. And perhaps it's my white-male privilege, but I don't think using my name will cause me much pain in the future.

Not that I haven't taken part in activities that might get me in trouble, and not that I won't get into trouble because of something I post online. I expect it will happen. But at least, when I do get in trouble for my online activities, I'll be able to say, "I really thought it was OK to attach my name to that activity; I will aim to behave in a way that best befits my name in the future."

Facebook is still a special case. If there was any place to use a pseudonym, it would be for my personal Facebook profile. Although I've eased up on my personal Facebook ban and I've started paying a little more attention to the Facebook community, clicking "likes" and making comments here and there, I haven't done a purge for a while and I might, one of these nights, delete my recent activity on the site again. Facebook still straddles the public and private spheres in ways I'm not comfortable with. It still creates circles of "friends" that don't seem to mean much in real life. And it seems to be, by the nature of its interactions, cause the most trouble for people. So I'll continue to treat it with the utmost caution.

Perhaps, if and when I apply to work in administration myself, I'll reconsider. Perhaps some of my vulnerable rants and posts will seem childish and unprofessional. Then I might change my tack.

But for now, Jeffrey Nordstrom is my online identity and that's fine. I've traded away my privacy (see below) and I'm banking that it will work out for me in the long run.

5 different English classes, three of them with over 27 students.

​And a play going on at the same time. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

(You can sort-of see my hairline way down in the right-hand row there, my elbow on the table.)

I mean, it's all gonna' be great... but it's gonna' be crazy.