Social Media, Self-censorship, and Space and Mommy Things

I can't seem to catch up on sleep. Daylight savings time is colliding with Anna's nighttime potty runs and I am balancing on less sleep than I'd like. I wake up feeling like I need like 2 more hours. But in reality, the days of sleeping in soundly, even till 8am, ended on March 8, 2007.

Anyway...

I have a Twitter account and have a handful of followers. Most are space geeks who found me somewhere, or other parents (www.damomma.com follows me! She rocks!), and friends who I don't even get to see that often but can keep up with each others' lives because of the things we "tweet". I also have a Facebook account but I use it less regularly than Twitter. Not sure why. I guess it's more effort or something? Or maybe it's because the Following is different? Twitter is quick and easy. Facebook seems committal.

There's a CBS anchor guy who started following me the day I tweeted that I was going to the ISS all-hands meeting that was to discuss the cancellation of the Constellation program. I think he must just follow alot of the space twitterers. My Twitter account is open access to anyone, which I like because I can tweet about space stuff and mommy stuff and my "followers" get it (I guess that's why I like it better than Facebook). You can lock a Twitter account so only people you allow can read it. But I don't lock mine.

My job is so cool I wish I could tweet about it on a regular basis during the day. Like last week when I got to talk to the visiting congressmen...it was cool because while waiting for them to show, I was hanging out with the deputy chief of the International Space Station (ISS) program (Shireman), the chief of the Space Shuttle program (Shannon), and the chief of the astronaut office (Whitson). Hello, some darned cool conversation THAT was. I wanted to tweet something like: "Interesting conversations with the chief astro and chiefs of the ISS and space shuttle programs while waiting to talk to congressmen about ISS science." Or "you should hear what ISS is saying to Space Shuttle! Oh SNAP!! Is this how the big decisions get made?"

Or I'd like to tweet from the ISS Program staff meetings exactly what we're talking about. How I knew in advance about ISS winning the Collier award before it was public knowledge. Same for lots of NASA press that comes out. Stuff about the next Nobel Peace Prize, which I hold back from my blog (it's only in my little mind). I don't Tweet about emails concerning the President of the US that end up in my Inbox and how our office is involved in it. I really wanted to Tweet when JR, TT, and I had dinner in Paris with the Assistant Associate Administrator for the International Space Station from NASA Headquarters, which included some wacky cool conversation.

I do frequently Tweet about how cool my job is. But on a minute by minute basis when I think I want to Tweet something specifically cool, I hold back. Because I always ask myself: Is this something you would want to see Re-Tweeted by that CBS anchor guy? I had a good talk with the deputy ISS chief on this a few weeks ago, just informally. I told him if he ever sees anything that is negatively associated with media that crosses his desk and has my name on it, it WAS A COMPLETE ACCIDENT! :) So now at least he knows...

In general I always think, "If I tweet this, could I defend to my management why I tweeted it?" Yeah, um. My management is beginning to embrace Twitter but still it's not "their thing". I tweet a little bit about ISS science, though not as much as I should, because my Twitter account isn't an official NASA account and I never want to get tangled along the way, especially because of my current position in the ISS Program Science office here at JSC. Truthfully, though, NASA has reserved a Twitter Account for ISS science that is being held until we decide what the policy on use of that account should be. In a word we're figuring out who gets in trouble if a bad tweet were to go out ;)

Anyway I guess my point is that as I was driving to work today I realized I've been somewhat censored my whole life, at least professionally. And it wasn't imposed explicitly by others...it's been implicit and imposed by me. I try to use real discretion when I tweet and on Facebook and even in my own blog (which is where I feel safest to just spill, but still not completely). First it was because I aspired to be an astronaut and didn't want to say something that would ever come back to bite me. Now that the astronaut thing is mostly out, I've censored myself because of my job here at NASA and don't want to misrepresent my office. Or make the office silly. Or whatever else.

I wish I could Tweet all the little things Anna tells me too. Like yesterday she "tooted" and then blamed it on me! Like WHAT? Here we go! Lately she likes to run over and sit on my lap, just so she can "toot" on me and laugh. Where'd she get this stuff? She has started saying "I love you SO MUCH!" spontaneously. I don't tweet much of the little stuff about Anna because if I did I'd always be like, "oh hang on, Life, while I tweet about THIS one!" Still it would be cool bc it'd be a running record of all the cute stuff Anna says and I'd always have it.

Well, this is abrupt, but honestly, that's all I really have to say today. Peace. :)