Name Change... Again

TESOL Materials (plus my reviews of stuff): A combination blog: Sharing my TESOL and teaching materials, plus my book and movie reviews

So, I'm changing the name of this blog again.  The URL address is the same, so no need to change your links.  But the heading is different.

I've changed names a couple times before.
From 2003 to 2006, the title of this blog was just my name.
Then in 2006, after I began to feel self-conscious about my name being displayed too prominently, I changed the title to my name written in the Japanese alphabet to try to be a bit more subtle  (ジョエル　スワグマン).  (See Internet archive HERE for a shot of the blog back in those days).
Then, I decided that the Japanese text was probably a bit confusing for new readers, and besides I left Japan in 2010, and had no plans to return, so it didn't make sense to continue to highlight my Japan connection.  So in November 2010, I decided that the focus of this blog would only be book and movie reviews, and I changed the name again to "Random Book and Movie Reviews."

Starting in November 2013, I got the idea to add some of my teaching material to this blog.  From that point on, the teaching material largely took over the blog, and the majority of my posts since then have been TESOL related.  The "Random Book and Movie Reviews" title was seeming less and less relevant.
I probably should have changed the title of this blog years ago, but I was reluctant to commit because of how unstable TESOL is as a life-long career.  Sure, I'm in TESOL now, but who knows what I'll be doing in 5 years?  Better to just stick with "Random Book and Movie Reviews".  In the long run, that will be the more stable name, I figured.

But... I've now decided to go ahead and change the name.  If I find myself employed in another field in 5 years, I can always change the name back.  But at least for the next several years, I'll be working in TESOL.
Also: I've been thinking a lot the past few days, and I'd like to narrow the focus of this blog.  I waste SO much time on the Internet, and I'd like to cut down on that and try to focus more on what's really important in life--my wife and daughter, and (as much as is possible in this field), creating a stable career with which to support them.

So no more political posts.  It's a waste of time.  First of all, the reach that this blog has doesn't justify spending a lot of time on it.  (I think there are 3 people and a dog who read this blog regularly.)  But secondly it's apparent that political divisions these days are more about tribalism and emotions than they are about ideas and rational arguments.  (Granted a lot of my political posts have always been more emotive than reasonable anyways, but then that's part of the problem.)
That, plus it's now apparent that everyone knows how awful Trump is, and either they are already convinced, or they don't care.  In fact, the right-wing loves the fact that he's so awful and provokes such emotive responses from liberals.  So what's the point of writing long political posts complaining about how awful Trump is?
And after Trump, there will be another demagogue who is equally bad.  (It's apparent that this problem is all throughout the right wing.)
I'm not saying there's not important political work to be done down at the grass roots organizing level.  I'm just saying that keyboard warriors are ineffective.  So I'm retiring my keyboard warrior badge.

Also, I'm going to try really hard to cut down on the amount of random junk I post on this blog.  I always think to myself, "I'll just jot down a few quick thoughts about such-and-such.  It won't take long."  But then it always takes me much longer to find my words and find links than I think it will, and before I know it, I've wasted 30 minutes or an hour.  So I'm going to try to limit or cut out completely (depending on my will power) writing about random stuff, linking to random stuff, or extra blogging projects like: Interesting Random Facts or Sharing Music I Like.

I will, however, continue with the book reviews.  I've decided over the years that if I have enough time to read a book, I have enough time to review a book.  (In cases where a book review is taking me a longer time than usual, I'll often just delay starting the next book, and use that time to try to sort out a review.)  I've also decided that reviewing books is a useful intellectual exercise.
I'm going to try to shift more of my reading towards professional development (linguistics and TESOL books), but we'll see how that goes.  (In the past, I usually burn myself out after reading too many professional development books, and then my reading list shifts back to guilty pleasures for a while.)

I'll continue with the movie reviews as well for the same reasons.  I think it's a good intellectual exercise, and I've been doing it consistently for so long that I'm reluctant to give it up. Although I'm going to try to limit the amount of movies I watch.  And I'll be doing my best to force myself to do the short form reviews. 

Reviews of TV shows and Podcasts etc will also pop up whenever I finish a series, but I expect these to be infrequent from now on.  (I can't actually get any peace and quiet in my apartment to watch TV at the moment even if I wanted to, and I don't expect that will change anytime soon.)

Oh, and the scripted Youtube reviews will also continue to clutter up this blog for a while until I work through all my backlog.  Which will probably be a while, but the series will end eventually once I get through all my old reviews.

In short: my plan is to only do reviews and TESOL material on this blog moving forward.  Not a huge change in the regular format.  The biggest thing is I'm changing the name to give TESOL equal time, and I'm going to try to limit posts that aren't TESOL related or reviews.  Time will tell how well I stick to this.

A couple notes about the new name:
* It's not eloquent, I know.  That's the problem with having a blog that has evolved into 2 completely different things over the years.  At the very least, hopefully its a concise and accurate description.

* There's so many different names for this industry it's confusing: TESOL, ELT, ESL, TEFL, TESL, etc.  It's a bit difficult to tell which is the most common name, and the current name changes every 5 years anyway.  For the moment I'm going with TESOL.  (It's the name that's printed on my MA degree--Applied Linguistics with a TESOL focus).  I may change this again later if I decide a different term is more recognizable.