Perhaps I should join a circus?

It's that time of year, again. The time when juggling becomes very important, and tight-rope-walking.

Official things I am juggling this next week include:
- reading for a course I've never taught before (Shakespeare's comedies are often rather trying, until you get to Middleton - where everything is, according to the notes at the bottom of the page, a pun about a penis.)
- reading for a course I have taught. It's always good to reread these texts. And suddenly the Miller's Tale becomes much less trying after dealing with Middleton.
- preparing and teaching (tutoring/TAing) these classes. That's two different preparations, delivered two and three times respectively.
- marking essays for one of these papers.
- reading for my own article.
- writing notes for said article.
- considering the job-market and reassessing my CV and teaching portfolios.

Tight-rope-walking - i.e. trying to find a balance in my life:
- celebrating my husband's graduation (that's two Dr Zcats!).
- organising a craft-evening.
- having my parents over for dinner in the short time while Dad's home, before he heads off again (Father's Day didn't happen).
- organising a Old English Reading group - which should be in the upper list, but I'm not giving it quite such priority.

It wouldn't be such a big challenge to keep all these plates spinning except that there's the job applications to go through, again. They take so much time and effort, time and effort which are taken away from writing articles, the absence of which is apparently my biggest drawback in the applications. There are a couple of interesting posts around, though, so once again, it's worth a shot.

(Should I add knife-throwing to my skill set?)

Open, honest blogging?

Over at In The Middle, they are discussing blogging and being academics. The post linked to is specifically talking about discussing things on blogs, sharing ideas. This is one of the things I am wondering / worrying about. How much should one share on one's blog? More specifically, how much should I share?

I have already had the joy of having my thesis topic stolen from under me (Hi, Ginnie!), and so am concerned about the dangers of having people take your ideas, and publishing them before I do. Of course, this should make me work harder to get things written and published, but what I want to know is just how real that danger is.

So how does one be an academic blogger? Do you let people know you're a medievalist? Do you tell them where you're currently working? What your topic is vaguely (female saints)? Do you specify what texts you're working from? By publishing on blogger, does this mean you've 'baggsed' the topic?

Thoughts?