Moving on.

Another New Year internal debate has been how frank to be with this blog and with social networking sites. As President Obama says, I'm someone who wants organizations to err on the side of openness. Does that mean that I also have a personal obligation to be as open as I want my institutions to be?

This morning I tested the waters by announcing, somewhat cryptically, that I am leaving my job at Duck University, although I failed to mention exactly where I'm heading. Indeed, I simply updated my status to say "Jon Jablonski just quit his job." Along with the expected congratulatory notes and comments, this generated quite a bit of confusion. Some folks were obviously in the know, others are still catching up.

It also prompted my mother to ask 'Isn't quit a strong statement'? In response I ask: can I not call a spade a spade?* I'd love to start my new job off by being the strongly opinionated, plainly stated person that I am. After all, if one's head is firmly planted up one's ass, should I not be able to tell him or her to remove it? (This assumes that my own head is in the fresh air. Perhaps that is not a fair assumption?)

The crux, of course, is that there is a big difference between being honest and being a jerk. If I'm aiming for breezy self-confidence, how do I avoid being labeled a cocky (and crude!) bastard. First impressions are hard to overcome, and I definitely don't want to go in tossing verbal hand grenades. That said, most future coworkers probably know about the Google, therefore they can easily see what I've been up to over the past few years.

So what approach should I take? As Jordan Jesse Go and a future colleague pointed out recently, new beginnings are also opportunities for reinvention of the self. On the other hand, this isn't the summer between 8th grade and freshman year of high school (see above comment about the Google). It's not like I can suddenly adopt a Manchester accent. Should I go with the Mork and Mindy suspenders or the utilikilt for my first day as the head of the University of California, Santa Barbara's Map and Imagery Laboratory?

*etymological note: the phrase comes Greek and has no racial connotation. Indeed, it refers to shovels.