blogging | The vulnerable professor

Image Credit: Thoth God of Knowledge

Last night I wasn’t feeling so well. It had been a long week and it was only Wednesday. I had been working late every night, getting up early, and couldn’t see an end in sight. I still don’t, but Iwoke up to a loving colleague tweeting about a remarkable student post about classroom work in my course. It’s not often that you get tangible, detailed, positive feedback at 6 in the morning. Let’s just say it was well-timed and the day continued to surprise as I had a rousing conversation about Minds Online with SEU faculty, several students came and engaged in the English Eddies Teacher Circle (along with venerable AISD 2013 Teacher of the Year Sarah Dille and her colleagues Ginger Gannaway and Janie Lewicki) and I arrived home to a swarm of smiling children who wanted to read Winnie the Pooh and go to sleep. Kind of a dream. Feeling grateful. Going to bed.

First things first, I haven’t blogged everyday so far. My longest run was 3 days in a row. The 30 day blogging challenge I entered into with folks on 7/17 has certainly been a reflective opportunity. Writing everyday is the work of a writer. I would like to think of myself as a writer, but the challenge is that I wear about 23 hats (to be exact). And when I write, it’s not always for this blog. I have to do many different types of writing for work. While the blog has some dimensions of my work woven across thoughts, it is more than my work and often not work (if we can draw boundaries between such things). Simply put, I am not paid to blog.

This brings me to a realization: I can understand now how full time bloggers must discipline themselves and do. Their livelihood and career identities depend upon it. I, however, am not a professional blogger. I blog because I like having a public record of particular ideas or thoughts, but I don’t blog for a massive, ad engaging following.

As a result of this realization, I’ve grown to appreciate the b-log origins of the platform and how the dailiness of posting truly pushes one to blog about daily, life-oriented material. It’s the only way to maintain something that requires daily or nearly daily touches. This means more personal life gets shared, the mundane seeps in, etc..

So I think the frequency suits my purposes, but the daily postings do not necessarily. That being said, if I was not trying to post everyday, I probably would not be able to post every other day or 5 days a week, etc. to come up with material, even material for less frequent lengthier, more edited posts, I must constantly be working the back burners of my mind stove. And that is my favorite take away from this challenge. I love the constant question mark over experiences, photos, and thoughts that fleet through my days: “Should I post about that?”

I’m actually really looking forward to blogging or thinking about blogging daily during the academic year as conversations and concepts in my courses will seep into my thoughts and I may be able to compose those nice professorly posts that make everyday connections to current events or questions posed at the close of class even more immediately.

My writing eyes are still opening and I’m still figuring out the value of this platform in my worlds.

To be continued…