Which is what Lewis and Clark said just before they reached the Pacific Ocean.
Last year I resolved to post often -- that resolution died very quickly through a combination of laziness and lack of purpose. Then I hit a couple of walls last spring that left me considering the whole blog thing.
First wall was legal: what can I actually write about my life and not get sued over? I was so excited last spring to take my first cell phone pictures of a student group presentation that seemed to me very creative. Then a few of the students in that creative group basically blew off their final written work. I wanted to post the picture and also write about my disappointment but news stories were surfacing about teachers being sued or fired for blog posts.
Another wall is my conflict avoidance. I had one nasty criticism about a post and it evoked such an unfortunate scumble of unpleasant emotions that I realized I probably don't have what it takes to engage with lively topics in the wild west of the web. While I enjoy live intellectual debate and have found methods to manage personal face-to-face relational conflict, the whole anonymous attack thing took me back to graduate student days of receiving nasty anonymous reviews of material I sent to journals.
So I'm not sure, at this point, what this blog is for. When I find out, I'll tell you.
2 comments:
Ok, now I'm curious: which post would evoke nasty criticism??
But yes, that's a risk of any public writing, no? The antidote: get nice people to comment and drown out the nasties.
The raging comment I posted (and since removed out of concern about its legality) about a person who withdrew from a job interview.
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