Metablogging … with random bits

I’m still making up my mind about what sort of things to include in a blog. There’s a curious clash between the public and the private and I’m not yet sure where my boundaries are. Part of my reason for writing a blog is to keep in touch with family and friends, and yet in reality I have no control over who might view it. So, I catch myself wondering what I should include and why, and who is it for.

Having kept a journal/diary for 60% of my life I don’t find it strange to be writing this sort of thing. However, this feels quite different from my journal, with its largely linear account of my rivettingly fascinating life (yeah, right). My journal is many things for me: at the least it’s a crutch and factual record for my increasingly absent-minded brain; somewhere in the middle, I just enjoy the writing process; but at a deeper level it also serves a therapeutic, reflective purpose that’s highly personal (I’ve never thought about it all that much, really … I just write it). However, I’m quite sure it would make for dull reading … but you’re not going to find out!

This blog, on the other hand, feels kind of different: perhaps more whimsical, quirky and random than the daily formality and routine of my journal keeping, although it also incorporates that aspect of just enjoying the writing process. But* the public nature of a blog does put a different slant on things, not so much cramping my style as producing a different style, and I’m finding that part of the act of blogging is influenced by my awareness of this public/private nexus.

Just recently I informed some of my friends about this site — since, after all, one of my reasons for setting it up was so that I could let them know what I am doing in the coming months when I’m on sabbatical — and there was a degree of surprise that I’d already written stuff when, clearly, I’m STILL HERE!! And** then tonight one of my friends asked if I was going to put up a photo and/or account of the teaching excellence award that I’d received this evening. I had to stop and think. This is something that I want to share with family and friends (and I was very glad to have some of my friends there for the presentation), and yet I feel a little, well, shy about blogging about some things (despite having gone public about campfires, marking at 3am, obsessing about needing to find a geocache, and other weird odds and ends!).

Okay, in the end I decided to share … and so here is a photo of me with my award from our Graduate School of Education.

There were a few other things I thought about blogging about tonight, such as some thoughts about the art and practice of teaching, whether or not I am going to be able to cope with any more marking before totally losing the plot, why doctors don’t think to tell you certain things which surely aren’t obvious (e.g., they hand you a specimen jar and say “Go and give a urine sample” without offering any advice on how to actually achieve this in a practical way (hmmmm, I seem to have lost my concern about the public-private divide!!!!! (and in case you’re wondering, I’m just having a mid-life health check to see if I’m fit enough to cope with any mid-life crisis that crops up))), whether I will ever get out of the habit of stream-of-consciousness writing with nested parentheses, or, in a blog entry entitled “Skirting the issues”, I thought I might explain why I don’t wear skirts all that often (actually, I do: you just have to go to the right place on the right day). But seeings as it is now late, and this drivel took far too long to write, unfortunately (fortunately!) I seem to have run out of time and so they’ll have to wait another occasion …

* Yes, I know you are not supposed to begin sentences with “But” … except for dramatic effect.

** See comment re “But”