Day Seven: This is interesting!

Day Seven

First of all, thank you, really – THANK YOU for your comments here on the blog and on Facebook. They are all valued and appreciated and so interesting to read.

This is fascinating and just a little weird.  As you know yesterday was a real struggle, heck I even said so in the title and I really feel that I did not say very much and yet, and yet it has the highest first day readership yet by a long way. In fact it got more readers in total than all the other posts bar Day One, which has been up for a full week now.  Yes a week!

I honestly thought it would be of little interest but clearly it did connect for some people.  I want to explore that today as I think it is really interesting and I want to think more deeply about what people wrote as comments.

On social media I had people telling me that they 'preferred' my earlier posts and missed the 'witty me', but also people telling me that they liked my sincerity.   I know that all these were meant in a nice way and were not being critical and they are taken that way and valued.

Here on the blog, well there were those who just confirmed that they had read it (smile) and support and encouragement for continuing and for the fact that I was showing a human side.  Indeed one comment said it was the most ‘real and satisfactory post so far’, that I had moved on from my ideas about things, ‘clearing the undergrowth until there was just me’.  Wow!

Then again, expressing a counter view if you like, was the question about purpose and suggestion that if I stuck to a theme I could write an ebook if I stuck to topic and wrote to teach.

As I say, I value all of these view points and have been thinking about them over the day.

Which brings me back to why I took this challenge.  If you Google “30 day writing challenge” you will find that there a number of these and although the details vary, the principle is the same.  The one that I actually took is this one.  

Why?

• Because I wanted to test out firsthand the 30 day rule for forming a habit, to see if I could stick at something for 30 days nonstop and form a habit.

• Because I like the process of writing.  I do not play music or paint or create in other ways very much. My main creative fulfillment comes from words, writing words and speaking words, telling stories.  I think most of my presentations and a lot of my classes are narratives.

• Because I feel that if I do form this habit it can be useful to me, in helping me form other more positive habits and also in my productivity in work.  But – the aim of the challenge was not to do something for work. I do not want any more work to encroach into out of work time.

• Because the process of writing changes me.

So that is why I do not want this challenge to be about writing a blog on educational technology or teacher training or education policy and so on.  That is work.  However if my mood means that I feel the need to write about that then I will, after all it is my blog! (wink).

Which brings me to audience, as your comments got me thinking about that a lot as well.   Who is my audience? Who am I writing for?  Who do I imagine reading this?   Well of course I know most of you that are commenting and so I can picture you reading it, but does that mean I am writing FOR you?

I do not have an answer for that yet and in this challenge maybe I never will, because this seems different.

Stay with me, let me explain.  When I write teaching materials or a paper or journal then there is usually a very specific group in mind and that constrains things, which is fine. You learn the rules and also find your voice and style but you do know who is likely to read.  I see this a bit like people who write a song to be a hit, there are rules and a formula to having a popular hit record. 

However sometimes a hit happens out of the blue, not because it followed the formula but because it connects, it has soul, it speaks to an audience even though it was not written to entertain them.   It is as if the song almost ‘had’ to come out, it had to be created, it needed to be expressed. The emotion and passion needed an outlet and the audience hears that in the song.

Please understand, I am not comparing myself to any great song writer at all here, I am just using that as a metaphor to try and express the difference.   So although I really appreciate the idea expressed in the comments of sticking to a theme and of writing an ebook or regular blog or article on some topic in the future, I am not there yet.  I do have ideas for regular themed blogs and I do also read them, but those same influencers inhibit me because I feel I never could be as good as them.

Finally your comments made me realize that I had been doing some ‘channeling’.  When I read back some of the posts on say the EU and politics the voice I heard in my head was not really me but me trying to be funny like Charlie Brooker and Frankie Boyle.  I am not comparing myself to their huge talent – but I see elements of say some of Boyles writing in the Guardian.  I was not even aware of that at the time I wrote it.

Is channeling bad?  For sure no, every single person who creates anything at all is always channeling their influences and experiences, often without being aware of them.  It was just interesting for me and I think worth commenting on.

So – Slowbow, my friend, again more stream of consciousness and more process and not much content, sorry. However perhaps that pretty well reflects a lot of who I am, as a person, as a teacher and as a learner.  I am about process rather than content.  With that I will say good night as this has been a very long post – more than double the requirement and it has flown past.  Thanks again for staying with me.