Why I Started This Blog

This year I am trying to write more, but differently. I read the short story "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" by Ted Chiang over the summer, and my brain goes back to it like my tongue returns to a popcorn kernel stuck in my teeth. It makes me notice certain things. And I decided that, if I am already literate, I might as well consciously use my abilities to read and write to support my cognition sometimes.

Firstly, I am trying to break myself of the habit of treating microblogging like a personal diary. When I use microblogging to sort my thoughts, they essentially land in a "post" or "don't post" pile.

One thing I am doing instead is journaling. I am not trying to commit to journaling every day; I think that will be difficult to sustain sometimes. I did get a "reading journal" as a gift, so I am trying to journal whenever I finish a book. I already track my reading on an app, but since I don't rate books using stars, the app doesn't really have a place for me to record any thoughts. So while there's overlap between the app and my journal (book title, author, format), I am using the journal to record some things I don't enter into the app. Why did I choose this book? Who would I recommend this book to? What did I get out of reading this book? This is more helpful to me than stars. I don't generally finish books I'm not-- well, "enjoying" isn't the right word. Because sometimes I read a book that imparts something important and meaningful, but I wouldn't say I always enjoy that experience. Holding It Together by Jess Calarco comes to mind. And I occasionally finish books I don't like, especially if a friend loves it, or if it's that month's book club pick. In those cases, I do have a guaranteed opportunity to discuss it in detail. Besides, sometimes I don't like a book but I can see why other people do. (Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman comes to mind here.) I suppose the best way to put it is that I don't finish books I can't appreciate. I am still "getting something out of" the experience.

It occurs to me now that perhaps I should also record when I finish an article, or excerpt, because even if I don't read something as substantial as an entire book, that doesn't mean that reading made no impact. I will consider this.

I also received another journal as a gift, and I intend to use it specifically for a teaching journal. I have my lesson planner from last year that helps me know what I taught when, but I didn't frequently jot down what went well and what didn't. I can intuit and remember many details, but some concrete ones escape me - I have a poor sense of time management compared to others, for example. I hope that writing in a teaching journal will help me reflect but also help someone who might need to step into my shoes in the future (hopefully distant -- I quite like my job currently).

So, I am trying to write more for my own sake. But, I think writing for an audience sometimes can help me organize and analyze my own thoughts. Instead of the microblogging binary choice of "post/don't post," blogging for a (hypothetical) audience helps me connect thoughts in ways that flow logically and can be communicated clearly. I hope this will also help me remember thoughts and impressions over longer periods of time, as well. And perhaps, serendipitously, someone out there might benefit from reading my reflections. I know that reading about the experiences of others, particularly other teachers, has been very helpful to me sometimes, especially at times when I felt like I was the only one I knew who was struggling.

I had actually sat down to write about something else, but instead found myself explaining why I was blogging at all. The ideas aren't unrelated, but this post seems ample on its own. Stay tuned, I suppose, to read up on some things I'm trying for the new school year that have so far been working for me.