It isn't really a Fear of Sharing as @benjamingilpin suggests. I got over that a long time ago - as anyone who knows me well will tell you.
And it isn't really a matter of perseverance as @ColinWikan intimates in his post Your Perception is Not Always Reality. I also view failure or setbacks as a learning opportunity and can generally pick myself up and dust off.
I think it was more a matter of exhaustion. Not the actual physical feeling of exhaustion (although I have been known to fall asleep on the computer!) but rather the exhaustion that Chip & Dan Heath talk about in Switch:
"When people try to change things, they're usually tinkering with behaviors that have become automatic, and changing those behaviors requires careful supervision by the Rider [rational side]. The bigger the change you are suggesting, the more it will sap people's self-control.
And when people exhaust their self-control, what they're exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure. In other words, they're exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change."It's exhausting to try and lead change, real change, and manage self-control when it seems like everyone else is critical. And it's hard to not respond emotionally when it feels like the only feedback coming your way is criticism and not formative. So to preserve that sense of self-control, it is a bit easier to just not engage.
But it isn't really fair (or being a good leader) when you push others to engage and clarify their standpoint and you are just coaching from the sidelines. I used to justify it by saying "Hey - at least I am at the pool" (Bambrick-Santoyo reference to Man on Fire) but I now realize that I need to actually be practicing the strokes as well.
So prompted by a summer blogging challenge from @gcouros and a recent Twitter exchange with @doctordea where I once again preached what I am not practicing - I landed here again. But it was the final push from @leah_whit sharing her first blog post (also in response to the challenge!) and then @Rogers_Suzanne asking for feedback on her blog that made me pick up the computer and write. If these brave people can do it - so can I!!
This time - no pressure, no worries. I'll post about what I am reading or learning. I won't be disappointed if no one comments (although I am committing to commenting on at least one other blog a day). And I will try to practice self-control! :-)
3 comments:
Thank you for your honesty. Exhaustion does happen. Summer time feels as a chance to rebloom. Please write as you have time.
Your post is encouragement to others who have either taken a blogging sabbatical or have yet to dive into the pool. Blogging is cerebral exercise: weighing words to discern meaning; considering the implications of diction; repositioning thought for clarification and questioning. Sometimes, a carefully constructed argument or well-designed explanation goes unnoticed by others. But the efforts of blogging are never lost; blogging propels a writer's thinking and becomes an "experience...an arch wherethrough/
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades/
For ever and for ever when I move" (Tennyson, "Ulysses").
I think that my hesitation to blog much was also exhaustion. However, mine was in the sense of all that I was hearing and reading were about the tools and now about the practicality of them in a classroom setting. I try not to think of it as just "blogging". It really is a communication of my learning and growth. Thank you for connecting with me today. LOVE your blog.
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