It has been extra hard to write my blog today. It isn’t that I don’t have anything to say. That basically never happens. I’ve got an opinion for just about every occasion and I am generally not very shy about sharing them.
The thing is that my blog is supposed to have a certain flow to it. A bit of a beginning, middle and end that starts off with what seems like it could be whining and complaining and then hits on something thought provoking and ends with some kind of high point of hope. The shape of my blog is not an accident, this is actually just how I try to think about things. It’s helpful to me and I write it out hoping it’ll be also helpful for someone else.
When there is something bothering me, I wallow in it a little, wonder about why it’s happening or what it means and then drag myself over to another perspective.
There is always another way of looking at things.
This other perspective doesn’t necessarily make everything better, but it helps. It helps me to get a little peace and often find some kind of light.
The problem is, my mind has been extra scattered lately and I am having trouble staying with any one topic long enough to work out an arc that makes it into a readable blog. It isn’t that I can’t find that other perspective, but more I keep finding so many perspectives that I don’t even know what I am actually trying to say anymore.
In a day, there are many different things that I could write a blog about. Today, for example, my students were building replicas of different kinds of North American traditional indigenous homes using a collection of different building materials and some were really struggling. What started out as a social studies/art lesson quickly turned into a problem solving lesson as many of my students spend all of their time on electronic devices and weren’t able to make something out of materials that weren’t virtual.
It led to a very interesting discussion about the importance of having different kinds of experiences and learning to problem solve in all kinds of different ways.
It also left me feeling a little hollow because I’ve used more computers this year in class (and on remote learning) than ever in my teaching career. I’m not anti-technology, but I am 100% convinced that my students don’t need any more screen time.
I want to tell you that I vowed to do a lot of physical problem solving for the rest of the year, but I also want to tell you that this is much harder to do in covid times.
Mostly, I’m tired of teaching in covid times. This is not a useful topic for a blog though, as everyone is tired of doing everything in covid times and I’m pretty sure that I don’t have anything surprising or insightful to add to the already long list of why this pandemic is hard (I guess based on the definition of a pandemic, it would be silly to expect it to be easy).
I’m not sure if it is the crazy excess of estrogen in my body, the snow that won't stop falling outside my window, or the new covid restrictions that are looming over us all, but I just can’t seem to focus on one thing long enough to write a nice and neat blog.
I feel like being messy. I feel like just pasting the first few sentences of all the blog beginnings that never made it to blogdom together and just leaving it at that. Or writing random disconnected words and sentences that I like and pretending that it’s poetry (or maybe I’d call it spoken word because poetry always feels a little intimidating.)
Maybe if I took the time out to do some yoga or meditation and focus my mind a little, then I would be able to write a blog that was something coherent and meaningful.
Or maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe if I took the time out to do some yoga or meditate then I would find that I didn’t really need to write this blog at all. I definitely find that sometimes when I settle my mind, there are less words and less need for words.
This can be useful in life, but it’s not useful in blogging.
I am happy to say that for once, I can’t blame my lack of focus on sleep deprivation. I’m pretty sure I’ve had over five hours sleep every night for the past week (over seven last night!). I feel like this means that I should be at the top of my writing game, writing a scintillating blog that will move mountains and change the world.
But, it seems like that is not going to happen.
Maybe you will just have to forgive me for not being able to find focus. Maybe you know what it’s like to not quite be able to get your thoughts to line up and behave the way you’d like them to. Maybe acceptance is making room for ourselves and each other to be messy and hoping that chaos will eventually give way to light.
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