Friends
Prompted by Sarah and Marco’s comments on my last post:
Irony and contradiction are endlessly fascinating to me. My focus in life - since I was a little kid, even, is always first on my subjective response to whatever experience I happen to be having. I’ve made a practice of being transparent on the blog, because when I’m not, it comes out bland and meaningless.
Now I’m in a spot where my thoughts and feelings are maybe not very attractive, and I am having to work through that. The previous post was about ME, (note the title) and now I guess some people will feel like I am talking about them, when I am only exploring meanings for myself. And I seem to be unable to say anything without offending someone now. I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.
A teacher at my work enjoys calling me on my “attitude” problem. She is a friend, and she credits my outlook on life to my Irish Catholic background - which is her personal history, too. Her inights are much appreciated by me, and we joke about my social blindness. Sarah, you shouldn’t feel like you owe me anything - most of all an apology. But I see that you take great reponsibility for all the people you care about, which is your strength and your goodness of heart speaking through your actions.
So I’m soured on blogging now…. no big deal, I think. I’ll get over it. I’m soured on schooling, too, yet I continue because it’s what I do, even though I doubt every aspect of it’s worth these days. Anyone who knows me understands that I am skeptical to a fault. Again, my character. My teacher friends disagree with me, and tell me that I do a “good job.” Why can’t I see that? Maybe because I have higher expectations…which is what it’s supposed to be about, yes?
To my sympathetic readers, thank you for your friendship. Your commentary is quite valuable to me. I appreciate it. I hope I can be done explaining myself.
To open this up to a more global context, Jo McLeay posted a good article about another aspect of the digital divide, and asked, Why isn’t Web 2.0 important to teachers? I think I know. It’s a lot of work, and it opens you up to a bunch of soul-searching that most people don’t have time for. My friends at work told me last week, after my presentation on the read/write web (I’ll get to that another day), “Yeah, but that’s you.” They’re right.
Artichoke wrote,
(bôr’dər-lănd’) n. Located on or near a frontier. An indeterminate area or condition.
If you knew who you were in the Borderlands Doug, or where you were in the Borderlands, there would be no purpose in writing your blog (and even less purpose in me reading it).
There would be no richly textured Doug unfolding in the posts – they’d become yet another example of the featureless group think that fills the blogosphere.
It is your uncertainty that makes you human, it is your inconsistency that connects you, it is the irony and contradiction in the posts that makes us embrace you. You explore with enormous courage and honestly what is liminal to all of us and I value it enormously.
Link | October 22nd, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Doug wrote,
Group think…yes, that’s what I ran away from. No map now. Just celestial navigation charted against an anecdotal record, and with a confused sense of direction. I do need help understanding where I am. Yours is always welcome.
Link | October 23rd, 2006 at 6:33 am