Blogging Frustration

Blogging frustration

I tried to set up some categories for my blog, but for the most part I failed. Taxonomy is difficult, when all subjects meld close to my heart. Will Richardson picked up on a thread from the free radical on this very topic.

I struggle with the same issue, because many times there are things of a more personal nature that I would like to get down in my space. Problem is I don’t know if it’s “appropriate” for my “audience”, and I don’t really know how much I want to share publicly. I put in a picture of the kids last week and felt kind of unsure about it. Yet, I do feel motivated by the idea that people are reading what I write. So my “professional” topics elbow out the “personal” ones, since I feel some strange sense of duty to it and to “them”. Weird. But it helps me understand what it might/must be like for my students too.

I intentionally refrained from giving out my web log address to my students. My outlook, writing style, and other perspectives are already strongly evidenced by my selection of material I provide for the class. The last thing I want is for my students to write like me.

Of course, some enterprising students have found my blog, and that’s okay too. I am a person first, and a teacher second. When academics stumble on my blog and e-mail me, sometimes it makes me think that I should provide a more in depth documentation for the stuff I write. Like Will says, there’s a sort of sense of duty to the whole enterprise. But I also feel a duty to be entertaining from time to time; I don’t think these desires are necessarily contrary. When I’ve talked about these issues in the past, the small group of readers of this site seems to agree with me. I want to keep all the parts of me together, rather than ripping them apart.

But does the sense of duty to audience cause a frustration regarding emotional outbursts? Damn right it does. However, sometimes frustration can be a powerful tool. I was watching A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy this afternoon and I heard a relevant line:

Because of our problems in the bedroom, I’ve learned to fly.

If anyone wonders about a suitable reason for the massive outburst of verbal diarrhea around this place, it’s as good an explanation as any. Frustration works. It seems like the more frustrated I get, the smarter people seem to think I am. It's the conservation of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it merely changes form. Even a casual reader might surmise I’m not low in the energy department. After writing this, I was reminded of a poignant fact by Woody Allen:

Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.