Burnout or fractured personality?
I had a crazy, but wonderful period. I attended, one after the other:
– the I-KNOW ’04 conference in Graz, Austria (30 June-2 July)
– BlogWalk3 in Vienna (4 July)
– BlogTalk 2.0 also in Vienna (5-6 July)
– the PACE project meeting in Santiago de Compostella (8-9 July).
During all this time, what was happening around me was much too important to let me time for breath. I didn’t dare to blog, even if I was given all the chances to do it! I guess I wanted to experience everything at full intensity, even if in my head, I was blogging all the time!
I arrived back to Luxembourg three weeks ago, in an empty apartment, realising that my electricity and gas were cut off in my absence. Back on Earth!
It felt like I arrived here for the first time: it was a continuous struggle with the bureaucracy to get accepted and find my place here. Then I had to register to several other authorities, to move all my stuff from Germany over here, to buy basic furniture…
No that this was done and I found my peace again, I think I can go back to blogging.
I felt bad all this period about deserting my blog, and I made great efforts to come back. Then I read Bloggers suffer burnout in Wired and I thought maybe the same happened to me: I’m done!
Two days later, I discovered Nancy White‘s post about trying to catch up, and I felt a bit better.
Probably I will never suceed to catch up, even if there are so many things about these past events I would like to talk about. But why not start again now, and see what happens afterwards?
During BlogWalk3, I had few apparently neutral talks that made me reflect on my blogging. First, speaking in a group about my thoughts being spread throughout several blogs, Elmine told me she considered blogging about my personal life only in Romanian unfair. She argued that people reading Coniecto can only perceive one of my facets and are prevented from knowing me better. Then, speaking about my passion for astrology and sharing pros and cons during lunch with JJ Merelo and Fernando Tricas, JJ asked me: Do you blog about this? And I said yes, often, but only in my personal blog I keep in Romanian(which is a mixture of links, quotations and stories about myself).
Doubt was already planted in my head. By trying to keep my personal life out of my so-called professional blog, I made it sound false. I missed a voice. OK, people were able to guess a lot about me just by looking at the kind of things I usually post. But I think Elmine was right: this is not fair! A sort of gap developed between me and my own blog, keeping me from writing when I was mad and sad. I think I am ready to accept now that this is me, and there’s no use to hide that I have doubts, fears and preferences, just like any other human being!
So, back on track, trying to put my “fractured” personality together right here, in what was meant to be a serious, strictly professional weblog.
After reading yesterday Olaf Brugman’s serie of posts about the spiritist perspective on social development and knowledge management and finding it really interesting, I feel a lot better about thinking of studying the possible influence of stars on people’s inclination to blog.
Blogs can foster our weirdest ideas, serendipity arises on the edge (I read this few days ago in a blog, but I can’t find my bookmarks anymore), so why not?
August 06 2004 12:48 pm | Uncategorized