Back to blogging
I have been planning to return to blogging since the beginning of this year, if not earlier. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my friend Elmine Wijnia, who committed to a 66 days blogging “diet” back in 2009. She told us it was tough, but I still wanted to try!
But I put it off day after day. I am too busy to afford doing anything for myself.
Until today, when Stephanie Booth put out this “back to blogging” challenge again. It’s only for 10 days, so I hope I can keep it up.
It is one of the busiest periods until now this year: I have tons of reviews pending, paper deadlines, project work, exam papers to grade and so on – all on top of my teaching. But it’s now or never! I’ll have something to look forward to every day:) Or not.
I love blogging. I think about myself as a blogger. I got most of my current and many of the past students to at least try blogging. Many surpassed their master, and made me very proud. Their blogs, combining portfolio pieces with learning diaries, brought them outstanding jobs all over the world. Just like this blog mattered maybe more than the job interview when I got my first job in Limerick almost 8 years ago.
And I actually never stopped blogging: I just neglected my own blog.
I initiated a project we titled Connected Limerick, looking at the interplay between the physical city and its digital replica. And not only looking, but also engaging in it.
Last year I had the privilege to work with the Limerick Local Heroes to kickstart their online presence.
Then last summer I participated in an exciting project that was part of the Interactivos? workshop during the Hack the City exhibition at the Science Gallery in Dublin. And guess what? I volunteered to be the project’s voice.
This year the Limerick Tidy Town initiative decided we should get a more permanent online presence than the Facebook page we started with. And then we did the same for a project very close to my heart, Limerick Riverpath Volunteers.
A student helped me turn the Meetup presence of IxDA Limerick into a proper web presence – still working on this!
Every now and again I contribute to the IDC blog. And since February , I am also part of a large EU project dedicated to cultural heritage. Just got my user name and password for that blog as well!
Do I still enjoy blogging? Yes! But I wish every day would have more hours in it…
And to be honest, academia is making me think of blogging as a sort of guilty pleasure. Blogging, when I should spend every precious moment of my life producing the highly desired ISI publications?!
Well, I’m only human.
March 11 2013 11:53 pm | blogging
Stephanie Booth on 12 Mar 2013 at 7:54 am #
Glad you’re joining the challenge! Some of what you say is exactly why I launched this challenge: I love blogging, but somehow everything else is always more important, more urgent. In reality, it isn’t, because blogging is the base of my professional career, and it is probably also the key to keeping it fresh and allowing it to evolve (something I’m thinking a lot about these days).
Look forward to reading you over these next 10 days… and after!