Procrastadabbler

I’ve tried blogging in the past, but it never really went any where. For one, I never really had a readership. I mean, who wants to read my rather prosaic thoughts on anything? Secondly, it takes time and do I have the time to spend translating my navel gazing into prose. But as I thought about it — all right I admit it, I’m procrastinating doing my real work, and therein lies the name of this blog. Procrastadabbler. I’m procrastinating by dabbling in the art of blogging.

Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing, so I hope I’ll learn more about this type of writing by engaging in it. As a literacy professor who is ostensibly interested in the new literacies, and blogging is one of them, I believe I will gain more understanding of the process by participating in the process. I don’t know where this blog will go. It may very well go no where. Or I may find myself using it to come up with incredible insights. Yeah right.

So today, I’ve got two tasks. One to work on one of two presentations for an upcoming national conference. Two to go grocery shopping. Have I done either. No. I have thought a lot about my Monday class and what I want to do. And I have what I think are some pretty good ideas. We’ll see what my students think. I’m going through my usual midsemester glum stage. I feel like a crap teacher who doesn’t know what the heck she’s talking about.

Part of my problem with writing for the conference is that I’m no longer really interested in either topic. But I’m committed, so I can’t get out of the presentations. That’s the problem with conferences. You have to submit so early and then by the time I get there, I’ve moved on to something new. But the problem now is that I’m questioning my whole research agenda. What is it that I really want to be looking at. During the doctoral and dissertation process, much of my work was informed by the guidance of my advisor. And good advice it was. But now I’m on my own in an environment that focuses on teaching rather than research and I’m trying to figure out how to make it all fit together. I love teaching and I love research, and I have a love/hate relationship with writing. So I gotta figure out how to do it all.

Bear with me my friends, post comments. Help me figure out this thing called being a professor, being a literacy researcher, heck help me figure out what it means to be human.