On Love and Fanship

I was an early adopter of blogging (although it took me many years to say that word without breaking out in hives). In fact, I began blogging long before that term had even been coined. In 2000, I was among the first to own a shiny new LiveJournal account. As the word "journal" would imply, this was back in the days when the majority of blogs were personal spaces -- used to share and deal with one's thoughts and feelings -- rather than the mass media phenomenon blogging has become.

Nearly a decade later, my reasons for blogging have changed... but not by much. They now straddle that line between personal and public: I write as a convenient way to keep my family and friends updated on my new life in England, all the while remaining conscious that I have anonymous readers who have never met me and have no reason to care about my personal life. As a result, I struggle with the content of this blog a great deal. Ultimately, though, I've decided that the most important reason I blog is for myself. It's a way to immortalize memories of this exciting period in my life, in the same way that I can now look back on my university days (so dutifully recorded in LiveJournal) and immediately be transported back in time. So, I write about whatever happens to be on my mind that day while hoping that I'm interesting enough to not lose too many of my readers.

Victoria Westcott (of Teach in London and Canadians & Americans in the UK) has just nominated me for Edublog's Best Individual Blog Award. I am flattered, surprised, humbled, and... am also feeling quite a bit self-conscious because of it. Although I do appreciate my anonymous readers (thank you, anonymous readers!!), this blog really isn't targetted for public consumption, and I'm worried I'll be criticized for that. I'm probably over-reacting (but just in case I'm not, this post is my disclaimer!).

In any case, this turn of events is good because it has lit a fire under my butt to get going on a couple of edu-relevant posts that I've been meaning to write. Stay tuned for an update on my experience as a longterm Learning Support Assistant, as well as an essay on my personal principles of teaching. I've also added tags, so you can now search for posts that interest you by clicking on the appropriate tags in the right hand menu.

PS - Still sick, still happy, and still incredulous that I'm going to Barcelona in just 15 days!!!