My reason for doing this (from a letter to a colleague, 18 June 2007):

It does seem as if keeping up with netgenners requires more time than most of us have in a day. I know I can almost never find time to do the journalling that — I do know from those periods when I HAVE been able to sustain a writers’ notebook — truly feeds my creativity and scholarship and, regardless of the time it takes, actually serves to enhance my life and make me more productive than were I not doing it (I feel the same way about exercise). For myself, I know that I NEED to be journalling in this way if I am going be living and working at my full creative and scholarly potential.

A blog seems like the ideal place to do this kind of writing, both because I have more partially filled journals laying about my office than I care to count, a problem that a blog’s virtual and archival quality solves for me, AND because of the blog’s nonlinear (linkable) quality, which I would imagine nicely complements the way I think, and might actually serve to further my thinking than were I developing my thoughts in a vacuum. Which is to say that I imagine blogging, in it’s most engaged and responsive moments, to be something like a cross between being at a great conference and having discovered an excellent piece of scholarship that inspires you to annotate, research, and write. The difference, being, of course, that in the virtual manifestation (i.e., the blog), the normally limiting variables of space and time are completely at your command: you engage in the conversation at your discretion, choosing when (and if) to engage; and the annotation, research, and writing can happen instantaneously and pursued in infinite directions. But my fantasy of this vitual life of the mind might be simply that: I agree with you in that simply chatting for chat’s sake is something I have no interest in nor time for, and if that’s waht this turns into, I’m out.

In any event, your idea of a prayer journal sounds like a great one. My thinking about this blog thing — and all reflective writing, for that matter — is that whatever you do, it needs to be for you (i.e. not others) and add meaning to your life (which is why I made that comment today about my wanting to keep a personal blog in addition to one for our classes). If you kept your prayer journal online, perhaps you might be able to link some of your writings to online scripture, which could at the very least be handy. Or you might link to other contemplative sites, which might take your thoughts in other directions. WHo knows? You might even find yourself connected to other people interested in similar ideas, and together constructing knowledge and understandings that take you well beyond where you might have gone solo? I would be willing to bet money, that were you to do it for a year, it would begin to evolve in ways to reflect your many interests and facets. This is at least the way I am intending to go about it — start small — focusing on English Ed stuff — and commiting for a period of time in the hopes that as I learn the medium, it will evolve to be a more dynamic thing.

But, as in all writing endeavors, at your own pace and as it suits you (and me ;) ). It’s amazing how much we learn about teaching from learning ourselves! See you tomorrow; if it’s anythign like today was, I can hardly wait!!

My commitment for the summer: blog regularly (at least 3x/wk) for the rest of the summer and see what happens.