This week, I assigned blogging projects to students in both my new classes at GWU, tasking them to start weekly writing about the issues they encounter during the course. I feel happy about instilling a regular writing practice as core to professional development.
But I also feel hypocritical, since it’s some years since I maintained my blog, or other writing practice. museum geek used to be my primary space for thinking through issues and questions I was grappling with, but lately when I try to post, I get hung up in draft, and never make it public. There are a few pieces I’ve worked on for some weeks that I keep holding off on surfacing.
I don’t know when or why I lost my nerve. I think some of it is just writer’s rust. It might be a lack of focus. Although there were times when I felt overwhelmed with possibilities during the PhD, I always had a series of lodestar questions that kept me from straying too far from my core concerns. Since I finished, I’ve lost that singular focus.
So I’m going to try to rediscover my focus and my voice by committing to a regular blogging practice again. If my students are expected to blog, then I should do it too. I don’t know where my focus will land. It’s likely to continue to include museums and technology, but it might also drift into the land of teaching, or float off in other directions. I’m not going to put too many expectations on myself, and I hope you’ll forgive me for the time it takes to rediscover my blogging legs.
Blogging is not like a bicycle after all… sometimes you do forget how to do it.
museum geek 
I suspect that one reinvents at several points along the way of any long-term blogging experience. I have consistently inconsistently maintained my blog for nearly nine years now – and my content has certainly evolved over that period.
My motivation behind blogging has always been to share ideas and be in dialogue with folks. I enjoy that I have more meaningful relationships with some folks I have met via one of my blogs, and have yet to meet in person, than with some of my colleagues I interact with face-to-face on a regular basis.
I suspect in fact blogging is like riding bicycle . . . sometimes I ride only on dirt tracks, other times road biking, and now much more for transportation purposes . . . but always just getting out and filling my lungs with air and exercising my body and mind. And, like with biking, sometimes with my blogging, I take myself too seriously – adjusted when I post the occasional song lyrics, because I enjoy them in the same way I enjoy telling a good story about a coo co-creative museuml project.
And in fact, blogging is the only writing I do that is always pure fun.
Look forward to reading your posts.
Robert, this was a lovely comment to receive. It’s also a good reminder that it’s ok to have lost a bit of bike fitness, and that maybe blog fitness is the same. It’s not that I’ve forgotten how to ride, I’m just a bit out of practice, and huffing and puffing more when I get to the end. I like it 🙂
And your note about community is such an important one. For instance, I cannot wait to meet you–finally–at MCN this year. Blogging isn’t just thinking out loud… it’s thinking socially, and that remains part of its enduring appeal.
Thank you, both for reading, and continuing to help shape ideas and offer comments.
Thanks for your kind words – and I too look forward to meeting in New Orleans.
Thinking socially! Sharing ideas! Being in dialogue! Community! I for one celebrate those intentions and look forward to whatever you may blog. Incomplete, random, provocative, reflective, excited or somber. Your blogs are a catalyst for intelligent thought and connection. I’m patiently anticipating your next one.