I passed a milestone-- my first month of blogging-- but it went unmarked, because as others already know but I'm just finding out, blogging is hard work.
I've been reflecting on this lately, in the midst of the grueling Maymester class mentioned in my last post, because after only one month (now 6 weeks), I've already fallen behind on my goal of posting 2-3 times a week. Here's why blogging is hard for me:
1. There's never enough time. In particular, I hate not having time to edit my writing. It's nightmarish to find, as I did on another blog, the word "aggregious," which was supposed to be "egregious," and not be able to change it without just drawing more attention to it, not to mention looking like an obsessive-compulsive egghead. As an academic, I'm used to writing something, printing it out, reading it, thinking about it for a while, editing it, giving it to other people to read, editing it again, and then submitting it for publication, which means two or three more people look at it, which leads to more revision. And then maybe it's published. Writing one minute and hitting "publish post" the next is hard.
2. There's never enough time. Here are some things I haven't written about: judging grad student teaching portfolios (some really wonderful work being done around this campus), serving as faculty sponsor for Connie Crumbley's Relay for Life team (in four years they raised nearly $25,000 in memory of a friend; my daughter is pictured above visiting UGA's Relay in a photo by Carolina Acosta-Alzuru), my Campaigns students' presentations (killer), my PR Comm event plan projects (one student planned and executed an event that raised $500 for New Orleans musicians; others were published in multiple local media promoting nonprofit events), and the first week-plus of Maymester (it's going well). There are other things I can't write about--grading controversies, our search for a new dean, serving on the graduate school's admission and retention committee--because they're confidential. But most of the time, I just can't find the time to write about everything I'd like to include.
3. There's never enough time. Not only have I failed to keep up with my own blog, but I haven't posted comments on some others when I had something to say, and I have been really bad at responding to blog-related e-mail, too. Charles Fishman, the author of the book I'm using in class this spring, was kind enough to write, and it took more than a week to get back to him. Luckily, he's a nice person who not only wasn't mad at me, but who answered my response in a couple of hours. Hey, way to make me feel worse! The thing is, when I do fall behind--and the blogger who is so much more diligent than I am has already posted several more items-- it seems pointless to go back and comment on something old. And time spent on this is just more time that I'm not posting on my own blog.
How does everyone else overcome the time problem? Is it just a matter of commitment and diligence, or is there some time management tip I'm missing? Type fast, people... the clock is ticking!
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