Challenge accepted

I have had the pleasure of being reminded that I know a lot of really supportive, thoughtful and sensitive people this week. It makes me happy. One friend read the blog I posted about KLS and pointed out that I am letting the negative nelly voice in my head have a bit of free reign.

I agree, but I also think that even though I am sometimes blogging up a pity-party storm, its important for me to keep developing the habit of blogging. Some people blog because they are experts about something, some blog because they think they are, some because they are super funny and some because they want to make money (can't figure out how that one works). I suspect a lot of people blog because they are writers and writers like or need or at the very least should write.

I don't really know where I fit in there yet. I know that writing is helpful to me. I also have fallen into a bit of a workaholic-crazy-overstuffed life and I am really attempting to be a bit more healthy. Healthy in the way I eat, sleep, exercise and just generally go about my life. I don't really think my blogging would interest many others, so I am not concerned if I don't have a wide readership or following. I am writing to myself, mostly. But I do want to get better at writing, develop a bit more discipline about writing on a daily basis, and to reflect more honestly on how my days are going.

When I was studying for my degree, the writing staff always gave the advice that the only way to improve your writing was to write. Obviously getting grammar, form and style are all important too - but it is the writing that makes writing better. If you don't write, you don't progress as a writer.

I am not sure how many other people are like me, in the sense that I have a lot of long conversations in my head. Not command hallucination conversations, just long winded monologues really. Often I catch myself thinking that I have summed something up beautifully. But then when I try to recall it later, it is of course gone. So clearly sitting my ass down to actually write is key here.

I learned to teach when 'reflective practise' was all the rage. It still is, and our school is implementing a whole range of exciting opportunities to engage in it. The fact that this mainly seems to involve going to more meetings is the downside. However, reflection is important. It is not just a good teaching habit, its a good life skill. Meditation is great too, but that is about emptying the mind. Reflection is about really mining your experiences and in a focused way, using it to reaffirm your self-belief by acknowledging what you did well, and looking constructively on what you can improve.

So THAT is why I started this blog. There is a certain sense of anxiety on my part to create something that is entertaining. I am not sure why, because a: I am relatively certain that almost all of my page-views are in fact me. And b: I learned a long time ago that if I laugh about myself first, it doesn't sting so much when others do. I am steadfastly ignoring the fear of non-entertainment because if I gave into it, I would not write a single word.

So the challenge I accepted was to only write positive things for a week. This is not a bad idea, as something in my Irish/ Scottish/ possibly Viking invader ancestry has a definite taste for sadness. I looked for a picture of a sad Viking on Creative Commons, but sadly most Vikings look to be having a lovely time while pillaging etc and there were a few men at parties with the horns on their helmet facing downwards. So I had to search for sad Irish pictures (mainly green cupcakes and people at football matches where their team was losing) and sad Scottish pictures (which were very confusing and involved a lot of leaping in fields). Seriously, google images has no control over its search parameters. No sad pictures today! Anyway, I was all about being positive, and I know for a fact that training your brain to think about stuff that went well is very very effective. I did the '3Goodthings Happiness experiment' a year ago and it worked (go here if you want to try it: https://www.facebook.com/thehappinessexperiment?fref=ts ). Accentuating the positive is a good habit.

But giving that negative voice some air is too. Because although we all say 'that little voice' we all know that he or she is not someone else. It's us. And it is often a very young us. It's the us that got knocked back before we really even knew who we were. Its child us. And children need to express fears. they need to be able to say 'I'm scared' out loud. And they need to know they are being heard, and that it is OK to be scared. The trick is, teaching yourself to answer like an adult, and not add more stress onto that young voice inside.

So yes, she will be popping her head up every now and then. But be assured, my wonderful supportive friends, I know she is quite often misguided in her worldview. I am just letting her say her piece. Eventually, I am hoping she will start to really truly believe that she is OK.

And as for this bloggy thing, who knows how it will evolve. I'll just keep an eye on it for now and see.