Thing 11: Reflective practice
So clearly, I’ve not been keeping up with the Things as they’ve been proceeding. In a sense, I’m ‘behind’, Thing 11 was posted in late August, it’s now mid-October, and the final Thing, number 23, has just been posted. I’ve never really intended on ‘keeping up’; I know that there is a deadline to get all the posts done that isn’t until late November, with a chance for an extension after that. I’m doing the course for general CPD purposes, rather than anything specific (i.e. chartership, for which there may be certain deadlines, I don’t know). And while it might be good to be on the bleeding edge of the course in terms of interacting with others going through it, there are plenty of others going at a slower pace with whom I can touch base if I choose.
There’s been nothing holding me back, it’s just been a matter of prioritizing and where my blogging has fallen in my list of priorities. I’m currently a stay-at-home dad to twin two year olds, with my wife at work full time. Their health, welfare, and spending time with them having fun, together, these are priority number one in my life right now, and I fit everything else I need to do around them.
I am a little further back than I had anticipated, but this is due to a reshuffing of priorities I had to undertake a while back. In August, something very substantial fell in my lap that was very time consuming, and required my full attention. I was lucky in that my parents were in town from overseas for a few weeks, and were happy to take over where the boys were concerned for a few days. After that, my attention shifted to spending some quality time with my parents before they left again!
I’m also volunteering for Rudai 23 as an administrator, so it has been a higher priority to me to make sure I’m checking the blogs I’m responsible for on a regular basis, and commenting on them from time to time. There are a lot of people depending on me to get that done, so when very pressed for time, I’ve made sure that whatever spare time I have starts with getting that done, before moving on to my own blog.
I’ve also tried as best as possible to wait for a good enough gap in my schedule to come through to really focus on a Thing. Doing Rudai 23 is an amazing opportunity to update my skills in terms of a host of technologies, and I don’t just want to blow over them in a superficial manner. With Pinterest, for instance, I took two or three hours to create a profile and try out its features, before taking time to write out a blog post. I don’t want to skim over trying out these tools just for the sake of getting a post up quickly, so have been waiting adequate spans of time to do a decent job of exploring them to come up before undertaking a Thing.
