Reflections on Blogging

I’m not a writer, per se, but have written a diary ever since I was quite young. I do like to ruminate about things, to sit back, reflect and analyse my thoughts, so writing a diary suits me well. Fast forward to my arrival in China, and I began an online travel blog, posting photos and in-depth coverage of my day-to-day experiences. However, I found the whole thing, ‘too much’. I literally documented everything I did, which was too ‘wide’ and I felt unable to narrow down my ideas, or make short, concise to-the-point comments. So when I had the opportunity to start a new blog, as part of a Language Teaching MOOC I was participating in, I was more than happy to abandon the travel blog. And thus started what is now my blog – Learn Experience Teach.

My blog is a collection of my personal thoughts on learning and teaching, often in the China context. In order to get a clearer understanding of what I think (and by default, who I am), I find it useful to contrast my thoughts with others. So my blog is slowly metamorphosing from being a one-person show (just my opinions), to incorporating the views of others, through video and audio interviews with teachers in the field. That said, the most important step in terms of sharing, and collaborative dialogue, is yet to be taken. That’s right – almost 3 years in the making, and I haven’t invited anyone to read or subscribe to my blog! My DTLT classmates really are the first! So it seems I suffer from that well-known ‘perfection’ complex, whereby the blog is never quite ready to be opened up to a wider audience, which contradicts the very notion that I claim I want to embrace: that of sharing and learning from others!