Since December 2000, I have been writing morning pages, a creativity technique espoused by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Three pages of long hand writing. First thing. And, it used to be the first thing I did. Then, I adopted two more dogs for a total of three and the two I adopted had different expectations about the morning than my old black lab who was content to sleep in. These two want a walk and breakfast and my morning routine has changed somewhat. In addition, I have found that after doing the pages for more than 7 years, they have become less useful, more like a glorified to do list than a creativity exercise. Oh, on page three, I do still occasionally have a revelation or two, but I find myself dawdling more and more as I write.
So, this morning, I fired up the computer instead. Of course, typing is against the rules for morning pages. But, what about morphing it to morning blogging? After all, technology has supposedly changed everything else, why not my morning pages? At least for awhile, I think. I’ll admit that there is a superstitious part of me that is afraid to let them go. They have seen me through some pretty major life change, given me a place to dream big, and just been an anchor for my day. But, they seem to have outlived their usefulness. I wonder what the average time is for people to continue to write?
This morning, I am up and dressed and ready to head to Roanoke for the VSTE Conference. I’m on the board and doing a lot of volunteering so it will be a busy few days. My bags are packed and I’ve just got to tuck my digital video camera back in the bag. As I sat at my desk, the unusual warbler that we’ve been watching since yesterday showed up again. I got some good video of him and the yellow-rumped warbler that’s been around for a few days now. The secret is using manual focus.
I am also exporting a last piece of video from my interview with Glen Bull. He’s an ed tech legend and one of the founders of VSTE. I finally got around to digitizing the video and have uploaded a few short clips to Teacher Tube. Here’s a sample:
