Stunned and overwhelmed

When I can no longer focus on what I am trying to do - for work, for school, for my family - I take refuge in the multi-layered world of the web, where it is easy to lose oneself for hours. Today I watched three RSA videos: on the evolution of leadership (for class - not that anyone else will pay attention), on the Future Mind (not hopeful), and on making mistakes (a topic I know all too well).

The I checked Facebook, and Twitter, and gmail, and all the other ways I connect - not so much with people as with ideas and trends and what is going on out there. And as always, I followed a Twitter link from Neil Gaiman and found the link to Christopher Salmon (who grew up in the BC Interior, which was unexpected) and then to Kickstarter...

I am fascinated by the fan-culture explored by Henry Jenkins - he was interviewing a professor from Athabaska U (also in Canada) talking about fan culture, which led me to think about kiva.org and freethechildren and ways people seek to influence the wider world around them - knowing that everything they do is just a drop in the bucket and rather than taking that realization as a sign that they should give up, instead getting their friends to drop a little something into the bucket too until the bucket overflows. And a film is made or a novel published or a well is built... $10 at a time until the job is done.

And this fills me with such hope - such enormous energy - all the feelings that I thought I would find in the programme I am enrolled in. But it only fills me with a deadened sense of "do it the way we've always done it because otherwise people won't take us seriously."

And I say - who cares? Who cares if people take you seriously? Do what you want, break the mould, try something new, make mistakes and learn and grow, make a mess and clean it up and learn something from the doing of it...

I am angry half the time and frustrated all the time, and then I go to my magic mirror on the world and I see people doing so much with so little and I think, "Wait. Why am I taking this course? In this programme? Banging my head against this brick wall with people who really just want me to do things their way (and when I refuse, punish and humiliate me). Do I need this degree? Do I need to be accepted by these peers? Is this important?"

And I have to reluctantly admit: it is. It is important to me to complete - if not this degree then A degree. To be accepted in this world. To have my work acknowledged and accepted. I am too old (and I mean that literally) to throw off the idea that my worth is somehow bound up with what other people think of me.

But I hope my kids will have better ways of dealing with the world.

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New Year - every fall

It's been a while - but time to find a place to drop some thoughts and let the words flow again.

I am back at school - not teaching but learning. Not learning but studying. Not studying but reading. Not reading but thinking. Not thinking but worrying. Not worrying but procrastinating.

I wanted so much from this course. Too much - I know that. Always want too much. But I feel that I am getting nothing - not even the minimum. Then I feel ungrateful and bitchy. Not wrong, just unkind.

I am interested in the concept of community and community-building. Which is the programme's focus. But it is limited in its view to face-to-face economic or social justice communities. It is tied to paper and text. Nothing wrong with that - it has sufficed for 1000 years and more. But what about the virtual communities that exist, that flourish, that succeed, and achieve, where people never meet f2f, never know the tone of each's voices or the colour of each other's skin? What about the words that fly, float, spin on screen and never fall dead on paper? What about hyper-text and inter-net and webbing-4-good?

I want more - and less. I want to write-my-own-adventure because I hate to be led, to be told, to be judged. I want less prescript and more flex - I want to write a film-script, movie-score, poem-rant with cast-of-1000s.

I want to do it myself. And not be corrected.