Post #400

Wow. Hard to believe this is my 400th posting to Lympho Bob.

Sorry it's taken so long to write something since my last post. Ironically, I'm getting behind in keeping up with this blog because of...another blog.

This semester, I'm teaching a course called "Social Media and Professional Writing," where I'm teaching a bunch of English majors all about the ways writing is changing because of blogs, social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other interactive websites. It's been incredibly fascinating to teach.

And incredibly time-consuming, too: plans that I had made for the course in June are evaporating because all of this technology changes so quickly. In fact, I sat down two hours ago to work more on this post (which I had started last Friday), but got an alert that Facebook had made a major change to their "Groups" function. That change wiped out the plans I had made for how students will use a wiki for their collaborative report in a few weeks, and so I needed to watch a video on how the new Facebook Docs feature works so I can introduce it to the class on Friday, and then I had to post the video to my class blog and invite comments from my students......

Oy. It's been like that all semester. Sometimes I am literally learning about stuff 5 minutes before I teach it to them. It's a very different way of doing things for me. But like I said, it's been a lot of fun.

And it all started with this blog, 399 posts ago.

When I was diagnosed, I knew what blogs were, sort of, but I had never created one before. But I had one ready to go, and had posted a few times, before we even told the kids about the lymphoma diagnosis. I've been looking back at those early posts. It was very different then. They were much longer, more emotional, more personal. Mor desperate.

And over time, things changed. I got less fearful, and so did the people reading. The posts became less about me, and more about the good research I was reading, and about the good things the kids were doing. Comments tailed off some.

Which is fine. The blog still serves as a way to let people know what's going on for me. and every now and then it gives me a chance to unload about something important and emotional.

But writing a blog also opened up a whole new world for me professionally. I started the blog in January 2008. The following June, I went to a conference and learned a lot more about blogs and other social media and how they are written. By September, I was applying for a sabbatical to do my own research all of that stuff. A year later, I was deep into that research. And now, in February, less than a month after I celebrate my 3rd cancerversary, I will be presenting at a conference on writing, to scholars from 12 different countries, on what I've learned. A whole new professional world has opened up, and I've been re-energized by it all.

And what's really great about all of that? It's gotten me thinking excitedly about what I'm going to be teaching and researching for the next 25 years or so.

And that's the good part, becaue it wasn't too long after I started this blog that I was wondering just how long I was going to be around. I think now that it's going to be a long time.

So, pleaese be patient with me and the blog. I know I've said I'm going to be better about keeping it up. In the past, you might have started to get worried when I didn't post for four or five days, thinking maybe I was sick. Now, you should flip that worry around, and remember that when I don't post for a while, it's because I'm focusing on the next 25 years or so.

There will be plenty of time to post between now and 2035....