Under pressure

Sometimes I feel like I don't know where it came from, when I read what is on the screen. Hence, of course, the title of this blog. But it isn't really the blog which is the most typical exponent of this feat in me. It more regularly happens in meetings, when I cooperate, when I supervise, and when I for some reason need to make a snap decision and stick with it. When I have to improvise. In a way the blog has become the regular, safe and steady outlet for my musings, and I occasionally think about blogposts for quite a while before they reach the keyboard, enjoying the freedom and leisure of just writing.

But sometimes I still surprise myself. Dennis Jerz has generously ignored my lack of responses to his suggestions for a panel I agreed to participate in for a conference, and kept including me in his emails to the bitter end. And since it was still night in USA when I got to work today, writing a response within the time limit Dennis gave could be done! OK, 100 words, a 100 words... can't be that hard. And I wrote.

The thought, the word, the blog

Weblogs have become a medium of cultural expression, of personal confession and of learning and study. I am exploring the connection between the individual desire for attention, anonymity of the internet, demands of the imagined audience and the use of the net in self expression.
I look at this through reading teen-age and student weblogs in Norwegian and English. By following a few select weblogs I will look for their integration of the personal with the public, the limits between personal and private, and their expressed relationship to their chores and duties at school or college.

When reading it, I had a minor epiphany. I looked at the 100 words and realised: I do this, I could do that, I know how, I know the theory I want to refer to, I know where to find the blogs, I know... and I wanted to do it. It was like my subconscious had kicked my conscious aside and sent me an important message.

It was my fingers talking again, under pressure and only reporting to the brain later.