The last week or so has seen me less engaged in the social side of education, including blogging and tweeting, than normal. I have also been less engaged in reading and almost totally disengaged in anything akin to exercise. I have found myself content to arrive home at the end of each day, do some prep work for the following day and then lapse a dazed state watching popular TV watching.
Looking at my twitter activity over the last few weeks I have returned to the point of re-tweeting some brilliant posts and ideas from others rather than contributing anything much new myself. This is something I am a little critical of as in my early use of twitter this was the limited extent to which I was involved. At that time, and on reflection, I vowed to make an effort to be a sharer but also a contributor and therefore a return to sharing alone represents a step backwards.
The question at hand is why this has happened and why I now find myself in this situation. I think the answer to this question lies in looking at all the things that went on during February. During February I took place in #29daysofwriting during which time I wrote 29 blog entries, 1 for each day of February. I also took part in #teacher5adaysketch and made some attempts around getting a little bit fitter as part of #teacher5aday.
I have previously written on the benefits of treating life as a series of sprints as opposed to a marathon (you can read this posting here) however there is a down side to this approach. The downside for me appears to have hit me during the last few weeks.
My sprint through February has left me a little depleted in terms of energy and motivation. As such my TV watching has been an attempt to recharge my batteries and build up on my currently depleted reserves of energy.
Looking back at my posting on sprinting through activities I still stand by my comments however in hindsight I will add one additional point. If you plan to sprint through an activity be aware of the impact it will have on your energy reserves and the fact that following the spring you will need to rebuild these reserves. Also, the bigger the sprint, the bigger the required recharge period so after 29 blog posts in a month, plus a number of other activities I need a larger recharge period than if the sprint was focused on a lesser or single activity. Looking back I now see the importance of including a period for recharging within my plan and making sure you stuck to it.
I now feel I am coming out of my recharge period, which is further helped by the bank holiday weekend. With that in mind, onwards and upwards!!
Technology and Learning