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Floating in cyberspace...

So, seven years ago, I intended to start a blog, back when it was cool to have a blog. Life intervened, and I didn't follow through. I know it's not as cool to have a blog anymore, so this will serve just as my space to discuss random thoughts and ideas, my little cyber planet where I can unload whatever is clogging up my cognitive space or gumming up my creativity gasket, or for those times when I need to get something off my chest.

I used to have a place to go for that, back in the early 2000's when boards and forums were all the rage. Then Facebook came along and just decimated everything else. Oh, and the baseball player around whom the board was centered retired. (Yes, I'm talking about Mike Mussina. I still love that guy!) I still talk to my closest pals from those days. Most of us migrated to Facebook and opened a "branch" of the group of which we were core members.

We had a password-protected forum on the board for pet peeves. I truly miss it. I still need those places to go when I'm obsessively stuck on something, or even just to hear a "yeah, I feel ya." I'm even okay if it ends up just being me here.

So, if anyone other than me reads this, feel free to give me a "yeah, I feel ya," or poke my cage every so often. Just don't be obnoxious if you do poke my cage.

Now, how ironic is it that I promise I may sound off about things and the only things I can think to sound off about are that traffic gives me serious anxiety and I love Larema Coffee House, Rocky Mount, NC's newest and coolest coffee house?

As I am writing this, I've got a doozy of a peeve brewing up, such as trying to help a student who is too afraid to think. I was trying to help her answer a question and she just scrolled away from the question to tell me she is too nervous. Seriously, you're in college and you don't know what a verb does? I have to remind myself that yes, there are students who get to the college where I teach and do not know what verbs are or even how to add and subtract; there are students my ten-year-old nephew can best intellectually.

That's when someone would ask, "What kind of college do you teach at?" In my head I'm responding, "'At what kind of college do I teach?' Idiot." At the same time, I'm reminding myself that not everyone has the regard for the English language that I do and I'm trying to gauge not only whether I can safely admit I teach at a community college or if I will get a flat, "Oh," like it's not a real college, but also whether I can admit that the student who does not know what a verb does is not even in a curriculum English course yet.

Yes, my brain moves quickly.

Now I'm stressing that I use "I" too much, all the while knowing that reflective writing requires one to use a personal pronoun. Since this is my blog, it's teeming with my opinion, thus overuse of a particular personal pronoun is par for the course. I am also hesitant to let my personal opinions fly, even though I can defend them, but being beaten mentally senseless with cognitive distortions, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies is not my idea of fun -- and that happens way too often.

I suppose some seeds have been planted for more blog entries to come. And they will. I promise I won't make you wait seven years until I explain what being beaten mentally senseless with cognitive distortions, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies feels like.

Until then....




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