You have walked through my dreams (Wild Beasts)

I blog every day. You may have noticed.

I'm not alone.

As Seth Godin says - Blogging every day clarifies my thoughts — it helps me notice things. It’s one of the most important practices of my profession.

Since rebooting  The Purdzilla Show I have maintained writing every day as a discipline.

So far I haven't missed a day. It's built into my morning ritual. 

Each morning I post an update so that I rotate through my four blogs every four days. 

I enjoy each of them for different reasons. Because I love music, Goo Goo G'Joob is a lot of fun to write for; writing about music is almost as good as listening to it. Wozza's Place, and Baggy Trousers are the oldest and most challenging to keep fresh. They stretch me and I need that.

The eagle eyed will have noticed a fifth blog has now joined the ranks: Jewels for the thirsty appears on the weekend and summarises my weekly sensual overload.

Apart from the daily discipline involved in gathering my thoughts and apart from trying to fashion something sensible and interesting to say; apart from all that - I need these blogs to make sense of the world I live in.

In case you haven't been paying attention those would be the worlds of music, inspiration, education, my senses and my inner psyche. 

Blogging/writing pushes me to get extremely clear on my thoughts. And that is good! 

Love/peace - Wozza

You take what you need and leave the rest (The Band)

Recently, during a class, one of my Year 9 students asked me about my motivations for starting a blog in the first place. 

She was asking because I'm using the blogging facility on Schoology to get them all to write posts about their current work in English.

She has an inquiring mind and has no problem voicing her thoughts.

I dimly remember writing that first ever post on Wozza's Place in 2008 and explaining why I decided to start a blog, so I told her that - not thinking she'd actually find it, read it and tell me loudly that it actually didn't help her much.

Like I said - inquiring mind.

Intrigued I am heading back to the future to see if I can find that post which articulated my motivation... 

Okay - got it!

It was a tentative start in 2008 for sure - more like an email update - the main reason from those first posts was to keep in contact with my family. Back in 2008 my dad was still alive, Jade was still living at home, and home was Stratford. 

At the time I saw it as a one way monologue, as I said then...

 this is not an exercise in making you feel guilty - it's designed to  help my burden of guilt!

It's changed a lot since as my blogging has expanded beyond my need to only keep in touch with family and friends. Actually I'm pretty sure my family only dip into this blog from time to time (and ignore the other three).

So my reach has extended beyond that need.

In particular, Twitter has really opened my eyes up to other possibilities.

A student gave me a new smart phone this week - I was floored! It's meant I now have greater access to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. 

I'm sure the fascination will wane eventually but for now I'm thrilled to engage with complete strangers via Twitter on a daily basis.

Love and peace - Wozza

Listen to the tales and romanticize (Tool)

The title quote for this post is from Tool's 10,000 Days album and song (a great prog metal album by the way). I'm using it because the blog has passed 10,000 pageviews since I started in 2008 (see the counter down the right column). My brain makes these seemingly random connections all the time.

Thank you if you're a casual pageviewer or a regular reader.

10,000 sounds like a lot of views. Originally (when I started the blog in 2008) the audience I wrote for and my whanau emailing list was restricted to just the immediate family. The whanau has kept growing since then and I know there are people throughout the blogosphere I've never met who regularly tune in to see what Wozza is up to.

Reality check time.

10,000 hours is the magic number that Malcolm Gladwell highlights as the amount of hours needed to become an expert; the difference between success and non-success, genius and mediocrity.

According to Malcolm Gladwell's thesis: anyone from the Beatles (in Hamburg playing marathon sets) to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (tinkering away on their computers) who has succeeded has done so on the back of at least 10,000 hours of practice. Plus, obviously, some intelligence and talent. 

How many hours have I put into my three blogs since 2008? Nowhere near 10,000 hours.

I've done 313 posts on Wozza's Place (the one with 10,000 pageviews), 148 posts on my music blog and 111 posts on Baggy Trewsers. I would conservatively say that on average I spend about 3 hours on each post before I publish. I also start quite a few posts and forget about them or ditch them.

If my maths is correct that makes a grand total of about 1,700 hours. A looong way to go. I'm still a blogging novice.

When I compare that to teaching it puts the 1,700 hours into glaring contrast.

I've been a teacher since 1983 (with one year off in my first year of being a Principal and the last two years of being an educational consultant). That makes 26 years of teacher contact with students. I've taught for about 4 hours a day on average (more when I was younger and less when I moved into management areas) for about 190 days a year.

That makes a grand total of about 20,000 hours. That's a lot. Way over the Gladwell 10,000 hour yardstick.

I mention this because I miss teaching English. I love being an advisor at Ali bin Abi Taleb School in Al Ain and that has reignited my teaching juices.

Maybe in the future I can get back into the classroom again. I do understand now why many former Principals end up full circle as classroom teachers.

Love and peace - Wozza