A few people have asked why I haven’t blogged lately. Today is a furlough day, so I’ll pick up where I left off in trying to record this year. But first, here’s why I haven’t added to it.
Reason #10: I have only had two furlough days since Thanksgiving. The first one, I used for Christmas shopping with the hopes that my taxes would go to education. Instead a number of my gifts were wrong and I had to take them back.
Reason # 9: The second furlough day, which turned out to be an all faculty furlough day on the first day of classes, I didn’t use to not work. (That is the kind of sentence I read all the time in student papers, so figure it out.)
Reason #8: What’s new to add? Furloughs have become a way of life. Next year, we will complain because we don’t have them any more–just as we got used to the 10% pay cut.
Reason #7: I realized that everyone has a blog and that is the same as no one having a blog.
Reason #6: Even fictional characters have blogs—Betty Suarez from Ugly Betty has a blog; Jim and Pam from The Office have a blog about their pretend baby. I had a brief fear that if I kept on blogging, I’d cease to exist. I would become a character on some TV show and have a constant narrative about my life running silently through my head. Eventually the little blog voice in my head would drive me crazy.
Reason #5: Reason #6 seemed even more a dangerous possibility after I watched Julie and Julia (or is it Julia and Julie)? Anyway, it was proof that a real person with a blog can become a fictional person with a blog.
Reason #4: The CSU Chancellor is implementing a program based on deliverology, which turns out to be a philosophy used by the Tony Blair to streamline government in Great Britain. Basically, it is an efficiency strategy and we are going to use it to push, I mean encourage students, to graduate. I decided that blogging didn’t seem so efficient until I read how unpopular deliverology is in Great Britain and decided that perhaps efficiency isn’t that good of an idea anyway.
Reason #3: In a newspaper article, I read that part of CSU’s deliverology program is for faculty to take attendance and call up students who miss more than two or three classes. I realized after my first couple of years at CSUSM that in order to get anyone to show up, you have to take attendance. And I can let the CSU know the reasons students give for not coming to class which, in addition to illnesses, overtime at jobs, deaths of relatives and friends, and family obligations, include “I was on my honeymoon” and “I thought we weren’t having class for two weeks” followed by “Did we do anything important?”
Reason #2: I’ve been trying to find out how much deliverology experts make consulting with large university systems like ours and if I qualify to be one since I’ve heard every excuse in the book. (Did I mention the student who had told her mother that I was missing class not her and that was why she wasn’t coming to school?) Possibly my expertise in deliverology might be a way to restore the 10% of my paycheck that I’ve been missing.
Reason #1: I bought a Wii and have exercising using Wii Fit. I’ll never be a downhill ski racer nor a skateboard champion but the game with the penguin on the ice burg trying to keep from falling into the frigid waters while catching leaping overhead fish for dinner seems like a skill I should cultivate.
10 reasons why you should blogg.
10. Makes you feel part of the Tolkien Universe.
9. Someday blogging may be illegal. Enjoy it while you can.
8. Makes me feel better about my possible 8% pay cut.
7. Makes me feel less guilty about keeping my blogg for only one week.
6. Gives me something to read while I try to untangle the rubber band that came with my wii fit.
5. When writing poetry, blogg is an easy word to rhyme.
4. I like to see my initials on the internet.
3. Helps me to contemplate what I might do with the purposed 6 furlough days I may have next year.
2. “Keep on blogging” is more hip than “Keep on trucking.”
1. I heard there was a movie being planned–Jill/Jillia.