2018.06.23 - Day 101

Hope you’re feeling better Eliza, ((hugs))

I like the Futurelearn platform because I can use it flexibly to suit my own needs. There isn’t so much grim emphasis on obtaining a qualification as other platforms. Some courses I finish, some I don’t. My worst area is computer coding. I always think I should be able to do that and never can. I just get stuck in all the tedious detail.

I liked this bit from Niebauer: ‘After separating the entire outer world, the interpreter goes on to separate and categorize the inner world, turning into a controller and something else to be controlled, creating an inner conflict that cannot be resolved any more that a leaf can pick itself up from a pond. We are the only species that can lie to ourselves, convince ourselves, love or hate ourselves, accept ourselves, push and even pull ourselves and you see this going back for thousands of years.’

I always think I can improve myself (and lots of others think I should :)) but who is improving who?

Niebauer Ph.D., Chris. The Neurotic's Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left-brain Plays Unending Games of Self-improvement (Kindle Locations 405-408). Outskirts Press, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

(((Zen)))) Thanks. Great excerpts, too.

Very weak again today, after feeling well for a few hours thankfully, and 'getting things done', but going to bed soon and looking forward to Dream Session tomorrow! :) edited 00:48, 24 Jun 2018

feel better soon Eliza

Enjoy some re-creation ((((Eliza)))).

Zen, I understand your comments re flexibility. My take on flexibility is unlike most people I see on their trailers who seem to like to fit in a bit here and a bit there, I want to do long continuous blasts, many hours a days for many days (overdoing natch ;) and then maybe I'll have to take a break. Rinse and repeat.

It's rather too late for me to do anything practically with a qualification apart from getting satisfaction. It's nice but I'm luckily not dependent on it for personal validation or self-esteem. So any course focusing on qualification would not find me an ideal student (or customer, as I'm sure that's in their back pocket!).

Non-qualification emphasis aside, expect to see, after the first week on the poetry course, a trailer for an MA they run at the Manchester Writing School! ;)

Someone passed me some links today for the University of Iowa, its International Writing Program some MOOC packs, and a free course they're running mid-July to mid-September called "Moving the Margins: Fiction and Inclusion". Do you have any experience of University of Iowa course, Zen? If you have, I'm all ears. If not, I'll go research and report back. :)

Storm,

Are you planning to keep a blog or website?

It’s a good question Eliza. Possibly. Probably even probably! ;-) At the moment it’s a journey. If it could be loosely quantified, I’m barely half-awake as a writer so far. Do I want to record selfies on the way, knowing I may look back on early work and roll my eyes?

It does pose an implicit and very interesting question: who am I writing for?

I do have an unused Wordpress account and several dormant blogspot accounts, all testaments to my indecision and to my latter day gradual withdrawal from Google. I’m rather more likely now to switch to something like write.as to act as a repository and publisher; it’s much more grassroots and it’s run by the admin of one the Mastodon instances I’m a member of.

>>Do I want to record selfies on the way, knowing I may look back on early work and roll my eyes?<<

:) Does anyone get to skip this part?

What you've written is so familiar. I have, even right now, 3 or 4 blogs that were started but never shared openly because I couldn't find the right tone or ... something. I've abandoned and closed many more over the years, because they felt embarrassing in some way, but then later on, if I've come across some of the saved posts, they didn't seem as terrible as I'd measured before.

Nothing inherently wrong with selfies. Van Gogh did many. ;-)

I know you'll find the right balances!