Great metablog yesterday from Martha Burtis (metablog=a blog on blogging). Martha works through plenty of questions/concerns about blogging and its relevance to a) teaching and learning and b) anything at all. I want to take some of those issues up myself in future metablogs here (you have been warned), but for now I want to comment briefly on the first issue Martha raises, the conflict between narcissism and perfectionism. I’ll quote Martha:

The narcissist in me likes the idea of being able to make my every whim and musing available for the whole world to see. But the perfectionist in me feels funny about making those whims and musings available in anything less than brilliant prose. Consequently, hitting the “Save!” button in my blog admin panel is often more an act of ambivalence than empowerment.

My strong belief is that narcissism should always trump perfectionism, which is of course very tricky indeed when perfectionism is one manifestation of narcissism and vice versa. I have certainly found these connected manifestations to be, um, ah, cough, present in my own life. (I cannot speak for Martha!) The outcome is that I get to beat myself up, no matter what. Not Good–but not uncommon, especially in education, where one’s vulnerabilities are magnified in almost every genuine teaching and learning encounter. At any rate, in self-defense if nothing else, I say, “Let Narcissism win.” A blog a day keeps the paralysis away?

Perhaps blogging offers a space–a genre?–in which some thoughtfulness is expected or at least acceptable, but also in which everyone understands that the tradeoff involves more spontaneity and less deathless prose, more quick and hopefully pithy observations and less sustained argument. The idea for me, then, as a teacher and a writer, is that the blog is a bridge between chat and a fully polished essay, a bridge that might encourage me, and perhaps others, to keep crossing that bridge despite the N and P obsessions, and thus to become a better (more powerful, flexible, and evocative) language user.

I’d also want to insist that each genre has its own excellence, and that blogging as a genre has rewards that other writing genres do not.

Thanks for that blog, Martha.