Some of you may have heard of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project by Darren Rowse. I am doing this with the SITS blogging community and I was working on my first assignment today (while I had a completely different post planned for you) and I got a little carried away. In short, the first assignment, called "The Elevator Pitch" is an attempt to get you to define your blog. I always have great difficulty doing this in print, but I can talk to someone about it without a problem. When completely stumped, I came up with a ridiculous writing assignment for myself. I asked myself a question and then gave myself time to just free write on it. Here is my question and answer, for any of you who wonder what my motivation for this blog is.
Question:
Nicole, I don't have the Internet, but I hear you write a blog called "Searching for Sustenance" what is that and why do you do it?
Answer:
Searching for Sustenance is a blog that I created when I realized that I was eating without thinking. Once my eyes were opened to all of the things I was missing - all of the horrors - I, being a teacher at heart, wanted as many other people to know as possible. I began to tell my friends, my family, and even started slipping things into my high school math lessons to try to shine a light. However, it never seemed enough, it never felt legitimate. Those conversations were always distracted within some other context, and people found a way to forgive themselves, forgive me and take us all off the hook for all of the things we WEREN'T doing to make it better. I couldn't force the issue in those arenas. I needed to find another way.
I decided to create a blog. A blog where I knew, at least in the beginning, I could wax philosophic until the cows came home and believe, or in fact, know, that no one else would be reading but me. However, in the depths of my soul I hoped and wished that eventually I would find like-minded souls. People, who upon reading all these things I kept finding out, would decide this IS something we ALL need to be talking about. This IS something we ALL need to be THINKING about. Food is serious, eating is serious - we can love it and adore it, but do we APPRECIATE it?!
Searching for Sustenance has two roles - to learn and to teach. I write about the things that I learn in hopes that if I write something wrong, someone out there will find it and comment right away so that we all learn together. And in that way it teaches. I have been a teacher for 12 years, but I never enjoyed the whole idea of "I have all of the answers, here they are for you," that is simply impossible no matter what you are teaching, no matter how long you are doing it. My style is more about, " I enjoy learning about this. I have figured out a lot of different places and resources we can go to in order to learn together. Here is what my experience is telling me might be right in this situation. What do you think?" That's how I roll with this blog as well. I am learning about food, the food industry, ways to eat better and healthier, resources to tap into in order to accomplish that goal and I am gaining more experience with it as I go. I am NO expert, by any means, but I'll share what I know and what I am really curious about is: WHAT DO YOU THINK?
That's it. It helped. I wrote a new About This Blog page and a new About Nicole page. So... um... WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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