Inspired to Write

I’ve started to fret about writing a blog entry.  A lot has happened recently and I feel like I should be documenting it. I often have several posts ‘in progress’ – not all will be published but my goal is a minimum of one per week. It has been less than a week since my last entry but currently I have absolutely no posts ideas.  Hence the concern.

My biggest problem is the lack of photos.  So many of the observations I make about the children at play are difficult to explain without picture.  You know the phrase, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’.  Well, in my case probably far more than a thousand because I’m a visual person and the words are harder for me – almost impossible until they are on paper where I can see them.

So, why don’t I have any pictures to share?  Several reasons really – four of them are toddlers. Four toddlers in care means I’m already short at least a couple of hands even without the camera to hold.  Then there are their reactions when I do pick up the camera.  Two of them stop what they are doing and ‘pose’.  The other two run to my side of the camera to watch ‘TV’.  Even when I try to hide the camera from their view they recognize the beep it makes when I turn it on.  Sigh.

It is usually easier to take pictures of the children when we are outside because they are more deeply engaged in their activities and don’t notice the camera as much.  Unfortunately, my camera hates the cold and this has been a particularly harsh winter. Even on days like Monday, which was a balmy -14C when we were outside, my camera would probably refuse to take more than one or two photos before becoming completely useless.

Monday was an inservice day too so it was super busy and exciting when we were outside.  The older children were thrilled to be able to spend much of the morning outside instead of in an indoor classroom.  The little ones were overjoyed to have their mentors here for the whole day.  There were plenty of photo opportunities but sadly, no camera.

So, instead of looking through photos for inspiration I now look through my notes from last Saturday when I attended the M-Blog conference.  It was an amazing event – the pace was so much faster than what I am used to at Nature Summit.  Talk about information overload!  I’m still trying to process much of it.

Here are a few (not all) of my favourite quotes from the presentations;

Ian McCausland said;

• Write about something old, something new, something borrowed or something blue.
• Use at least two mediums – text/pictures/video

Maybe these quotes count as something borrowed. As for a picture, since I was too busy to take any pictures at M-Blog, here is one I took after I got home and checked out the items from the goodie bag;

Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, said;

• If no one hates what you write, no one will love it either.
• Pretend you’re good at it and one day you will be able to scratch off the pretend.

Thank you Jenny, without your tweet about coming to Winnipeg I never would have heard about this conference.  You are amazing.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I learned so much from all the presenters at M-Blog. I’m still feeling a little overwhelmed but I hope to put at least some of this new information into practice soon.

To start, I think I’ll head on over to my Pinterest page and follow the advice from Cynthia Sanchez and ‘organize my boards in order of importance’.  I’ll probably end up killing a huge chunk of time there but maybe I’ll find something inspirational to write about too.