Redoing the Unfamiliar Familiar

Somewhere out there a man in Iceland will smile. 

I’ve never met, known, or contacted him, but from a Mastodon repost by Joe Murphy, Baldour wrote delightfully about a precious (in terms of value) habit that made me smile:

Somewhere this blog may light up an RSS reader in Iceland or maybe Poland or St Louis. I will never know. And that is the right write space, to be writing here, not for comments (but hallo Tom) or reposts or anything but just for my own self fulfillment.

Welcome to the blog navel gazing, the blog’s oldest topic profession, blogging about blogging or blogging about non blogging. If you just write on LinkedIn, shrug, I guess it can work as much as if it was scribbling in a paper journal.

The unfamiliar is where I sit now, a seat that I used to seek, maybe crave, wedged into the vinyl cushion of 14F right shoulder pressed to a plastic wall, a portal view to cloud tops under a single hued sky.

Yep, on a plane. Writing offline in a Google doc.

This was 6, 8, 10 years ago the familiar. I got caught up in the thrill of travel, the airport takes, that I was off doing this as my work. Whether its pandemic echoes or just the extra tree rings in my trunk, it’s now, thankfully unfamiliar. Somewhat unsettling.

I will just say it and leave a guessed explanation to simmer up. I am overly fortunate to be up in these clouds, and there will be fortuitous things that come from this, but it just does not feel like it did once. I see colleagues who still revel in it, the running through airports and selfies in the cabin; I don’t fault them at all, but I can’t really tap into that. It’s unfamiliar.

Not that any kind of *phobia has crept in, I just feel more centered at home where it used to be the opposite. I crave my Ursa time with Cori, our walks to see the minute changes in our property as a result of our efforts to turn our acreage into a more natural habitat.

Into the time / space distortion machine I go. With camera, with blog, with mind.

I’ve blathered on far too long, without marqueeing my destination. Maybe I will spare you, if there is a you, it’s just me here now at the keyboard. There might be a parallel here to that disembodied sensation of presenting in an online video session. You can only imagine an audience, a reader, but you get no or only trace sense back that anyone is there. Or if they are there, they are not far away in a different window.

Did you see how I went off track? That’s my style no AI generator can generate.

Yet.

So… right now I am headed from home pin in Saskatchewan to Vancouver but that’s not the destination. I then reverse in a long jump to London and then… to Cork, Ireland!!!

WTF is with me? I should relish this trip! Or mustard it, I actually do not relish relish. 

I missed getting to see Ireland in 2018 after OER18 because of a problem that came up with my vision after the conference in Bristol.

Yes I will be at OER24 next week, the first in person one I have been at since 2018 (Bristol) and 2014 before that (Newcastle). I remember the locations well.

I would not typically travel just for a conference (nothing against OERXX they are amongst my better experiences). No, my OEGlobal colleagues decided our globally distributed team could use a few days of in person meetings to get more focused planning and ideating than our online meetings. There is also a gathering of our Board members too. So it’s all strategic.

It will be of course most fulfilling to reconnect with the UK+ community and colleagues here; I do have to remember from my October trip to Edmonton for our conference, that for all my belief that we can and do have meaningful experiences online, there is a warmer sense being in a real room. 

I’ve not felt much that I have to present say to a conference audience, I am craving more being in the audience. But note I am doing something unusual in a 5 minute slot, that I am sure will leave my work colleagues perplexed.

Some of the lethargy too is knowing my brain that plans and criticizes said plans may very well likely over estimate what the body that carried it around can still withstand.

The physical energy lately has waned some and there have been a few unblogged health “things” — not wanting to label issues. But seeing the changes and loss too in my peer circle, that constant undertone of feeling my finiteness, even though not anywhere near it, is imaginable.

Oh what an uplifting post! I need to insert a cute animal picture or a happy cup of coffee one.

And then I can maybe just leave this nattering out of the blog publish screen, but— I’ve gone this far, I believe more in just sending it out to the echo less space, maybe the ripples can reach a guy in Iceland. And if not, no matter.

The ripples go out and sometimes if you are lucky they come back, but that’s not the reason for generating them.

Hey Baldour!