Am I Wasting My Time?

After an intensive lecture program last fall, this spring I have many days (white and new, like an unopened notebook) to fill up with whatever I want. Fantastic! This was something I really was looking for!

I start reading a book for the course on Qualitative research, and I enjoy it! But after an hour or something I think: Shouldn’t I be reading something else first? Then I read something else, but I still have a guilty conscience. Does the reading feel wrong because I enjoy it?! I’ll certainly have to do something with my conscience…

I am not sure if this is the way my students (on the teacher training program) feel when they are supposed to organize a few weeks of project work. I use to tell them: “If you feel like everything goes as it should, that you have enough time, are not stressed… - then something is definitively wrong!” Shouldn’t I also be more stressed? May be this is why I am a bit uneasy about my own use of time…?

And then, there is this blog writing… Is it of any benefit to my project, or is it just wasting of time? At least, I practice writing… But it will have to be more than that if anyone out there would be interested in reading my blogs! “In your writing, you must do some thing – try to gauge and reach and hold the attention of an audience you will never see”, says Harry F. Wolcott in his fantastic book Writing Up Qualitative Research.
“OK – I’ll try! But sorry, not today! Today I should probably be doing something else…