Wakeup Call: Resisting Irrelevance

I slept today until nearly six o’clock.

Now this would not be news most places– that someone pushing 70 would get 9 hours sleep. But on Goose Creek, this is, if you’ll pardon the mixed message–a personal wakeup call.

Since March of 2002, even when it was not the wife’s early work hours that rousted me from bed, my own internal alarms got me up absolutely not later than 4:30–not ever, weekends and holidays included.

What prompted me out of bed was the jolt of memory of a thing, an idea, a concept discovered the night before for which there had not been time to write or to fully process. It might be the pull of an incomplete conversation begun earlier in the week, more often than not, with a “blog friend” who had left a comment or emailed or maybe Skype called from Canada. I had to grab that thread and get back into the stream of conversation.

All those years, as soon as my mind peeped out from under the covers there was a pleasant urgency to be at it–a new day of exploration, visual or mental or creative in some way–with the ultimate intent to share where I was, what I had seen, what I was wondering or thinking or hoping or fearing or felt I had come in some way to know better.

And it was this last bit–this notion of not being alone after various and mostly minor “ah ha” moments. It was this that rose up as the chief catalyst to getting out of a warm bed in a cold dark room to boot up my brain and my blog at the same time.

More often than not, the effort was rewarding if not rewarded. And the cycle of gathering, processing, synthesizing and sharing was my day–has been my day–start to finish. Until lately.

This morning’s total lack of any prompt whatsoever until 2 hours past my usual hour of “pleasant urgency” has me thinking. And I know I should just do this rumination within the confines of my own gray matter, but no, old habits don’t die so easily.  I’m letting my fingers have a say.

Feeling the loss of momentum, the absence of purpose, the empty seats at the table, is there still any relevance to what I have learned and come to know? Is there a point to Fred’s pointless sharing?

And, not by total coincidence, as all this happens I wander in my uncharted reading upon another’s writing  about just this:  the role and relevance for such a learner-teacher as myself.

This morning, following the threads connected to sketchnotes (from yesterday’s pointless post) comes this from Edutopia addressed to adult learners and potential teachers:

Don’t assume that people already have the information.

It’s an easy mistake to believe that everyone already knows something that you have learned. This is rarely the case. Excellent adult learners who think about retaining, reflecting, and redistributing are almost always ahead of the learning curve. Your efforts to share will enrich the learning ecosystem. You’ll remove friction from the system and support the mingling of ideas necessary for change. The smallest chunk of information can spark a transformation. The slightest nudge can be the catalyst for change.

Can one be a catalyst for change when he finds no reason to get out of bed of a morning? I wonder.