When it goes missing

I’ve worked my way into a particular routine on Friday mornings. After my Friday blog post This Week in Ontario Edublogs goes live and Jaimie has had his first walk of the day, I update my record of all the blog posts and bloggers that I’ve featured for the current week. It’s done in a Google Spreadsheet just in case I ever wanted to share it with anyone. Not that I do that regularly but it’s for me to help keep track of spreading the love around.

I also have the Chey and Pav radio show “The Drive” on in the background as a source of great music and discussion. And, then I have Twitter open in my external monitor and I keep an eye on things as they roll by.

Except they weren’t.

I did what every computer user does. I reload. Still not working.

I went deep into the tricks of expert computer users and try it again this time clicking harder. Still not working.

So, I checked my favourite down checker – istheservicedown.com and indeed people were reporting all kinds of issues. There’s something comforting about knowing that it isn’t just me.

Now, I very seldom sit down here and just have one thing ongoing. At present, I have that spreadsheet open, the WordPress editor, a tab to play content from voicEd Radio, and a chat open on my phone which is piped into my computer. I’ve explained to my wife that my life would be so much easier if I had a few more monitors so that I’m not forever alt-tabbing. “Suck it up, buttercup” seems to be the popular response. So, I try to resume my state of harmony and balance and found it difficult.

It felt really strange when Twitter went down. I think like all people I’ve got a working routine. If one of those elements of the routine have a problem, it throws me for a loop. Not a serious loop, mind you, but enough to keep me more focused on writing this post. Maybe I’ll have less proofreading and revising to do as a result.

The clock on the wall just ticked over to 10:15 and Twitter appears to be back online. A flurry of messages just went be. Hang on a sec, I have to catch up.

OK, I’m back.

Bad case of FOMO here.

In education, I think we all recognize the importance of routine. I can’t help but think that this was reinforced for me this morning. I do have a set routine for doing whatever it is that I happen to be doing. I always have. My parents enforced it early when I went to school that there needed to be a regularly scheduled time to do homework. It sticks with me today.

When the routine gets interrupted, so does my flow.

This wasn’t the first time and the Twitter gap had me reminiscing. At my old school, we had the “blue memo” that was in our mailboxes on Friday afternoons. It was the bible for how the next week would roll out and an important part was the things that would ruin our routine – holding homerooms, assemblies, early dismissal, students out of class for sports or other things. I’m smiling inside when I’m thinking about this and the complaints at the next staff meeting when an unexpected change to the days ruined everyone’s plans. That was one thing that cured me of ever wanting to be a principal.

My current challenge seems so trivial by comparison. But now that I’ve written this post, I can get back to what I want to do. The dew should be gone now so grass cutting is in the future.