Revisiting a Question to Myself

It's been a Long while since I last posted on this blog.
My lack of blogging doesn't mean I have stopped actively reflecting (during fieldwork placement, in life and about myself) to improve my OT lens. I've found that I've actually written a few unfinished posts throughout my placement and I just never got around to finishing my thoughts and posting them. I hope that I will find the time to do that later this weekend.

For now, I'd like to revisit the question that I had asked myself when I initially started this blog and add on other new ideas I have for the purposes of this virtual outlet of mine:
Why a Blog?

A place to think... That's what this blog should be for me.

• To record my thoughts.
• To encourage reflection.
• To see the maturity of my thoughts (hopefully!) as they become more like a professional Occupational Therapist.
• To encourage personal goal-setting (both as a future OT and as a person).
• To possibly promote discussion with readers.
• To act as a resource for not only myself (in terms of self-reminders and helpful)

Now, to identify the problems that I have had in keeping up with this blogging endeavour:

• TIME: Finding the time to Think is not really an issue. This comes quite naturally to me. During my placement, I often found myself thinking about the events of the day on the bus. I'm sure it's a natural thing to do when we are heading home for some rest after a day of work. For me, I found that I was reflecting on my days in placement in a "OT" way more and more. More than just evaluating on the positive/negative aspects of the day, I was thinking of how I could have thought more like an OT in my interactions with clients and how I could've approached certain situations differently to enable the client to take on the role of the Expert a bit more.
• My issue is finding the time to Blog and by that I mean, finding the time to Share my thoughts. And for this to happen, the next issue needs to be tackled.
• Since I had a few unfinished posts, this probably means that I have trouble Articulating my thoughts. This isn't exactly news to me. In fact, the main reason that journal writing intrigues me because I know that this is an area that I need to work on. (Seems like I was trying to do some OT on myself without knowing it!) Unfortunately, the multiple attempts I've made at journal writing have always resulted in failure. Yes, many of them have missing or incomplete entries and have since been left neglected which has obviously hindered my well thought out intervention on myself.  SO. If history repeats itself, this blog may well be another example of those journals. To be totally honest with myself, I will admit that I had thought that this blog was going to be a lost cause until last week in lab. This is something I will explain soon. (Probably in another post, since I want to keep this post about )

Now that I've realized that it's my trouble Articulating my thoughts that's ultimately slowing down my Blog. Writing is the process of organizing thoughts, but sometimes that can be arduous task! I've got to think of strategies to help myself become better at this and I've come upon a few ideas that I will try my best to use in my future posts:

• Letters to myself
• List writing
• Use of quotes, lyrics, music, books, aritcles, photos, videos and other resources to support my thoughts
• Dialogues, writing in the style of a conversation
• Picking one specific meaningful aspect of an event and focusing on just that (e.g. the who/what/how of the scenario. Rather than the entire story)
• a portrait of a person
• description of a feeling as a metaphor
• Answering a Question
• this one I think I'm already doing! =)

With all that being said (or better yet, posted!), I think I am now more motivated about maintaining this blog, knowing that I have identified ways to help myself follow through with my blogging. I will leave it at that and come back before the end of this weekend to post re: Lab and placement.

This blog will go on!!