Have to start somewhere

Here we are three weeks away from returning to school, at least I the teacher am three weeks away from returning to school. The mid-summer slump is strange to me. For years I found myself far less productive than I intended and eager to return after a month of vacation. Now that I have kids, the summer are all the more precious and disappear all the more quickly. I appreciate my summers. I work hard during the school year, often working late into the night, working on weekends, and forcing myself to remember that my kids and husband need my attention as much as my students and studies (since I am also working on my Master's in English). But then summer, sweet summer. Suddenly time to devote to cleaning, organizing ignored rooms, playing with my kids, and yes, planning for the next school year. But those days quickly disappear. I was going to read a book a week. In five weeks I've read three, so I guess I'm only a little off. I was going to work on school work every week, and I still have summer reading assignments that I haven't touched. I truly believed that I could get our house spotless, yet it is anything but. Our main bathroom, now going on its 15th month of renovation, was going to be completed. My next project is working on the grout for the floor tile. We SHOULD be finished with it before I go back to school. Our living room walls were going to be stripped of wallpaper and repainted. That project has been put off so we can finish the bathroom. Our daughter was going to be fully potty trained by now, but I still struggle to understand why my intelligent, imaginative three-year-old refuses to always use the bathroom. At the end of each day I am left to wonder why these projects are not completed, and I find myself praying for more time. But that time is disappearing.

So what do I do? Start a blog. That's right. Instead of working on my many projects I decided to do something entirely for myself. After all, I teach writing, I'm working on my Master's in composition, shouldn't I do my own writing? How can I encourage my students to take risks with their own writing if I don't challenge myself. Here is my challenge: to write at least once a week, but hopefully more. I don't know what I'll write about, but I plan to write, and write, until I don't have anything to write about anymore. Not that I expect that to happen. I've always been more of a writer than a talker, so maybe this is what I need. This is my chance to give myself a little perspective, to get things out and let my voice be heard, even if no one actually reads this. Maybe I will feel a little less frazzled during the school year, and a little more focused. Or at least I can get it out when the pressure gets to be too much. Now I am off to spend some quality time with my kids and get them ready for bed. Maybe then I can complete some of that lesson planning I was talking about...

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