I’ve been told a professional writer should keep his politics and religion out of the public sphere. But for as often as I’ve heard this, it’s never settled right with me.
Why not? I’ve considered this a long time, and it’s time I explain why.
Continue readingLately I’ve been writing a lot of fiction. Since the start of the year, I’ve written at least six new stories (honestly, I haven’t counted, but I know I’ve written at least one a month) and I’ve sent them all out to market. What I haven’t written is a single blog post.
This blog has been a part of my life (albeit to varying degrees) for the past thirteen years. In that time, it’s been everything from a place to share my fiction and poetry to a personal blog talking about everything from religion and politics to mental health and queer culture. It’s evolved as I have, usually spiking in content between semesters while I was in college and then plummeting in content once I started working full time.
In some ways, my life is more uniform now, so I don’t feel as though there’s very much to write about personally. And the things I would write about often involve experiences teaching, which by nature involves talking about students, and while I might occasionally post snippets of a conversation that were funny on Facebook, I try not to talk publicly about students for both professional and privacy reasons.
I could talk about writing–but why talk about writing when I could just write?
This post, so far, feels like filler. It’s me thinking aloud. But isn’t all of my blog just me thinking aloud? So maybe it still fits. Part of me wishes I could embed a poll to get a sense of what my audience wants to read…which considering you followed this blog, is probably more of what I’ve written for years.
But then I grind against the taboos of being a professional author: don’t talk about religion or politics. But I’m a religious person, and everything is inherently political in today’s world.
So what’s a writer to do?
I could go back to publishing more fiction and poetry, but (at least regarding fiction) I think I’ve finally grown to a skill level that I’m capable of getting published, so I feel compelled to send stories to market rather than posting them on my blog. Is that selling out to the capitalist overlords of society? Nah, I don’t think so. It’s just engaging in the business of writing, rather than the hobby of it, and that’s critical to achieving my aspirations.
So again, what’s a writer to do?
Honestly, I don’t know. But I haven’t forgotten about this blog; I just don’t know what it’s supposed to be anymore. If you have any suggestions, please share them below.
In the meantime, do something you love. For me, that’s picking up a book or writing a story. Yesterday, in fact, I read a bit of four different books–I read like that. It’s weird, I know. But it’s how my brain works, so I just embrace it. What’s something you love to do?
Every year I start by blogging about my goals or theme for the year. For 2022, that theme was Rebuilding: trying to find myself again after a global pandemic, setting my sights on new long-term goals to move from just surviving toward truly thriving.
I came a long way: I invested in my writing through various workshops and conferences, and I wrote more than I have in years–I also submitted more stories for publication than ever before. Not only did I earn an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest, but I also had my first short story published. (You can check it out here.) I’ve also been accepted to a teaching fellowship through Teach for America that is helping me push my teaching skills to the next level, and I’m excited to start applying everything I’ve learned in my classroom.
So what’s next? What does 2023 hold for me?
Continue readingIt’s been about two weeks since I’ve published a post. I’ve written a couple, part of an extended metaphorical discussion of mental illness that I’ve been adding onto for maybe two months but have yet to feel like it’s “complete” enough for publishing.
Probably that doesn’t matter. I don’t need five or six or maybe seven posts on backlog, although that might not be a bad thing since school starts again in two weeks.
The truth is, I want to write meaningfully. Cheap writing isn’t my style. (Not that cheap writing doesn’t have value; it’s just not the right fit for me.) But this often means I’m struggling to find inspiration. Which is often shorthand for “my depression is making me so lethargic and lackluster that I’m not sure I could write something even if I tried” or “my anxiety is keeping me so strung up that I can’t stay still long enough to even think about writing.”
I’m a work in progress. The world is a work in progress.
So we progress.
Continue readingToday we’re learning distribution. I’ve just done a few whole-class examples and now I’ve put some practice exercises on the board.
As my students begin copying them into their notebooks (so they can show their work), I begin circulating the classroom.
My intent is clear: identify mistakes and correct them. This is important, both artificially because it’s on state exams and implicitly because the relationship between multiplication and addition that is distribution has profound impacts on number systems that underlie a plethora of physical phenomena and theoretical constructs alike.
The first few students I check in with are plowing ahead, all the way to the second question already. Then I get to one of my struggling learners. Let’s call him Joe.
Continue readingO Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
T. S. Eliot
In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign. Secondly, a just cause. Thirdly, a rightful intention.
Thomas Aquinas
Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Helen Keller
So I begin.
Continue readingOr: a response to “30 Behaviors That Will Make You Unstoppable” by Benjamin Hardy.
When I spoke to my therapist in early April, he suggested reading Hardy’s article to help me get some ideas for “what works,” you know, that post I procrastinated writing until a few days ago.
Likewise, even though I opened Hardy’s article while I was still on the phone with my therapist, and I kept it open for the next two weeks, I didn’t actually sit down to read it until two days before my next appointment–what happens, I thought, if he asks about it? (Spoiler: he didn’t.)
As I read through these 30 things that promise to make me unstoppable, I felt a plethora of feelings: some of it reminded me of what I read in The Four Desires; some of it sounded too prescriptive, like the “shoulds” that instill shame which Brene Brown warns us against; and some it made me wish for something more, like inspiration and imagination.
But part of me also realized, as I read Hardy, that it’s been a long time since I actually evaluated the big PVGs in my life: my priorities, my values, my goals.
I figured this all out, once, so I’d figured it would end there. But it never does.
Continue readingI wanted an epiphany in 2019. I wanted to have my eyes opened through the pursuit of Story. Except I don’t feel it ever happened. Maybe if I had read all the books I’d wanted, I would have reached this point… or perhaps I was counting too much on vicarious living to have my own life awakened. There is a time for reflection, for looking back, and that introspection is especially important for self-discovery–but if we spend too much time looking behind us, we’ll miss what’s in front of us–or worse, walk into unseen pitfalls.
So now is the time to set aside the unfulfilled goals of the last year and forge forward, to open my own eyes and look toward the perfection vision of new year.
Guess it’s fitting next year is 2020, isn’t it?
Continue readingSo. It’s the end of December. The end of the year. The time I’m obligated to write about my final progress on my annual goals. It’s always bittersweet. Bitter because I so rarely do it all, and sweet because the end of the year is a symbolic severing of the threads I wove last year and the promise of freedom (to let myself down in a different way).
It’s also bittersweet in another way, a brighter way: I’ve actually gone far further than at first I’d wished to, but the shortcomings I’ve encountered leave me questioning my own values–or rather, the sincerity of my commitment to these values.
It’s a long story. Or would you be more likely to keep reading if it’s a short story?
Continue readingAmerica is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.
Alexis de Tocqueville
It’s hard to say precisely the moment when America ceased being good. Some might even say she never was good–at least not wholly. Our country was built upon interracial warfare and slavery–against American natives, Africans, even the white poor.
To say any of that was ever good is shortsighted and misleading.
And yet, one can’t help but argue that America has always been great: a bastion of freedom, a new exploration of democracy on a scale that hadn’t been seen before, a righteous (but not self-righteous) country whose faith lay not in ethereal deities or divine mandates but upon the collective goodness of the people themselves. Yes, America hasn’t always met these ideals (if ever she has), but striving toward ideals is itself a a constant struggle and a constant celebration of the small victories along the way.
Yet now, amid political corruption and mass shootings, what victories remain?
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The Writingwolf: Words and Wonders 