Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two Babies

Tags

writing

 

My first grandchild came in March. His parents wanted some privacy, and I respect that, so I didn’t tell my online audience. I am now a grandmother. I posted my last blog post shortly after he was born, and since then much of my free time has been consumed with this baby; flying to see him, planning for him to come see me, talking to him on Facetime, gazing into his beautiful little face, thinking about what he looks and acts like when I’m not with him, etc. I never would have believed the depth of feeling I have for this wonderful creation. When I’m not thinking about him or how I can get to see him, I’ve been occupied with my other baby.

On October 11, 2016, I gave birth to the words, “The End.”  I was sitting in a coffee shop, and the battery on my computer was about to die. Pressing a stranger into service, I said, “I just finished a book. Would you mind taking my picture?”  I sat there looking at the last sentence with this stupid grin on my face until the machine shut itself off.  After a lifetime of desire, and two years and ten months of groping around in the dark trying to form a coherent manuscript, I had reached a milestone in the inception of this idea. I never would have believed the depth of feeling I had for this wonderful creature.

It’s miraculous, isn’t it, how humans have the capacity to change and grow even as we age? The boy baby has helped me to see myself as a mother. Being a witness to new motherhood through my child’s eyes helped me to give myself credit for all the things I did when I was a mother.  For the first time in my life, I can say, “I was a good mother,” and mean it, I can acknowledge it as a lockstone of my identity.  I wasn’t perfect, but I did some things right, and for that I can take a measure of pride.

I’ve also learned a lot from the other baby. Unlike my grandbaby, who came into this world perfectly formed, my book baby is a steaming pile of hot goo. Right now, it’s like a hormonal teenager peering into a fun house mirror. The emotions are sticking out in places where they should be muted, and muted in places where they should stick out. The main character consumes the whole stage, with barely any room for all the other characters that inhabit the world.

Sometimes I ask her, my character, “What comes next?” and she picks at her zits and shrugs her shoulders, mumbles,“IDK.” The book still needs to grow and develop, so I’m not finished. I thought that if I had some chapters, a beginning, a middle and an end, that I’d be finished,and of course that notion was fantasy. However, I have learned something very important in the last two years and ten months, as a part of this process of fulfilling a dream/learning what it takes/typing the words, “The End.”

I’m not the pauser anymore. When I started this blog, I wanted to see who I really was. I wanted to explore social media, which I’d never had time to do before, and I did that. I wanted to write, I wanted that above all. And that’s what I did,even though I was scared, even though I didn’t know if writing would fulfill me. I worried about whether or not I was a good enough writer, as if being good at something was the only qualification for devoting yourself to it.

Now, for the first time in my life, I can say the sentence, “I am a writer.”  And I can mean it. Writing is a bone-deep part of who I am.  Words are the film upon which I lay my history, the filter through which I navigate, and the starch that strengthens my resolve. The words might stink, they might be rotten, they might not make sense to anyone else, but I need them. I need the broken words most of all, the adolescent words that push me to make them rounder, more resonant versions of their former selves. That’s where the fulfillment originates, from the fragile words.

I’ll leave thepauser.wordpress.com up for now, but I probably won’t put up any more posts. A new site is on the horizon, a site that squares with my current latitude. I’ll keep you all informed about where and when to expect that move.

In the meantime, what can I say to all of you who have followed me here at thepauser? The words, “Thank you,” seem completely inadequate to describe the rich interactions, comfort, and encouragement I derived from my conversations with you.When I landed on the shores of blogdom, I was weak and used up and sugarless.You nurtured me through, and I never would have believed the depth of feeling I could develop for a bunch of strangers floating in media-space. I love you all. And I mean it, right up to the top of my hat.

But now,it’s time to press play.

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pauseRReport: Year One

Tags

blogging, creative writing, Education, social media, writing

At home, examining the light.  A description that fits for the last year.

The Pauser marked its one year anniversary just a few days ago, and I feel like celebrating!  Here are the big lessons I’ve learned this year:

• Digital, schmidgital! People make social media interesting.  I have enjoyed the personal connections I’ve made more than any other aspect of blogging.  While my virtual relationships are not the same as those real-world, on-the-ground ones, the generosity, kindness, and encouragement you all have shown me has helped me grow, and to heal hurts that I hadn’t even been aware of.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• Starting a blog was not that hard. I still don’t have the “bells and whistles,” skills my children have, but I can drive the boat.  Blogging is a testament to life being doable.  In year two, it’s time to learn at least one bell/whistle.
• Blogging is a measuring tool. When I look back at some of my early writing, I can envision ways to make the writing more effective than it was then.  I also look back at some of the writing I did about my husband’s journey with prostate cancer and I think about the way the writing helped me to achieve some emotional closure.  Because I flung my words out into the universe, they became a kind of commitment to my soul, something I had to go back to when the downs came calling.  Those words, once spooled out, became a permanent record of all I have felt, all I have achieved, all I have hoped.
• I’ve been fairly consistent with my posting, but I have learned that sometimes I just can’t keep up.  I’ve also learned not to worry about it.  The earth won’t stop spinning on its axis if I go a couple of weeks without a post.

Year One STATISTICS

Blog Posts: 86

Blog Views: 3027

Total Comments: 293 (Half of these are mine, because I always reply to comments. I’m Southern.)

Followers: 117

Top Three Posts:

# 3  Daily Discomfort: Frozen

# 2   Daily Discomfort: Love and Time

# 1  Daily Discomfort: Getting A Pedicure

The post with the most comments:

 DD: Mozart and the Beautiful Tears

Up Next:

My editorial calendar for the year: It will probably change, but at least I’ve got a plan.

For year 2, I’ve changed the editorial calendar a bit.

Each week I’ll write a feature article based on a monthly theme.  I’ll also write once a week from a prompt I generate in a new way each month.  Each month, I’ll write an article for the paus(ed) category based on how to use that prompt generation in the classroom.

In September, I’m writing about the New Guard.  You know, my kids and their kids.  I have just learned from NPR that I am of the Old Guard.  I (and apparently many of you) am classified as the Old Guard because I am are still using Twitter.

I’ll also write from a series of prompts generated by my Personal Universal Desk.  It’s a cool tool.  I’ll write about how it works so you can use it too if you want. I’ll also write about how to use the PUD(makes me feel good just to put it into writing) in your classroom.

pauseRReport: June 2015

Tags

blogging, Blogs I like, writing, Writing Process, writing skills

Summer Talk: A Sneak Peek

I didn’t think I’d be able to write this week, but the coastal sun has driven us indoors for a few hours and I find myself with an opportunity to write. Yay!

June has been a great month here on thepauser. Again, the site has seen slow, steady growth, and I’ve noticed that posts are getting more comments, especially on this month’s most popular posts, The Red Bowl, and Larger than Myself?: A Riff on Inspiration. Overall, I feel much more comfortable in the blogesphere than I did when I started ten months ago.

Reflections:

• My writing feels like it’s undergoing a sea change. For the first few months, it was a struggle to meet my internal deadlines, and there wasn’t much revision in the mix. I wrote, edited (checked everything for spelling and grammar mistakes) and posted. I’m not sure why, but now I feel comfortable holding off on a post for a couple of days after writing.  Sometimes I go all James Joyce on my first draft, knowing that I’m coming back to it. I’ve been able to pluck some gems out of that loose way of drafting.  It feels like I’m maturing as a writer.
• Ten months ago, I thought this blog would be focused on my exploration of social media, but that really hasn’t been the case. Since I promised myself this blog would be a place to explore discomfort, I haven’t been pushing the boundaries enough. I need to return to some of the topics I’ve let drop. I fully intended to learn some html, and what pingback and trackback mean.
• I’d also like to explore how social media has changed the way we respond to and think about important world events. I know that others have used their blogs as vehicles for voicing their opinions on society’s concerns, but I don’t know how I feel about using this blog as a platform. I need to reflect on it.
• I’ve started to think about SEO this month.  Here’s why. I wrote a post months ago called Getting a Pedicure.  I don’t think it’s particularly good or even characteristic of the writing I’ve done, but every single week somebody reads this post.  The only thing I can think of is that the word pedicure is in the title and people see it in the search engine when they look for a place to get a pedicure.

Blogs I’ve enjoyed in the month of June:

Aunt Beulah: Parading Season

Bones Don’t Lie: Let’s Talk About Death (This chart is something a teacher could use to discuss the interrelationships between science and popular culture)

The Carter Library: Trying On Swimsuits with Miss Kentucky

In Other’s Words: Tiny Little Girl

The World Is A Book: 5 Photos, 5 Stories, Bill the Photographer (Amy is an amazing photographer, and this story is not to be missed)

Next Month:

In July, look for Summer Talk, a series of posts dedicated to the days of laze.  I’ll write about that metallic cup you used to drink iced tea and cherry kool-aid out of.  And the taxi ride you took with that interesting driver when you were on vacation, and the conversation you overheard while watching the boys of summer chase fly balls all over the outfield.  And the cool sensation of sticking your hot feet into water.

Larger than Myself? : A Riff on Inspiration

Tags

D-Day, Inspiration, Normandy, World War II, writing

This month, I’m writing posts that are inspired by other blog posts that got me thinking.  In My Dirty Little Secret about Inspiration, Robert Bruce over at 101 Books asked,“How do you guys find inspiration to write or to do something that’s an integral part of your life?”  So here is my response to the post that inspired me to write about inspiration.

From Photo Morgue, the Beach at Normandy

I’ve lost the book.  I scrabbled around on my hands and knees, shuffling back and forth between all four of my bookshelves, and it’s not there.  I searched on Amazon to recover the exact name and author, but the book, like parts of my life, is mist.

The book was about the Allied landing on Normandy Beach at D-Day.  I bought it at the half-price book store because I noticed that my sixth grade readers enjoyed non-fiction.  Sitting in my reading chair, I scanned to make sure the content was appropriate for my eleven and twelve year old students.   Drawn in, I stood on the beach, watching the action roll out in front of me. The author of this little non-fiction book for children did something for me that Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks couldn’t.  He made this day come alive.

He spoke about how ill-prepared the troops were for the landing at Normandy.  The men who survived the initial bombardment had scattered to the winds. Young men, separated from their units, pinned down by enemy fire, left with no ranking officer to lead them. In language a five year old could understand, the author conveyed what it is to feel desperate. Then, the author lit a match in me.

He told about one young soldier in such a situation, who decided to do something. In my mind’s eye, as I read about the cliff he climbed with a small squadron of men at his back, I could picture men all over the beach, just allowing themselves to do.   In a hundred keystrokes, a stranger handed me a paradigm for the word inspiration that I can understand.

Ask me about what something means, and I will circle back to the written word.  In preparation for this post, I read Anne Lamott’s Shitty First Drafts from Bird By Bird, Natalie Goldberg’s first thoughts from Writing Down the Bones, and Peter Elbow’s thoughts on the freewrite from Writing without Teachers.  The experts will all tell you to just sit down and write, that inspiration comes from denuding your soul, stripping back to the primal and letting your darkest bits hang out on the paper.  Elbow says this is the way to find your voice, that voice is “the force that will make a reader listen to you.” Goldberg likens the timed freewrite to the feel of meditating through all of our worst emotions.  She says if you sit through it, “You learn not to be tossed away no matter how great the thought or emotion.”  In this state, “You actually become larger than yourself.”

So, I’m at the computer almost every day, doing.  I’m writing a novel.  I don’t talk about it much here on thepauser because it’s a fingernail across a chalkboard.  The process is so raw and disquieting that I leave the keyboard full of nervous energy, wanting to go back, not wanting to, because these words, the feeling of placing them on the paper, is so acute.  The entire time I’m writing, thoughts detonate.  One says, “Didn’t you see Super Soul Sunday last week?  The one where they interviewed Sue Monk Kidd?  She started writing a novel at thirty, and that was old.  You are fifty-five.  Want me to count that out for you?  One, Two, Three….” Another: “You are aware, are you not, that the kitchen floor needs to be mopped?”  And Mike Myers somewhere in the background, dressed like the Scottish character from the Austin Powers movie, declares my words are, all of them, crap.

Sitting, not erasing, taking the seed of an idea and blowing on it to tease out more flame, does not feel like being larger than myself.  It feels like being as small as myself, as petty, as guilty, as lazy, as conflicted, and as selfish.  It feels, all the time, like a slog. But it’s a slog to which I’m committed.  I hear the artillery and keep walking past the war-wounded, limbless ideas that have sputtered through my brain with a firefly’s swiftness, dying without my breath to fuel them.  In every thousand words I see a few worth keeping.  Those few words are the ones that feed me.

I still don’t call myself a writer.  I just tell people that I’m writing…a blog, a book.  The writing, which starts with a spark (some would call this inspiration, but I think they are just ideas), uses the fingers, the left to right, left to right, motion of the words flowing across the page.  Writing, like every worthy pursuit, is work.

I’ve told the story of the book, the young men on that beach acting, many times.  If I ever saw the beginning of a spark in the eye of my listener, I went to the shelf and pulled the book off, pressing it to the listener’s hand, telling them to read for themselves. I guess someone finally accepted those hundred keystrokes as their own.

This is where inspiration comes from, not just for writers, for humans.  It’s the hard work we press into one another’s hands.  It’s the enthusiasm we share, and the actions that follow as we do.

pauseRReport, May 2015: One Hundred and Six

Tags

bloggers, blogging, pauserreport, writing

Great news!  I now have 106 followers.  In last month’s pauseRReport, I said I’d be happy if I had 100 by the end of August.  I’m so grateful for your support and encouragement.  I said in one of my posts this month that the time and space to write has been the greatest gift I’ve ever been given, and you all have really made that possible.  Every time I think about giving up, one of you “likes” a post, or comments on it in such a way that makes me keep trying.

My reflections for the month of May:

• I’ve been working on my photography, because I know my posts need to have visual interest. I had a lot of fun playing with the aperture and shutter speeds on my Samsung when we visited Oakland for my son-in-law’s graduation.  I’ll be sharing more of those pictures with you soon.  A photography class is probably also in my near future.
• As much as I want to be a better planner, to find focus in my work (as all the blogging experts advise), it feels better to relax and let it happen. Here’s a picture of my editorial calendar.  It’s simple, but adequate for now.

My favorite blog posts in May:

• 2 Helpful Guys: 4 Productivity Principles Everyone Should Know
• Charlotte Hoather: Sir John in Love – In Pictures
• In Other’s Words: Songs from the Valley
• Life Lessons, a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown: Clouded
• Windmills of the Mind: On Public Shaming, call-out culture, and Humiliation as a sport

Coming In June

In June, I’ll write about inspiration, continuing the series I started last week based on other blogs that have inspired me.

I also have a goal to revamp my “About,” page.  Thepauser is not really about what I thought it was about when I wrote my about page the first time.

I hope all of you are in a safe, dry spot with people who treat you right.

j

The Leap

Tags

blogging, Geronimo, Leap, Life-Changes, writing, Writing life

For the next few weeks I’m writing some posts inspired by the wonderful blog posts I’ve read in the last six weeks. About a year ago, I acted against type and made a huge change.  I’ve been reflecting on this decision a great deal after reading Geronimo: On Falling with Style from Lily at Such Small Hands.

For empty lakes, storms…

I quit my full time job.  Now I work part time at an interesting, fulfilling job and the rest of the time I devote to writing.  I work on my blog, and I’m also writing a novel.   I know that quitting your job to do other things may not sound like much of a leap, but it felt like a nighttime dive into Medina Lake, in which the depth ranged from iffy to barely adequate.  I was ninety percent sure I’d break my blooming neck.

I took a personality test once, and I got an “A.” When I looked at my results, I pumped a mental fist in the air.  I don’t like to get “B’s.”  That’s who I am.  My velocity has always been fifth gear. Until I made the leap, I was a stereotypical overachiever.  I made lists, and lists of lists.  I’d rather have a nasty zit than turn up late.  I bashed my way through parenthood, marriage, teaching, graduate school, and community responsibilities with the headlong purpose of one of those bulls in Pamplona.  I wasn’t always sure of my direction, but I headed somewhere, hard.

In the midst of charging toward each destination, I was already contemplating my next pilgrimage. I lived, not in the moment, but in the next moment.  And the moment after that.  For most of my life, I had the impression that being a good person meant working very hard and taking on large amounts of responsibility.  For me, restful equaled stressful, because good people are not supposed to enjoy relaxing.

This is the type of faulty thinking that starts in the tangled webs of childhood and can’t be laid on anyone else’s door but your own.  What I’m saying is don’t blame my mother, because we all generate our own excrement.

I can’t say exactly when the Gospel of the Churning Gut started to lose its appeal.  However, the need for change really became clear when Super Husband was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer.  Cancer was the bull that gored me.  After a lifetime of making my own life hard, something truly nasty had charged through the alley.  My natural ferocity in dealing with life events, I knew, would afford no advantage.  I started to realize that other aspects of my life were equally out of my control.  I worked long hours, and spent a good part of my day with angry people. Those people were often angry with me.  I had trouble sleeping, and found myself sitting in my office with the lights off at least once a week, praying no one would see I was in there, begging for the shit storm to pass me by for just fifteen minutes.

I’d toyed with the idea of changing jobs before, but now I thought about stopping.  In January of 2014, I mentioned my idea to SH.  “I’ve been thinking about quitting my job.  I could work part time for a year, or not work at all.”  He surprised me by saying it was about time, and he’d be perfectly happy if I quit.  The rest of my family was equally supportive. I turned my resignation in two weeks later, effective the end of the school year.

My family was honest, I’m sure, but I don’t know if they understand how grateful I was for their sensitivity. If one of them had said anything to indicate that I was imagining the pressure at work, or dramatizing it, or that my income was critical to the family’s well-being, I don’t know if I would have been strong enough to quit.  I’d worked hard to get that job. I made good money.  People looked to me to get critical, important work done.  My ego was tied up in being a faithful employee.

Leaving after seventeen years was an admission that I had failed, that I could no longer rise above my current circumstances.  The wrenches: telling my boss, “I’m not happy,” writing the resignation letter, the two line response to that resignation, packing up my red and white enameled desk, thinking about how to make my home into a workplace, the child who said I was the only reason he made it to high school.  Parting was hard like an arm is hard when it hits the ground and breaks.

In just a couple of weeks, I’ll have been on my “pause,” for a year.  When I quit last May, I expected to return to the charge in the 2015-16 school year.  I thought if I could just disengage for a while, I’d be ready to return to the frenetic pace of my former life.  Now, I don’t know if I will ever be a charger again.  I haven’t changed a lot, but I’ve changed enough.  Enough to be happy, mostly.

I’ve been too glib about this leap, in my interactions with people, and here on thepauser.  In periods of time when I’m not working, I am home.  I have to sit in the stew that is Joni.  Total freedom is hard.  Instead of setting goals I can seldom reach (pre-Leap Joni), I just don’t set any.  It should feel freeing, but honestly, it feels slothful.  My internal timer, the one that rushed me out the door so I’d never be late, has blinked out on me.  Sometimes I fail to properly hydrate.  Or stop watching Netflix, or wash my hair every day.  I read poorly written literature.  In the car I listen to the Blue Collar Comedy Channel and switch to NPR when someone is riding with me. Occasionally I eat only slices of sharp cheddar cheese for lunch. I don’t jump on the treadmill every day. For an “A,” there are no small sins.

I have to constantly remind myself that I’m good enough, just the way I am. That everything doesn’t have to happen in a hurry.  I’m relearning the art of walking in my own humanity.  In my driven way, I thought it would take less time than it has. But in this pause, I’ve learned that I can only do so much of the driving.  Sometimes you have to let go and trust.

I’ve also learned about this space, here, on the page.  I have always written, but not with the regularity that I have in the last year.  I’m forty pages into a novel, and this is my seventy-fourth post since the inception of my blog on August 28,2014.  Time and space to write is the greatest single gift that anyone has ever given me. I needed this space, here, on this page and all the others, to internalize the quietude my soul so badly needed. I will not relinquish my balance again without a fight, and tapping on the keyboard at two in the morning has afforded me the courage to state so.

I have not made my last Leap.  The next, like all of the others before it, will be as terrifying as the last.  But in my next leap, I’ll have a sharpened number 2 Ticonderoga pencil.  I’ll have my journal. The scratch of lead against paper will be my mitigator, change agent and stabilizer.  I’ll carry spares in my bag for you, my fellow leapers, in case we meet on our next journey into the void.

pauseRReport, April 2015: On Dry Wells

Tags

blogs, creativity, Dachau, Germany, writing

April 28, 2015 marked the end of my eighth month as a blogger.  While I’m still struggling with consistency and keeping pace with my internal schedule for posts, April, like the four months before it, was a time of slow, steady growth of the site. I now have 92 followers. If I had 100 by the end of August, I would be happy. I know that those numbers may seem paltry to some, but I come into this spot with no expectations. Super Husband constantly reminds me that I’m blogging for fun, not to have something else to beat myself over the head with.

Here are some of the things I noticed in the month of April.

• I am still trying to find ways to balance part-time work and writing. In the last couple of months the job has taken more of my time than I anticipated.  Even though I still have plenty of time to write, my creative well has been dry. Perhaps this is due in part to my body’s muscle memories from the end of the last twenty-three school years.
• I also need to learn to handle responses (or non-responses) to posts that I did not anticipate. The post I wrote about my visit to Dachau did not get much response.  In fact, the posts I quickly put up to explain my lack of comments on other posts got more reads than this piece of writing that I spent a great deal of time thinking through.  I have no regrets about this post—it’s a documentation of how I interpreted my experience, a snapshot of my thinking that my children will be able to read when I’m gone.  I just need, perhaps, to learn to take it more in stride when others don’t see the value in some of my ideas.  Writing is risking, and I’m determined to keep sticking my neck out even if it gets whacked.

In May, I plan to write two more posts about my trip to Germany.  Then I’m going to start a series of posts inspired by other posts I have read in the month of April.

Here’s what I’ll be writing about:

• Why I Cried When He Talked About Mozart
• Beautiful Faces: What I Loved about Germany
• A post inspired by Mom’s Purse, Musing off the Mat
• A post inspired by My Dirty Little Secret about Inspiration by 101 Books
• A post inspired by Geronimo: On Falling with Style by Such Small Hands

I hope everything is copacetic in your world today.  Thanks, as always, for your support.

Problem Sorted

Tags

blogs

I think my inability to comment on your blogs is sorted-for now. I’ve made comments on several of your blogs.  Let me know if you don’t get them.

Commenting on your blogs

Tags

blogging, wordpress comments

Friends,
I’ve been having an issue with the comments I post on your blogs. I’m in the process of trying to fix this problem, and hope to be able to tell you what I like about your posts soon. In the meantime, I am reading and enjoying.
j

pauseRReport March 2015: Today, while the blossoms…

Tags

blogs, Brainstorming, mind mapping, monthly reflection

First flowers of spring

Wildflowers appeared in March here in South Texas. We will enjoy their brilliant colors until the sun leeches the chlorophyll from their stems and we once again swing from tree ropes and plop into anemic rivers in an attempt to stay cool.

Although March blistered by with the half-life of a Texas bluebonnet, blogging this month went better than February. In February, it felt like the blog honeymoon was over, and the initial heady rush of excitement when someone “liked,” or “followed,” me gave way to a dose of discouragement and lack of focus.  You know, when the honeymoon is over it’s time to pony up and decide whether to jump in with both feet or quit and move on to some other diversion. I decided to do the former, and it has paid off with slow, but steady growth over the month of March, and a growing perspective about what folks want to read.

I think one of the things I’ve found most helpful is writing the pauseRReport.  As with any other task, purposeful reflection can often lead to positive changes.  I did a couple of things differently this month.

• I listened to my own advice and planned ahead for writing two blogs a week. It took me about 30 minutes to think about what sort of posts I could put up, and I followed through with this plan.  That felt good.
• I learned to schedule my blogs in anticipation of our German vacation. While I was huffing my way up the steep incline to Neuschwanstein Castle, my Saturday Walk post went up.  The Daily Discomfort appeared on Wednesday like it usually does as well, even though I was wandering through a bunch of medieval churches on the other side of the world.  That also felt good.
• I started posting pictures of our Saturday walks, which I plan to continue. Not only is it fun to take pictures of the places we go on our travels near and far, the posts have been pretty popular.  Also, they don’t take very long to produce.  Time has been an issue in the last couple of months because it’s that time of the school year- testing- and my schools have asked for extra help.  Since I learned months ago that it’s pretty important to post regularly, this is a good way to make sure I’m keeping the blog content fresh.  It also helps me improve my novice level photography skills.

Here are some of the posts and blogsites I loved this month:

Wednesday Woodworking, I’m still Cutting: Andrew’s View of the Week

A Message for All of Humanity: butchcountry67

The Lies We Tell, Carter Library (I love her blog. Love it.)

Nutella or Montague: What’s in a Name: IdiotPrufs

On the Road with Animal Couriers– Any blog they write is going to make your day a little brighter.

I read a couple of great books this month, too:

Wool by Hugh Howey.  This book blew me away.  I read so much that I’m not too blow awayable, but this was a fun read.

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell. This is the first book in his Saxon tales series.  I’ve had to exercise self-control not to download all of them on my Nook.  Really accessible historical fiction.

In April…

I am going to write about our trip to Germany for the month of April. It will be a heck of a chore  to keep my blogs post reader short, because it was a singular experience.

My goal for April is to do some mind mapping before I start the writing about our travels to see if that assists me in any way, and whether mind mapping could have any applications to the work I do in classrooms for the San Antonio Writing project.

If I had a second goal, (I swore off of second goals, but…) it would be to write a couple of posts for the paus(ed) label.  Students have been doing some awesome writing within the activities their teachers and I share with them, and I’m anxious to share my observations about these wonderful young adults.  But I’m not setting a second goal.

When did you experience the end of your blog honeymoon?  What did you do to regain your footing?