Mid-semester, Spring, Third Year Teaching College

I was tired and planned to get to sleep early tonight. But I started reading through many of my old blog posts. Now here I am, two hours later.

I always doubted the premises of this blog along with my own writing abilities. So I am a bit amazed now at the sheer volume of what I wrote, and at times, I think a particular piece or part of a piece is well done. But after I started writing for the union organizing website I created, I faded away here on this one. And then we lost, and I taught a four course semester, and somehow, the habit just faded away. Also, though, I began to wonder if I should emerge out from behind the curtain of anonymity. So I tried that, too, on another blog. Not much, though.

There is a certain honesty in using one's name, but there is an ability to be more honest at times when that full name can be left out - when you remain unsearchable online.

Maybe I will come back to this. I don't know if I'll continue the old promotions I used to - the shameless emails to friends with links to the newest posts. But how would they ever know to read this, otherwise?

How did I ever write so much? My brain feels so scrubbed out sometimes... I feel like there's not much left after I teach and do all the other work connected with that, and work through whatever pending personal finances I must, and all the various things that somehow take up my days. Also, I used to feel that I was writing to change the world. I felt such an urgency to send my words out there, to try to get them right. Now, I'm not sure. I want to believe my words can do something, even something small...

But I'll try for some basic facts for now.

Matt moved out in October 2014. Four of my kids and I live in the house, going in on expenses and work to the extent that we can.

This past fall, I taught two classes. I'm teaching just one class this semester, my class on American idealism in its various strains and incarnations, and I'm sitting in on a friend's graduate class in ethnography. I'm also taking two community education art classes with my youngest son - one in composition/drawing, the other in painting. I'm painting a picture of my best friend and me as teens.

My class is going well. The students in it seem to do the readings and they express themselves passionately, intelligently, and sometimes courageously.

I have to sleep now... I'll write more tomorrow...