High Fiving A Million Angels!
I've had a good writing day. I managed to write for five nearly-solid hours (give or take an interruption or two) -- and I "finished" three stanzas of the fairytale poem. (I feel like the word "finished" should always be in quotation marks when used to talk about the state of one's writing.)
Compared to my work over the month of August, that's like fitting three days into one! It's nice to be able to finally appreciate the sabbatical. Days like this would not occur without a semester off from teaching. Or they might occur, but there would be only one -- maybe two -- of these days that actually happened over the course of three or four months.
That makes me sad, briefly, and then I shake off the sadness, force myself to remember that the spring semester and my eventual return to teaching is a long way off, and that perhaps my writing life will look somewhat different after having experienced this grace period.
Today, that's what the sabbatical feels like -- a grace. A blessing, if you're religious (I'm not, although more of these moments might turn me around). Now I know why my colleagues said, "Congratulations" when I was awarded one last year. I was like, I'm still working -- it's not like I won the lottery. But today, I'm feeling fairly appreciative, a little more humble, and definitely upbeat about what I've done with my time today. I hope -- I really hope -- that my poor attitude at the end of last semester was just the result of burnout, and that I return to teaching rested, and still appreciative, and with more patience for the less engaging (read: administrative) parts of faculty life.
It feels good to post something positive on the blog. This needs to be more than a record of my hysterical anxiety and fluctuating inferiority complex, right? A day of good work even erases the sting of the two rejection letters I received last week.
And so: This.
Compared to my work over the month of August, that's like fitting three days into one! It's nice to be able to finally appreciate the sabbatical. Days like this would not occur without a semester off from teaching. Or they might occur, but there would be only one -- maybe two -- of these days that actually happened over the course of three or four months.
That makes me sad, briefly, and then I shake off the sadness, force myself to remember that the spring semester and my eventual return to teaching is a long way off, and that perhaps my writing life will look somewhat different after having experienced this grace period.
Today, that's what the sabbatical feels like -- a grace. A blessing, if you're religious (I'm not, although more of these moments might turn me around). Now I know why my colleagues said, "Congratulations" when I was awarded one last year. I was like, I'm still working -- it's not like I won the lottery. But today, I'm feeling fairly appreciative, a little more humble, and definitely upbeat about what I've done with my time today. I hope -- I really hope -- that my poor attitude at the end of last semester was just the result of burnout, and that I return to teaching rested, and still appreciative, and with more patience for the less engaging (read: administrative) parts of faculty life.
It feels good to post something positive on the blog. This needs to be more than a record of my hysterical anxiety and fluctuating inferiority complex, right? A day of good work even erases the sting of the two rejection letters I received last week.
And so: This.
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