I vaguely remember receiving an email telling me that my domain was about to expire. Thinking that I had already broken numerous agreements with myself to work on writing, revision, and publishing, I agreed to renew the domain. Of course, those unfulfilled commitments continued to haunt me. However, a few things have changed over the last couple of months that have spurred me on to at least publish a couple of entries.
The first was that my sister passed away. On May 16, my sister, Cathy Walker, entered her heavenly reward. My family and I cared for her for the last year-and-a-half of her life while she suffered from end stage cancer. Much of this time she was in our home. She was positive, upbeat, encouraging, and faithful to her Lord right up until the end, and was an inspiration to all of us who knew her. Even with all of these gifts that she provided, it’s still physically, mentally, and emotionally draining to care for a terminally ill patient, and this labor of love took its toll on all of us.
The second was that I was carrying an enormous teaching load, even by my standards. Four tenth grade humanities sections, two eleventh grade composition and literature sections, two Latin I sections, two Latin II sections, one Latin III sections, and one night grade US History section. This coming school year, I’ll have a similar number of sections, but only four preps.
The third was that my wife and I, along with my mother-in-law, were in a devastating car accident on June 26. Seeing the photos, it would be difficult to believe that all of us came away with no permanent impairments. However, I have some broken ribs and am generally pretty sore.
The sheer boredom of sitting around rekindled my desire to write more. I’m faced with looking around my house and my innumerable books on writing. Paraphrasing the words of Roxanne Gay, author of Bad Feminist, it’s like being “beyond Lane Bryant fat” and having a closet full of size 2 clothes; a monument to ambition and shame. While I realize that such feelings don’t generally produce motivation to persevere in any long-term behavior, I must acknowledge them, even it it’s to rechannel them into both a realization that I get paid for teaching rather than writing, and that there is no shame in using my verbal capacity on my feet instead of on the page.
Half Baked 