I have had a very stressful last couple of weeks. At times, it has been almost more than I can handle at different moments and I have had to cope in little ways like going for short walks through a little breezeway near my classroom and reminding myself why I teach and coach or I have gotten home from work and left my phone and practically everything else in my car or inside and FH and I have just walked down our road and through the woods and stayed out till past dark because the weather is just perfect right now and I will never get to live each day that goes by with Mel or FH again.
I know we all live these maxed out lives and I really do wish I knew how to do it better or what I really wish is that I knew a way to opted out in a reasonable way. I am not pretending like I lead the busiest or hardest of lives, but it does blow my mind that in the last month or so, I have been to NYC, coached almost a full season of track, taught for over 20 days, graded over 500 papers, proctored the ACT, read, studied, and took a test to be certified to give the SAT, read two, 200+ page books, ran 100 miles, driven over two thousand miles, broke a tooth, got it repaired, worked on our house, ridden my bike around 200 miles, changed the brakes in my car, and a hundred other little, everyday things. I could keep listing things, but that is enough. You get it because you have your crazy list too. It is just mind-blowing. Or at least it is to me.
I am also not saying I want the opposite. I see the opposite too often. It seems like a miserable existence whether it is self-imposed or forced. I know of several folks who are so lonely or bored and sit at home where they look forward to one event for months at a time because that is their one chance to get out of the house for the whole Spring, but I would like things to go and be a little slower.
I know we all live these maxed out lives and I really do wish I knew how to do it better or what I really wish is that I knew a way to opted out in a reasonable way. I am not pretending like I lead the busiest or hardest of lives, but it does blow my mind that in the last month or so, I have been to NYC, coached almost a full season of track, taught for over 20 days, graded over 500 papers, proctored the ACT, read, studied, and took a test to be certified to give the SAT, read two, 200+ page books, ran 100 miles, driven over two thousand miles, broke a tooth, got it repaired, worked on our house, ridden my bike around 200 miles, changed the brakes in my car, and a hundred other little, everyday things. I could keep listing things, but that is enough. You get it because you have your crazy list too. It is just mind-blowing. Or at least it is to me.
I am also not saying I want the opposite. I see the opposite too often. It seems like a miserable existence whether it is self-imposed or forced. I know of several folks who are so lonely or bored and sit at home where they look forward to one event for months at a time because that is their one chance to get out of the house for the whole Spring, but I would like things to go and be a little slower.
What I feel I am seeing when I look at my calendar and then at our family calendar and then go to do something and realize that I can't do whatever it is because that something is broken or something of the like, but also know that I can't just not do what I needed to do.
I am writing all of this because I love writing. And I really love and look forward to writing and preparing the posts that I do end up publishing for this blog. However, I just don't have the time to do the long posts that I used to put out, but I also am completely unwilling to quit this place and let it die. So, I have racked my brain trying to think of some sort of solution where I can live my fast-paced life and have a blog that I update more than two times every five or six months. And I think I have come up with some sort of solution.
It'd be easy to just quit blogging and it would mostly make sense for me to do so. I really don't have time to do it and I don't really want to hear that saying about people having the time for the things they care about or are important to them. That may sound good on paper, but in life it looks more like when you have to choose between getting five hours of sleep or finishing a blog, or making a little money for your family on a Saturday or sitting behind a computer screen and finishing a blog post, or grading some papers or writing a blog post. Those are not great choices, but they are little choices I have to make on a daily or weekly basis. I am in no way complaining or expecting any sympathy because it really isn't that big of a deal. I love my job and am so grateful to God for allowing me to live a life where He supplies for me and my family in such great and miraculous ways and that allows me to work in a vocation that I feel called to do. And I love my family immensely and cannot and do not want to imagine a life without them. But I also want to have a little time each week to write.
So, in an effort to do all I want to do, I have come up with a little solution. I came up with the idea about a week while looking for a new book to read on our bookshelves. One of the books we own is titled, "By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades". I haven't had the chance to read it completely, but I have liked the little I have had a chance read. It is a book full of newspaper blurbs and little short articles that Hemingway wrote as a newspaper and magazine correspondent that he was throughout the majority of his career. And it got me to thinking about why couldn't I just write these short little posts where I can knock it all out in a couple of sittings or maybe just write all I can for twenty or so minutes and double check it and then let it go.
I have made mention of doing something like this in the past, but instead of doing so, I either didn't post at all or worked up these super long posts and took two weeks past forever to do them, and to be honest, most of them are still sitting my, Drafts, section of this blog spot. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to post here more often and doing these short, little blurbs about what is actually and currently happening in my life right now are the only way I see this place not becoming just another blog that never gets updated and then becoming a place where no one goes. I don't want that.
So, here's to the future. May it be full of short, yet informative, yet witty, yet appealing posts that you enjoy reading and I enjoy writing until the day I have time to write long and good posts.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for following.
DAVID
It'd be easy to just quit blogging and it would mostly make sense for me to do so. I really don't have time to do it and I don't really want to hear that saying about people having the time for the things they care about or are important to them. That may sound good on paper, but in life it looks more like when you have to choose between getting five hours of sleep or finishing a blog, or making a little money for your family on a Saturday or sitting behind a computer screen and finishing a blog post, or grading some papers or writing a blog post. Those are not great choices, but they are little choices I have to make on a daily or weekly basis. I am in no way complaining or expecting any sympathy because it really isn't that big of a deal. I love my job and am so grateful to God for allowing me to live a life where He supplies for me and my family in such great and miraculous ways and that allows me to work in a vocation that I feel called to do. And I love my family immensely and cannot and do not want to imagine a life without them. But I also want to have a little time each week to write.
So, in an effort to do all I want to do, I have come up with a little solution. I came up with the idea about a week while looking for a new book to read on our bookshelves. One of the books we own is titled, "By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades". I haven't had the chance to read it completely, but I have liked the little I have had a chance read. It is a book full of newspaper blurbs and little short articles that Hemingway wrote as a newspaper and magazine correspondent that he was throughout the majority of his career. And it got me to thinking about why couldn't I just write these short little posts where I can knock it all out in a couple of sittings or maybe just write all I can for twenty or so minutes and double check it and then let it go.
I have made mention of doing something like this in the past, but instead of doing so, I either didn't post at all or worked up these super long posts and took two weeks past forever to do them, and to be honest, most of them are still sitting my, Drafts, section of this blog spot. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to post here more often and doing these short, little blurbs about what is actually and currently happening in my life right now are the only way I see this place not becoming just another blog that never gets updated and then becoming a place where no one goes. I don't want that.
So, here's to the future. May it be full of short, yet informative, yet witty, yet appealing posts that you enjoy reading and I enjoy writing until the day I have time to write long and good posts.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for following.
DAVID
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