I must say I am finding all sorts of avenues to court joy these days. Sometimes it’s in the competency of the woman who needs to draw a vile of blood from me, or in a colleague who sends an especially sweet text after an afternoon run with me, or a dear friend who has offered to do me a huge favor with her precious and newly retired time. Joy floats all around in those sweet gifts. But there is something else that I am feeling. I am just really happy with many of my choices: those made yesterday, last year, maybe even ten years ago, when I set in motion a lifestyle with Future Me in mind. You get what I mean right? It didn’t all happen at once, but little by little I realized that I needed to lead Present Me around on a short lease and think about tomorrow. She’s a bit of a wild child who wants to run, well wild, this Present Me. She’s not always reliable. She’s not factual either. Oh the stories she tells afterwards are pretty colorful, but they can led to a less than happy future me. Sometimes Present Me does win me over, and sometimes, even in her worst decisions, I smile, a bit hungover, with sore dancing feet, and an embarrassing selfie plastered all over my socials at midnight… but mostly, I keep her in check.
Tag Archives: winter
Light in the Dark
What a week! Without going into too many, or any actual details, suffice to say, this week has been a tough one. Days that start in the dark predawn and end with the same blackness all around, with little time to get outside or feel any sunshine are onerous. Seems like burdens just mount after a string of days like that, doesn’t it? Hard to motivate. Thankfully, I live with a dedicated illuminator, who takes her job seriously, and plots out all the ways to shine brilliant light in the darkest of the dark days.
Starry Nights
Reposting from 2018 when a “plague on both your houses” was just a emotional line shouted out in desperation and not a world-wild reality that carved out even more distinction between those billionaires holding power and the rest of us dealing with all the fallout of a collapsed economy, a non-stop pandemic, and the Republicans still causing havoc. Regardless, I must say, as Shakespeare’s words fill my classroom and the minds of my students once again, we reach for hope. Will we ever attain those lofty hopeful aims? Will the old white men clinging to their past power ever step aside and allow for a new dawn and vision for a more diverse America, a more sustainable Earth, and a truthful assessment of our current challenges? Let’s say yes, for tonight, let’s find that thread of faith that leads to hope and believe in a perhaps. Yes, let’s.
As I embark on a Shakespeare unit with my students, nine graders reading Romeo & Juliet and AP Lit reading Hamlet, we start with questions. Questions Elizabethan thinkers might have pondered in 1598; questions we still ponder in 2018. I am struck with our timeless preoccupation over destiny: Are we the masters of our own fate? I ask students to think and write about their beliefs on this topic. Certainly, these teens, like those penned by Shakespeare, want to believe they are, indeed, in control of their outcomes, while I, I who have screamed up at the Heavens in distress, frustrated by the unpredictability of chance, those ‘why me’ moments; “O, I am Fortune’s fool” situations. As if we are pulled by strings invisible to our own hands. Just when we want/need/hope for a different outcome we must settle for what is… but as I look across…
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