Officially taking the plunge and committing to post once (or twice) a week in 2013, to help me get to 100 posts in the year. Come join me!
Category Archives: daily blog challenges
Getting Drafty
So far in April, I’ve written sixteen poems, following the prompts given at Poetic Asides for the 2012 Poem-A-Day Challenge, and including an additional tanka challenge.
Now, have I written one each day? No, there have definitely been points where I lagged behind and then caught up, drafting several poems in a day. I’ve got one to go right now, actually, a prompt from a few days ago involving the idea of shadows and shade.
Have I written sixteen good poems? Definitely not; most are first drafts, and some I knew were not very good, even as I wrote them down.
So what is the value, then, of a challenge like this? I would say part of the value is that you push yourself to pile up a lot of shitty first drafts, as Anne Lamott wrote in her wonderful book on writing, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Will I revise each and every one of these drafts further? No, probably not. But I can tell already that some of them have potential as ideas, and I know also that some of them have some good lines, or at least the germ of a good line, and any poet knows the value of one great line.
I think that once I’m done this challenge, I’ll have some good candidates for further revision, and some recoverable lines that I’ll plant in new poems. But more importantly, I’ll have gained some momentum through carving out time to regularly engage the poetic gear of my writer’s mind, and that will surely benefit me.
Books I Should Have Read in High School
Image via Wikipedia
This year, I’m taking on the Books I Should Have Read in High School, But Didn’t challenge Dana is running, and I’m pledging to read six books I feel I should have read, putting me in the Graduate Student category. The over-ambitious part of my personality wanted to try the Literature Professor category, but decided not to, since I’m tackling a notoriously long book as one of my choices. A few of these books I wouldn’t expect to be assigned in high school, nor would I want to teach them, but I feel I would, might or should have read them if my graduate degrees were in literature.
Here’s my proposed list, in no particular order:
Frankenstein
War and Peace
Song of Solomon
Things Fall Apart
Julius Caesar
Vanity Fair
War and Peace and Vanity Fair take place against the same historical backdrop, so I’m looking forward to those. Also, I have to confess two more superficial reasons for choosing Vanity Fair: looking forward to watching the Reese Witherspoon film, and finally/fully understanding the Becky Sharpe allusion Anne makes in Anne of Windy Poplars!
This is certainly a lot of reading, but I have a few strategies. First, I’ve gotten into a really good habit of reading before I go to bed every night, so that will be helpful to keep me moving forward. Second, I’ve always been a voracious reader, so I’m not daunted by the sheer number of pages I’ll be tackling. Third, I’ve also always been a relatively fast reader. Fourth, I’ll probably start my longest book (W&P) at the beginning of the summer, which is when I often get a lot of reading done, either in the long summer nights when I don’t have to wake up for school the next day or the long summer afternoons I spend poolside (yes, it’s clear why summer is my favorite season!).
Some of these are titles I’ve wanted to read for years, but I also like the idea of challenging myself to do what I ask students to do–read an unfamiliar, challenging text simply because it’s in front of me, and see what I can get out of it along the way. I’ll be blogging reviews and thoughts along the way, and will be watching film adaptations too. This is my first time participating in one of these kinds of reading challenges, but I think it’s going to be a lot of fun–feel free to join in, or try one of the many reading challenges Dana is trying. Dana is encouraging participants for hers even if you don’t have a blog, so jump in!
All links provided via my Amazon associates account, though I have received no compensation for these reviews. If you click through these links to buy the books, I get a very small cut. Thanks!
Related Articles
- 100 book challenge, 2011 (notsuchayummymummy.wordpress.com)
- Review: My Reading Life (bookingmama.blogspot.com)
Appreciate Five Minutes
As much as I can understand not wanting to have children of your own, I am continually amazed at who I am because I have had children, and because I am a parent. I don’t know who I would be if I wasn’t, but I do know that wanting to be the best possible parent I can be is inextricably linked with wanting to be the best possible version of myself that I can be. The immense amount of value I place on parenting makes everything else in my life more intense, because all my roles and identities stem from that one.
I appreciate what being a parent has meant to me, and I appreciate the incredible joy I have often received from being a parent, as well as the deep anxieties and sorrows I have felt. All of it has made me better, but as also brought empathy and compassion into my life in pervasive ways. All of this can happen without having children, but for me, my children were the catalyst.
So if I imagine I will lose my memory of 2010 and have to capture the best moments, they will all revolve around my children. Splashing in the pool, reading bedtime stories, playing Beatles Rock Band, baking cookies, saying our “roses and thorns” around the dinner table, all of these and more, but especially every minute I get to spend watching them, talking to them, snuggling with them, and generally basking in their glow.
11 Things
Image via Wikipedia
What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
I’ve missed a few prompts over the weekend, including this one and the one about body integration, so I’m going to try and meld them together here.
One of the areas of my life in which I am continually unhappy is how I take care of my body. I’ve written about my struggles with self-care and also about my issues with veggies. I’d like to say I’ve made a lot of progress since I wrote either of those posts, but that would not be entirely true. I’m not much better about taking care of myself at all, especially in the exercise arena. And while I have been eating more salads and incorporating greens into other meals more, I still don’t eat enough vegetables, and have not been very adventurous in cooking them. So part of what I’d like to lose next year is my reluctance to exercise, my resistance to starting the exercise habit, and my past record of not maintaining the exercise habit once I start it. I’d also like to lose my absentmindness when it comes to drinking enough water, and trying new vegetable recipes. I’d like to leave behind my habit of forgetting my lunch too. Those are six weights I’d like to eliminate in 2011.
I’d also like to lose some related emotional weight: the guilt I feel over not eating better, over not making as much progress on the health front as I would have liked, over not maintaining the strong resolve I keep thinking I feel about taking care of myself. I’d like to leave behind the gap between how I feel about my mind and how I feel about my body, and I’d like to replace all that guilt and disappointment with pride and a sense of accomplishment.
This is my Reverb 10 post for the day.
Wisdom
Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?
Today, all I can think about is that the most UNwise decision I’ve made lately is the one that allowed this much grading to pile up at once. And I can only really blame myself, because I’m the one who designed and assigned the work, and I control when it is due, and I have been simply not plowing through it the way I really need to do before the break starts (a week from today!!). And so I’d rather be making lists of recipes for all the Xmas cookies I’m planning to bake this weekend, but that grading is just looming over my head, and I can’t shake it until I actually do the work.
Sigh.
This is my Reverb 10 post for the day.
Community
Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?
For me, 2010 has been a year of transitioning, in terms of community. As I have become more and more involved, or even enmeshed, in my school community as an employee, I have become less involved in my kids’ school community as a parent volunteer.
When my girls started kindergarten, I was teaching very part-time at my current school and still adjuncting a class a semester at another school, so I didn’t feel a permanent connection to my jobs yet and didn’t exactly know where I would end up. I did know that I wanted to be involved in my kids’ school, so I jumped in with both feet: I did all the dropping off and picking up, I helped in their cafeteria once a week and with recess duty when the weather was nice. I was at every holiday party and every school movie night, field day, parade and bake sale. It was really great, actually–I got to know a lot of the other parents and families, felt I knew their teacher and new friends well, and felt welcomed into the school community. This pattern continued in first grade, even more so because I became friendly with both girls’ teachers and spent some time volunteering in the classroom, serving as an extra pair of hands when they were building structures from toothpicks and marshmallows, for example. I helped run the environmental club, and I ended the year by compiling a photo-album for Lucy’s class and continuing to feel really included in the school community. I was one of those moms, and I loved it.
Then I started working full-time last year, including becoming part of my school’s advisory program, which included working more closely with some really wonderful and inspiring co-workers and taking on new challenges at my school. It was a year of professional accomplishments, and I felt I was making huge strides in my career. Unfortunately, these strides came at the cost of maintaining my previous level of involvement in my kids’ school community. I tried to keep juggling it, but more and more, I dropped the ball.
This year, with my increased schedule, I’ve barely made it into their school, showing up for American Education week and sending in paper towels when asked, but not making it to pick-up or even drop-off, not chumming with the teachers or helping out at the movie nights. In the springtime, I’ll be able to do more, but I feel less flexible and less involved than I have since my kids started school, and right now, I’m not loving the feeling.
Of course, this is why some teachers I know teach at the same school where they send their kids, and while I’m seeing the appeal more and more, that’s a bridge I’m just not ready to cross yet. And of course, mixing my family and work life that closely would bring its own challenges…
This is my Reverb 10 post for the day.
Related Articles
- The new wave of dropouts: PTA burnout hits frazzled parents (theglobeandmail.com)
