The Unintentional Personal Literacy Hiatus

There was some radio silence: on the blog, with my dozens of unreturned emails and phone calls, and with the visits with friends I've been delaying until things settle down.

The silence was unintentional, though not altogether surprising.  Through other hectic periods of my life I've noticed two things take a hit from my life activities:

Reading. Writing.

I'm still an English teacher five days a week, so I inevitably read and write for multiple hours a day.  But it's not the same.  My students' written aren't full of the intellectual challenges I revel in with pleasure reading, and the most interesting thing I've written lately is a pretty sweet test.  A Scantron one.  I haven't fully been making stuff.

You can't really beat making stuff.

And so, I find myself living in a literacy hiatus that I accidentally created for myself.

Do other teachers experience this?  Where you devour books all summer and then read only student work for the other ten months?  And you lose some of your creative intellect when you're knee-deep in the routines and requirements of work?  Do non-teachers go through these waves, too, sans the weirdness of the school calendar?

The main reason I keep this blog is because I like writing.  It's a true craft and it takes work and practice.  I want to challenge myself to keep thinking and reflecting and collaborating.

I'm going to find my way back to sentences.

And making stuff with words.  Of which, arguably, some of the best things have ever been made.

Art by Richard Koehler