Status Update: Moving Again

I am coming out of a two-year Ice Age. As you can see from my previous posts, the last time I was active here was back during the 2008 NaNoWriMo. I managed about 10,000 words during that year’s event before I got sidetracked mid-November. In 2009, I managed to accomplish even less writing during the event. It turns out that November is a terrible month to pound out an entire novel. I know, I know – the point of NaNoWriMo is to be the master of one’s circumstances, but my job has peaks and troughs, and November is a nasty, chilly, windswept, barren plateau that also begins a sharp ascent to an early-December peak. I am a high school teacher. By November, weeks of school have ground me down so that I am just trying to survive until Thanksgiving Break. After the break, I immediately begin the race to review for exams in December so my students don’t fail my classes. Seriously, why did they choose November for NaNoWriMo? Why choose a month leading up to the holidays, a traditional time of high stress? Why not choose the summer, when people have more free time and less stress on average? Would it be so tragic to let go of the idealism and try to set people up for success?

But I digress (already, in the first paragraph). Some historians might mark the true beginning of my personal Ice Age more like about ten years ago at the onset of a long bout of clinical depression. Before long, it felt like everything in my life was a glacial struggle. I was productive only in fits and starts. I finally started to receive treatment for the depression a couple of years ago, but my recovery was complicated by a new addiction to World of Warcraft, which I eventually broke away from, and am now in an overall much improved state.

So now I’ve been “sober” for a while, mostly depression-free, and I’m off work for the summer vacation. It’s time to start writing again. “Movement and Moderation” should be my new slogan. I have a tendency to be extreme and try to take off running, only to burn out quickly. I intend to instead focus on small steps and on steady progress. Blogging is a great way to get things flowing.

I’ll end for now on a note of triumph: several years after a first wrote it, the other day I finally brought myself to revise a poem modeled after Mark Doty’s “My Tattoo” from his Sweet Machine collection. Although there is more work to be done, the poem is much improved, and the revision process was refreshing. How satisfying to witness a song find shape!