Honestly I do

My roommate and I are sitting in the living room, watching dvr'd episodes of New Girl and perusing Land's End.  Together.  On our laptops.  As in, sitting side by side and looking at online sweaters.

She points out what she deems to be unwearable, and I tell her how much I love whatever she's pointing to -- honestly, usually I DO -- and we laugh.

Such good times :)

If I had to sum up Friendship in one word, it would be Comfort. ~Terri Guillemets

Regaining Equilibrium

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.  ~Norbet Platt

This semester, I am teaching a course called "Nonfiction Prose and Its Process."

Every week, I gather with nine students to discuss a certain author's writing process and works.  So far, I've introduced them to Donald Miller, Frank McCourt, David McCullough, Jon Krakauer, and Dave Eggers.  The students discuss what they like, what "works"and what they admire or find intriguing; we take turns reading passages aloud.  

Teaching Nonfiction Prose and Its Process has been, in a word, idyllic.   

They read.  They discuss.  They connect.  They engage.     

Every week, we meet in the campus coffee shop and they write.  Together, we've decided what the week's focus/motivation/"jumping off point" will be.  We base the focus on the author we're studying -- so sometimes they've written memoir, sometimes spiritual reflection.  They think about when and how they behave as writers.   They think about process. 

They write.   They are honest.  They are vulnerable.  They are intensely personal.  

Their courage challenges and inspires me. 

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.  ~Sylvia Plath

No, but...

It comes up.

I sort of steel myself for it every semester, as new faces fill the seats and a fresh batch of students are initiated into English 100.

Every fall and spring, they suffer through my corny jokes and big smiles and we write and revise and write and revise and revise and revise again -- and usually, they hate the process but seem to be okay with me...and that's how we learn to be writers, these amazing freshmen and I.

I am fully myself with them because I want them to be fully themselves with me. 

So, it comes up.  The question came this semester during the fifth week. I mentioned something funny that happened to me on a first date, and one of my student athletes stopped chewing her gum and called out "you're not married?" in an incredulous tone which made me love her.

"Nope," I said, wiggling my ring finger at the class.  "See? No ring."

They looked at me, and a few raised their hands to ask more questions, but I blushed and chickened out and distracted them with a corny joke while pretending not to see the hands.  

I wish I had been more honest in my response.  I wish I had said, to these fresh-on-the-cusp-of-life freshmen who are so good to me:

  

Shameful Secrets

I don't exactly know what RSS is, or how one "subscribes" to updates using it.

I'm not precisely sure how to calculate basic entries in an excel spreadsheet... sum total and alphabetizing are all I've got so far.

The green onion has a green part and a white part, and I consider them both to be The Green Onion, but I suspect that I'm mistaken.  Also, are chives just dried up green onion pieces?

Yesterday, I googled the pronunciation for the word "pedagogical" because I'm always a bit confused as to whether it sounds like peda GO gical or peda GOD gical.  Sigh.  I mean, my instincts were correct, but geesh.

The only parts of a car I can name are the lug nuts and the chassis.

I had poptarts for lunch today... and I'm thirty-four years old.

Names That Make the Heart Happy

Hans Zimmer
William Butler Yeats
James Taylor
Nora Ephron
Pablo Neruda
John Williams
e.e. cummings
Jane Austen
Nat King Cole
Louisa May Alcott
J.R.R. Tolkien
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Vince Guaraldi
Alan Silvestri

(thanks to you all)