Happy Birthday to Us!

This week Teaching Authors will celebrate it's first Blogiversary! (I would insert a quick verse of "Happy Birthday", but that would require copyright permission.) So, minus the song, I have the pleasure of kicking off Blogiversary Week. (And yes, that's my eighth birthday party...no permissions needed.)

I am not one to "Wow. A year already? How time flies." For me, time doesn't fly like a Concorde, but more like a crop duster, puttering low over the fields, with frequent stops for fuel. Very frequent stops. This year has seemed exceptionally long for me, partly due to my eye surgery last June. I was working with one eye for what seemed like months. (It was a convenient excuse for my numerous typos.)

What has this year meant to me? Well, without getting all "Miss American Farewell Speech," I can say that this year has been a blessing.  Meeting new writers and teachers (and sometimes even in person!) gives me the one thing that all writers (teaching or otherwise) crave...the feeling that we are not all alone. We spend so much time in isolation with our chosen instrument of writing, living in our heads even in the presence of others, we forget that what we create in solitude is read by other people. Sometimes lots of them!

I still have that solitary confinement feeling as I try to wrestle two novels into shape, but when I sit down to write my blog, I have this wonderful sense of being surrounded by all of you. I can see you...even without the old Romper Room Magic Mirror (extremely dated Boomer reference). I see you with your coffee cups, stacks of "urgent" paperwork from the Central Office, reading us as a guilty pleasure, all the while feeling as if you should be doing something important.  I see you too, you stay-at-home parents who have wedged reading this blog between play dates or homeschooling lessons or magically concocting an item that your child remembers at 10 pm he needs by tomorrow morning. (Slight digression...the worst case scenario I've heard was a mom who sculpted a boars head out of SPAM. Don't ask me why.) That all of you teachers and writers have found the time to visit with us on line is a humbling sort of honor. Please don't stop.

My secret guilty pleasure (which when you read this will no longer be a secret) is checking the blog stats a couple of times a week, to see where our readers are located.  I know that you are from Alaska and Australia and Belgium.  I know that there is a big bunch of faithful readers from the Midwest. It's a real mindblower for me, to know that someone on the other side of the world might read what we Teaching Authors have to say. In return, we are thrilled to hear from all of you, no matter where you live. We are all in this teaching-writing thing together.  Writing and teaching are the hardest and most rewarding job you will ever have, whether you are in Topeka or Timbuktu. We look forward to many more Blogiversaries...as long as we keep hearing from you.

OK, altogether everybody, a chorus of "It's a Small World After All." Wait no. Those pesky copyrights again. Well, just imagine I am dumping a cybershower of balloons on you right now, wherever you are. And in the words of the Great Maurice Sendak, "Let the wild rumpus begin!"

Out and About

This is cheating because I am not "Out and About" yet, but I will be very soon.  Yankee Girl has been chosen by the Winnetka-Northfield Public Library System for their "Two Villages, One Book" selection. So for all you folks in Chicagoland, I will be doing school visits and other assorted pleasures the week of May 3.  For all the festive details, check the Winnetka-Northfield website.

Mary Ann Rodman