Fifteen years? Teaching Authors is fifteen years old? How is that possible?
I have no sense of time. People kept telling me “Wait until you have a child, and you’ll see how time flies.”
Well, no. My daughter will be thirty in July, and her birth seems to have taken place in a “galaxy long ago and far away.” Everything in my life feels like it happened in the last Ice Age. I swear I’ve been writing these blogs for at least fifty years.
So what is there to say on this momentous occasion? For one thing, we Teaching Authors, and especially our Mighty Blog Mistress Carmela, should give ourselves a big, old pat on the back. When we began posting 2009, everybody and his dog had a blog. The majority fizzled out after a couple of months…or weeks. We’re not the only blog that’s lasted this long…but we are definitely in an exclusive club. Let’s hear it for us!
I suppose this is a time for looking back.
For 12 years I really was a Teaching Author, leading Young Writers’ Workshops and Camps in the Atlanta area. Then COVID hit and…well, there was really no way to do day-long programs for kids 9-15, virtually. I haven’t taught since 2019, and I really, really miss it. The same thing happened with school visits. (I’m available for workshops and school visits...hint, hint.)
Life has shifted in my family as well. Most of these fifteen years I was the “Sandwich Woman”; getting my daughter through school while trying to take care of my parents in another time zone. For the past ten years, my husband has been commuting from Atlanta to Chicago for work…every single week (except for the COVID year when he telecommuted from the kitchen table.) After four previously announced retirement dates (the first was March 2020 and we all know what happened then!), he is officially retiring this August. My parents are gone, now. My daughter is teaching in a public school Pre-K, while pursuing a double masters degree in Special Education. (Her students can’t believe she was the inspiration for MY BEST FRIEND and FIRST GRADE STINKS!) The circumstances are constantly changing but life goes on.
I had a “milestone” birthday in March. I’ve never really thought about age, but that particular number has brought me up short. My husband’s retirement plans are unformed, apart from wanting to move away from Atlanta traffic. The future seems fuzzy and uncertain. However, I am hanging on to something I was told in the Vermont MFA program; write the book you must write before you die (not that I'm planning on doing that in the near future!) So that’s what am I doing now.
I press on.
Don't forget--you have until May 18th to enter our Blogiversary Giveaway Book, S is for Story by TA Esther Herschenhorn. Details are here.
Posted by Mary Ann Rodman
MA, great point about our blog standing the test of time!
ReplyDeleteI wish you the best writing the novel you MUST write, and hope you'll be able to return to teaching again soon.
Whooo Hooooo! Congratulations. Never did I ever imagine blogging to be an old-fashioned activity. Alas, it is. I still blog though. Keep writing. I love the voice of your post. I'll bet it's great in that novel. Can't wait to read it.
ReplyDeleteMary Ann, you're so right ~ Carmela truly is our Mighty Blog Mistress. We are lucky ducks!
ReplyDeleteAnd as much as I love YOU writing the book you must write before you die, I am not going to take that challenge. I'm going to write the book that plops on my head unexpectedly and drips all over my t-shirt.
It's been a privilege to read about you over the years.