New Years Time!

Boys and girls, my blog is really growing up. It turns three this year, and I couldn't be more proud. I am proud of my blog because it has always been honest and from my heart. My biggest inspiration as a writer are people who write because they have to. I used to think that everyone was a secret writer, but teaching really knocked that naive notion out of me. Now, I think writing is more like a language that some of us are more comfortable in than others. In fact, sometimes I think writing is like my first language and speaking is only a cheap substitute. Sometimes I need to write like other people need a cigarette. I write to make a decision. I write to understand. I write to laugh. I write to cry.

I remember one time in undergraduate school I had to write a paper about teaching writing. I said in the course of the paper that teaching writing was like teaching breathing. I didn't know how to do it because I don't know how not to be a writer.

Yet, when I look back at this blog (my primary writing outlet over the past two and a half years), I wrote almost exclusively on the theme of education and being an educator. Reading it, I would almost believe that I am a teacher the way I am a writer. I know that is not true, but over the past three years I lost myself a little in teaching. Yet, I found myself in my writing.

I wrote so much about teaching because that is what I needed to write about, but I am ready to explore different topics in my writing again.

All of this started to dawn on me on Christmas day. I picked up George "W"s autobiography (a gift to someone else not me), and read the first couple of chapters. He talked about how he spent his early twenties living without a lot of responsibilities and finding himself. I thought about how good for him that must have been later on because when he was president there is no room to be anything but president. Then, I thought about how I've spent my early twenties. The answer is that I've spent them lost in teaching. The truth is that I have given it too much--too much to sustain anyway. I have to find a way to be more balanced. Because of who I am, a big part of that is going to be writing about other themes. So, this blog is going to change in 2011. I'm still going to write about education sometimes because that is a big part of my life and what I do most days, but I am going to write more about theology and family and life and love. That is my New Year's Resolution this year.