20131219.0939

I received word today that I have a teaching schedule for the spring term, one that works out well for me.  After what I ran into last spring, I think I am justified in being happy to have work to do.  I am all too familiar with what it is like to not have it, and despite my occasional complaints about handling students and their work, I have no desire to repeat the experience.

I realize that I am not always as indicative of being grateful as I ought to be.  I know that what I write often betrays frustration with the world in which I live and the people with whom I share that world.  I know also that people are sometimes put off by what they read of what I write in such a vein.  It is not my intent--for all that an authorial statement of intent can actually be trusted.

Even as I acknowledge the sometimes uncomfortable nature of my writing, though, I must admit that I have no intention of changing much of how I go about things.  It would not be fitting of me to deny my experience and the emotions it provokes in me, and if I am to entertain so narcissistic an activity as writing a personal blog, one that serves primarily to offer my words to the pervasive ether of the online world, I do owe it to myself to represent as honestly as I can what I feel.

I am human.  Sometimes my feelings are unpleasant.  As such, my discussions of them will be sometimes unpleasant.  That is not a reason to deny them.  And it is the case that I am in a situation similar to that in which many others find themselves.  I entertain the hope (if again with some narcissism) that my comments about my experience may be of some aid and assistance to others, and if they are to be so, then they need to be as complete as can be made.  I entertain the hope also that what I write will produce some commentary and lead to some discussion--and I have seen that hope fulfilled more than once.  If I do want to see discussion, then I need to offer somewhat to promote it, and the more of myself that I offer up for discussion, the more likely that discussion is to happen.

It is the case that I perform a particular role in this space--as do all writers in all writing situations and indeed all people in all situations.  We are all of us wearing masks and costumes, playing parts as the Bard remarks, although the roles are not a mere seven but seventy times seven.  I do not expect that all of my performances will win awards, certainly, but it is not always in search of praise that the actor acts, or that the writer writes, or that the worker works on The Work.  It is often welcome, but it is neither sufficient nor necessary; the thing itself justifies itself.