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THINGS HAVE CHANGED:

Since I am no longer a professor in the classroom, this blog is changing focus. (I may at some future date change platforms, too, but not yet). I am now (as of May 2019) playing around with the idea of using this blog as a place to talk about the struggles of writing creatively. Those of you who have been following (or dipping in periodically) know that I've already been doing a little of that, but now the change is official. I don't write every day--yet--so I won't post to the blog every day--yet. But please do check in from time to time, if you're interested in this new phase in my life.


Hi! And you are...?

I am interested to see the fluctuation in my readers--but I don't know who is reading the blog, how you found it, and why you find it interesting. I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to use the "comment" box at the end of any particular post to let me know what brought you to this page--and what keeps you coming back for more (if you do).





Thursday, April 13, 2017

Another day of no progress

I don't usually say a lot about my personal life in this blog, but I need to today. One of my cats is dying. He's been sick for a while, but over the break, he's taken a significant turn for the worse, and I have put in a call to a vet who does compassionate euthanasia house-calls: there's a whole lot involved here, which I won't get into, but tomorrow or Saturday, if my cat, Jack, hasn't given up on his own, I will get the vet here to put him to sleep. I've known this was coming for some time, but that doesn't make it any easier--and the emotional drain of the decision to be ready to put Jack down, the grief that is already very present and will only get more acute once he's gone, makes it very difficult to work, to think, to do anything except to try to distract myself with mindless fluff. I had hoped I could use work as what Bruce would call a "meaningful distraction," but grading essays requires a fair amount of physical energy to support the mental effort--and I am drained. I don't have it in me. And the next few days are likely to be as bad if not worse.

So, no: I won't get much done over the break. I have contacted students who didn't upload essays to Turnitin, or who didn't submit essays period, and I've replied to their emails. I marked a few essays--one completely awful, one mostly awful, one potentially good but missing a solid center--and some accompanying homework, and that's it for today. I refuse to beat myself up over it. The work will get done. Not today, but it will.

I don't have the heart to say much more in this post. I don't know if I'll post again before next week. I'm just breathing through each moment as it comes.

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