Tag Archives: writing

General Posts

Wednesday Morning Ramblings

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To all my friends and readers, for a limited time, you can download Michael West’s “Poseidon’s Children” for free from Amazon.  Even if you don’t own a Kindle, you can still download the book and read it on your computer.  Please, take advantage of this opportunity and help support Seventh Star Press.  Even though the book is available for free, SSP will benefit from the exposure and rankings on Amazon, which in the long-run could help me sell more books.  Please, download the book and share this link.  It’s your patriotic duty.

If you don’t know anything about Michael or his work, here are a couple of links to reviews for Poseidon’s Children:

http://www.scifiguysbookreview.blogspot.com/2012/03/poseidons-children-book-review.html

http://vampirekiss1967.blogspot.com/2012/04/guest-post-with-roger-hays-from.html

General Posts

Monday Morning Ramblings

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I had a pretty cool experience last night while talking to Collin.  On average, I talk to the boys 4-5 nights a week for about an hour each night.  Usually, Collin wants to play games that we make up, and most of those games are based on whatever video game he’s into.  Sometimes, he wants to talk to me “like adults,” meaning he wants to tell me all about his job, wife, and kids.  Currently, he’s an illustrator, an explorer, an inventor, and a construction worker; he’s also been married for twenty years and has two or three kids, depending on the day.  Finn sometimes wants to talk, but mostly, he just enjoys having me sing to him.

Recently, Collin has begun reading to me from a book he got about the most dangerous animals in the world.  He gets very serious and has already developed a reading voice that sounds like a museum tour guide.  He needs a little help on a few words, but for the most part, he’s becoming a pretty good reader.  I probably don’t need to mention how proud that makes me.  For the last four years, I’ve worried about him watching too much TV and playing too many video games, but now that he’s discovered reading for fun, he seems to be taking to it much like I did at that age.

Last night, Finn had already fallen asleep, so Collin and I started out playing a couple of games.  Then, he asked if he could read to me from a new book he had just gotten, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  If you know anything about me, you probably know that’s the book that got me into fantasy and writing, so it’s pretty special to me to begin with.  He had gotten to page 47 on his own and read aloud to me up to page 63.  For nearly a full hour, I just sat and listened to him, helping him with a few words but mostly just listening to my oldest son read to me one of my favorite books.  It was one of those ineffable moments parents get to share with their children that make all the difficulties worth it.  All I can say is that I’ll hold onto that memory for as long as I can.

General Posts

Thursday Morning Ramblings

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I’ve reached the point in my teaching career where I feel like I’m wasting my life.   The skills I teach, writing, critical thinking, and to a lesser extent reading, seem life relics of a bygone era, and every semester, not only are the students less prepared coming into class, they also tend to act more resistant to learning even the basics.  Sure, there are the occasional gems and the dedicated adults, but their numbers dwindle with each year.  Now, after 14 years in the classroom, I truly feel burnt out, used up, frustrated, and ready for a substantive change.

Those who have followed me for a while have heard me gripe about these feelings before, but now, I can’t stress loudly enough that I really, really, really need out.  I feel like I’m suffocating from the demands of the job, and with each passing hour of class prep and grading, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve lost yet another hour that could’ve been spent doing something more productive and more fulfilling for me.  Right now, I’m honestly only here for the paycheck, and considering how paltry the money is in comparison to the effort required, that’s simply not adequate motivation to continue.

The downside is that I know I’m stuck for at least another year and a half because I’m too close to having my retirement vested to walk away today, and while that amount of money may not be enormous, it is enough that I would be stupid not to tough it out for at least 18 more months.  But with every single day and every single essay graded, I feel a little piece of myself die and know  the time wasted on most of the papers is that much less time left in my life to write my own works.  I know there are some of you who feel trapped in your jobs and can relate to what I’m expressing.

The good part is now that my health is coming back, my focus is returning to the farm.  Without that prospect of hope, I’m not certain I could make it, but having the opportunity to get it going provides me with at least the sense of an escape route.  Over the next few months, I’m going to throw myself back into that project and make as much progress as I can.  With a little luck and a lot of hard work, hopefully it will become productive enough that two years from now I can walk away from education permanently.  One of the only things I know for certain is that I don’t have much more than that left in me.