A fine Tuesday to those 5 readers who are checking out my blog today.  It’s a good day, a hot day, and my daughter’s 16th birthday. It’s amazing how you have children these creatures grow up right before you, and you don’t even know that it’s happening.  Our daughter is a gorgeous young woman, but never seems to realize the full what she could do if she allowed herself the chance. She makes the choice to be attached to her phone and between texting and Snapping and Instagraming and whatever elseing I’m missing, hides from what she could be. She’ll get there, this I have no doubt, but it is a worry of mine.

As I think about what we talked about a lot in class this year, following your passions, I showed both of my daughters this TEDx video:

I drive my wife crazy with beatboxing. I’m a product of 80’s where true hip-hop was born, and I loved the sounds and energy this kind of music could produce. While I’m not one who will go out and purchase much, I have always enjoyed the genre (much to the chagrin of my wife and surprise of my students). However, this is a guy who followed his passion, and is getting paid to do so. My daughter looked at me and say, “Yeah, but he was just annoying when he started!” True.  But how many people who are performers didn’t drive someone crazy at one point or another?  The point I made to her: if you follow your passions AND get paid, you’ll never have a job, period. That made her think a little bit, then nod in agreement.  That’s why I think, in spite of ALL the changes that have taken place, I enjoy what I do so much. I’ve never looked at myself or what I do as a passion, but I’ve never really felt like this was just a job either.  “I love what I do and I do what I love” is something I tell my students all the time. Sure, just like everyone else, I wake dreading going to school, but honestly, I cannot imagine doing something else. Well, I could, but that’s coaching, and I get to do that anyway! 🙂

A couple more things:

  • Last Monday, I was told that my cancer didn’t seem to have spread, so for the next two years, I have either a CT scan or a chest x-ray every two months. This type of cancer, while not aggressive, has about a 30% reoccurance rate, so vigilance is the key. After those two year, the rate goes down, but I’ll have 10 years of scan before being pronounced cancer free.
  • I’ll be “just” an 8th grade teacher next fall, so you 8th grade RLA teachers, I’d love to hear from you. I muddled through my first year, and after I finish another book or two of pleasure reading, I’m going to dive into a couple of books in hopes of making both some reading and writing changes in my room. The problem is, I get 50 minutes for both reading and language arts. Ugh.
  • With my surgery last month, my garden suffered, but I do have a few things both purchased and planted. I’ll have some beans (black and green), tomatoes, peppers (red, orange, green, and jalapeno), broccoli, cabbage (red and green), kale, basil, oregano, and hopefully, I’m getting the zucchini and squash planted in the next day or two. It’s a smaller overall garden, but we’ll still produce a lot of stuff!

If you’ve got this far, thank you. I will continue to try to be more regular with my writing. Today is the first day in a couple of weeks I’ve felt good about putting words to the “page”. I hope I can find that groove again!

Enjoy your day! 🙂