Good morning, fine readers.

It’s been a hot minute since I had the urge to put words to the screen.

I’m not sure why:

  • School got hard. We had a good class this year. They weren’t angels, but none of them ever are. However, they were good kids (other than they looked at school with disdain). It’s like any school year, but it just was hard.
  • I’ve been distracted by too many things. The whole “control what you can control” idea is great in theory, but in action, ugh. I’m an old man yelling into the wind, which if that keeps me sane, so be it! 🙂
  • One of the biggest things I’ve gotten out of the practice of noticing things and writing them down. My notebooks are dusty. I’m not sure when that happened, but it has, which is a little bit sad, yet, is a practice that only requires a pen and paper. Yes, I’m old school. I like my phone, but I don’t like how tied I am to it.
  • Change sucks. Yes, yes, yes, we need to change to grow, and honestly, the change that has happened over the last two years has been pretty awesome. Moving to a very diverse district (in rural Iowa, no less) has challenged a lot of what I believe, and it’s forced me to work harder than I ever have. I’m off of Duolingo (AI first jackwagons), so my Spanish has suffered, but I’ve found a new program to do some practice. Last year, my students were more fluent in English, so I didn’t have to practice Spanish as much. The whole point of this, my principal is leaving. That change sucks. My grade partner is leaving. That change really sucks. Both of these women convinced me to leave my comfort zone, and knowing I won’t see them is tough. Next year’s grade partner is a great person, so I’m not too worried, and I know the principal who was hired will do a great job. Change just sucks.

Beyond that, we are spending time on the beach to decompress. We’ll get to Colorado to see our daughter and her husband, who’ve moved out there, and we’ll hook the camper up and go on adventures. Where? The road will tell us. I’m taking an iPad and hope to do some writing from all these places because I’m sure there will be a lot to notice and wonder about! That and writing blogs on a phone is awful! 🙂

If you’ve not been writing, why not? Or what keeps you motivated to keep writing? I’d love to hear more in the comments!

Otherwise, if you’ve made it this far, thank you! I love seeing that my voice, however small, gets out there. We talk about that a lot in class, that we all have a voice. That was the driving force behind starting this blog, and as long as I can, it will be one of the driving forces to keep this blog.

The other being it’s a place where I can dump my mind, and no one cares! 🙂

Happy Saturday!

PS: AI-generated pictures for this blog: Thumbs up or thumbs down? I’m on the fence and am curious what you think?