For the first time in...well, months, really...I don't want to write an essay. There have been times when I didn't know what to talk about. I'd cast my eyes around my office, hoping for some inspiration to strike. My eyes would rove over books that I either remembered or had no memory of, depending on how long it had been since I read them. Most of those that I read I could probably regurgitate some event or other that happened in them, and any of those that I don't have any memory at all are probably those that I haven't actually read them yet. Nevertheless, they often spurred some topic or another.
Not tonight.
I finished some final thoughts and changes to my first World War I presentation that I'll be putting on tomorrow, which used up a lot of my time. Thinking about what I'm going to have to do to teach a handful of 15 and 16 year olds about the Great War always makes me glum. It's hard because I have a lot (for the lay person) of knowledge about the World Wars, but not so much that I've become numb to it. So I have to wade through a lot of difficult information and try to distill it in a way that makes sense to students, gives them a sense of the scope of the war, and develops an appreciation for what happened.
As a result, I'm a little tapped out on the creative writing side of things. Throw in my children being children--and all the irritations that go along with that--and I'm really not in the mood to write.
So I've taken an easy way out. I'm writing about how I don't want to write. It's meta.
Done.
Not tonight.
I finished some final thoughts and changes to my first World War I presentation that I'll be putting on tomorrow, which used up a lot of my time. Thinking about what I'm going to have to do to teach a handful of 15 and 16 year olds about the Great War always makes me glum. It's hard because I have a lot (for the lay person) of knowledge about the World Wars, but not so much that I've become numb to it. So I have to wade through a lot of difficult information and try to distill it in a way that makes sense to students, gives them a sense of the scope of the war, and develops an appreciation for what happened.
As a result, I'm a little tapped out on the creative writing side of things. Throw in my children being children--and all the irritations that go along with that--and I'm really not in the mood to write.
So I've taken an easy way out. I'm writing about how I don't want to write. It's meta.
Done.