There are few things more depressing in daily life, than taking a well written but useless scene in your manuscript and turning it into a badly written but useful scene. Please somebody, tell me the frustration I’m feeling right now is those last horrible yards up to the next plateau of better writing and not the last ridge before the top of Sisyphus’ mountain.

Oh, yes it has. Many of you know that I am a theater teacher, and so March is dedicated to One Act competition, which is also putting together our spring show. I don’t feel ready to comment on the experience yet (in some ways, my teaching life is something that writes more easily as fiction than blog), but I will say that I am so incredibly proud of my students for the talent, their class, their dedication, and just their all around good-people-ness. I couldn’t have been blessed with better young men and women to work with. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

The house has been slow. I don’t work on it much in March. I don’t see people a lot. I don’t work on my writing very much. I do read, because it’s a great escape from reality, but there’s a coiled tension throughout the entire month that just doesn’t let up and makes the month extreme in every way. Since last I wrote, I have had my 8th wedding anniversary, turned 32, re-written the beginning of my first novel, prayed for my cousin’s wife (who’s in the hospital pregnant with triplets; she could use your prayers or good thougths, too), taught T.S. Eliot (my absolute favorite poet on Earth), painted my best friend’s baby room, planned a road trip to visit my sister (also known as my other best friend!) who will be leaving Austin in July to marry a wonderful man, been nominated for Teacher of the Year, turned in my resignation (and told my seniors), and won two One Act contests and made alternate in a third (and in all three, one of my girls one best actress; in one we got both best actor and actress). The last six weeks have been… major, I guess. And yes, I slipped in the ‘r’ word, taking a risk here that nobody will pass it along until I’ve had the time to talk to all of my kids about it. My deadline for the talk is Thursday after opening night for our public, non-contest showing. 

Must get ready. Going to Ave. Q tonight, and I’m looking forward to it. I’m sorry if my next few entries are… sparse or pensive or…. I dunno. The Earth is shifting, and while I think it’s shifting in wonderful ways, I haven’t yet figured out how to stay standing.

As life spins in new directions, I’m trying to take stock of who I am, who and what I want to be, and honor what I have been without turning maudlin about it.