Ya Gotta Believe

When I woke up this morning, I felt depressed, anxious, and irritable. I felt overwhelmed by work and unsatisfied with my personal life. Worst of all, I realized that I felt totally drained of all passion.

I have spent much of my life dealing with pretty serious depression: I have contemplated suicide many times and even spent five days in the mental health facility attached to Rockingham Memorial Hospital in Harrisonburg. When things were at their worst, I remember saying that my life felt like a light switch - it could be on, it could be off; it didn't much matter one way or the other. Feeling this way doesn't exactly happen all at once, but getting there is not something I am always very aware of either. A bad day here, a bad day there, too many things to do and not enough time to do them. The normal stresses of every day can pile up until I wake up one day and just don't want to get out of bed.

This morning was like that; I just wanted to hide under my covers and not confront any of the myriad things that I had to do today. I thought about the much needed sleep I could get. I thought about the book I was in the middle of but never had time to read anymore. Most importantly, I thought about the baseball game I could watch.

R.A. Dickey, my favorite player, was trying to become the first New York Met pitcher in 22 years to win 20 games. His saga this year has been incredible: He climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro to support a charity devoted to helping girls caught in sex-trafficking; he released a beautiful memoir in which he discusses how he overcame a lifetime of neglect, horrific abuse, and unthinkably bad luck; and in his third year with the only team that would take a chance on a mid-thirties knuckleballer whose career had never materialized, he became the most dominant pitcher in the National League. While all of those are good reasons to love R.A., none of them is the reason that I love him. I love him because he straddles a line between Romantic Hero and Hardworking, Humble Competitor, and that was always how I imagined myself. He's a long-haired, bearded professional baseball player who wants to be an English teacher, and I'm a long-haired, bearded English teacher who wants to be a baseball player. He has fought his way through depression, self-doubt, and bad breaks, and reinvented himself as a completely different kind of person. I've been trying to do the same. I desperately wanted to watch him pitch today, and the fact that if I went to work I wouldn't be able to see him go for win number 20 felt like a kick when I was already down.

I did eventually force myself to get up out of a sense of duty to my students, who are in the midst of doing research for their big essays and need all the help they can get, but I was sure that today would be absolutely miserable. For much of the day, I was right. My students were rowdy, it felt like I couldn't get anything accomplished, and I just knew I would end the day feeling even more buried than I already did. As the day progressed, things brightened a bit. My later classes were more cooperative, and I was able to get a few things crossed off my to-do list. Even though I knew I would miss the early innings of the 1:00 game, I figured that I could still catch a lot of it when school ended at 2:25.

The bell rang and I threw on my Dickey Jersey and Mets hat, which I am thankful I had the presence of mind to bring with me this morning. I pulled out my phone and opened up the MLB app, and through the magic of MLB.tv, I was able to watch the rest of the game. The next two hours reminded me why I am a Mets fan, and how good it can feel to really feel passionately about something.

When I turned the game on, The Mets were down 3-2 early. But shortly thereafter, something amazin' began to happen. A couple of men got on base, and a single by Daniel Murphy tied up the game. When David Wright came up to bat with two men on, it just felt like something good was going to happen. If you watch enough baseball, you'll start to notice that something in the atmosphere of the stadium changes when a guy like David Wright steps to the plate in a big situation. The fans expect him to come through with a big hit, his teammates expect him to come through with a big hit, it even seems sometimes like the opposing team expects him to come through with a big hit. The air in the stadium carries the electricity of the shared excitement of everyone there, and if you are a perceptive enough fan, you can feel it at home too.

I normally pride myself on being the kind of baseball fan who is happier with a string of doubles than a home run. It seems like it's always the casual fans who just come out to see some dingers, but the real fans are there to see a hard fought pitchers' duel with a well timed double or two that make the difference. We'd rather see a few good at-bats in a row, because a baseball season is a marathon and not a sprint. We know that power comes and goes, but patience at the plate and good fundamentals are a recipe for long term success.

Maybe it was the fact I was having such a bad day. Or week. Maybe it was the fact that I had once again watched my beloved Mets far surpass any expert's expectation in the first half of the season, only to watch them completely fall apart after the all-star break. Maybe it was the fact that I just wanted for R.A. to get that 20th win so badly, especially in front of a home crowd after the year he had. But when David Wright set his feet in the batter's box, I felt like I was eight years old again, wanting nothing more than to see the home town hero crush one out of the stadium.

When David made good contact and sent out an opposite field shot to put the Mets up 6-3 and give Dickey his first lead of the day, I jumped out of my desk chair and screamed. I danced. I was so happy, I had to choke back tears. When R.A. came back out and continued to sit down Pirate batters one after another, I felt giddy. When he tied his career mark of 13 strikeouts in a game, I cheered. And when he got an infield single in his final at-bat of the season in front of an ecstatic home crowd, I held back the tears again. When he came out of the game in the 8th inning, I gave him a standing ovation from 300 miles away. When Jon Rauch gave up a 2 run homer in relief to cut the lead to 1, I just said to myself "Ya Gotta Believe!"

R.A. Dickey, David Wright, and the rest of the Mets made me believe again, and that's what being a Mets fan is all about. Just like my team in the second half of this season, I've hit a rough spot in my life. I look back at what it was like a few months ago, and it seems like everything has changed. It would be easy to give into despair and pity, to say that I am cursed with bad luck, or that things would be better if it weren't for the people in charge, but that's just not what Mets fans do. We say things are awful and try to act like it doesn't bother us, but deep down we always hold on to the hope that we can turn things around. The Mets have been eliminated from playoff contention this year, but when one of our own needed help, every player, coach, and fan did everything they could to help him.

When Dickey gave his post game interview on the field and thanked the fans for supporting him this year, I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. I cried for the promising start that dissolved with July, I cried for my own lost sense of direction and happiness, and I cried with the feeling of community that comes from thousands of people loving a team so much that they can all join together in finding something to root for in a lost season. I don't know what it's like to be a fan of The Royals of Padres or Twins, but I sincerely hope that those fans can feel as a part of something as I feel with the Mets. Fandom can be a great and terrible thing, but as long as you keep believing, you'll never be on your own.

Dan Cathy Ruffled My Feathers

So I haven't done much writing lately, but it seems like everyone is talking about Chick-Fil-A and its president, Dan Cathy. The following are my thoughts, taken from an email to a friend who prefers (perhaps wisely) not to debate politics via public internet forum.

It's good to hear from you!

Thanks for the email - I am always glad to hear your opinion on things, as I feel I can usually trust it to be well-thought out, respectful, and include a better understanding than my own of any given subject from a different perspective. I understand your reluctance to weigh in on public internet forums, as I often find myself forgetting that one shouldn't argue with a fool because people may not be able to tell the difference, but I kind of wish you would reconsider. I think that the more visible debate is between reasonable and intelligent people, the more everyone can fully see both sides and inform their opinions. Plus, it's good to see mutual respect among people who disagree, which is hard to come by these days.

I've been thinking a lot about that last part for a couple of weeks. I have said for a long time that the cultural divide in this country is the most harmful thing about our society. More than the philosophical differences on either side, it seems more and more that it's the people on either side that don't like each other. On healthcare, abortion, tax law, gun law, etc., I try to see both sides of the issue. I have my own opinions, but that doesn't mean I can't see what the other side is saying. I understand very well when you say that most of the people you interact with have different views on many things, as I fall mostly outside the norm of my peer group on the majority of political issues. This doesn't affect the respect with which I view my friends, family, coworkers, etc.

The trouble, of course, comes when people start talking about homosexuality, specifically in regards to marriage. The trouble with the pluralistic approach when it comes to this issue is that there is no acceptable (in my eyes) middle ground. Person A can own a gun while Person B chooses not to, but Person A can't live in an America where gays are treated equally in the eyes of the law while Person B doesn't. While I do feel very strongly that homosexuality is not for anyone on the outside to judge, what most inflames me is the paternalistic approach that those arguing against gay marriage take for society. The parallels to anti-miscegenation laws from the last century seem undeniable to me. The Supreme Court ruled (correctly, I and most would say) that those laws violated the 14th amendment's guarantee that no state can take away from a specific group the rights that it protects for others, without due process. Constitutionally, it seems such a cut and dried issue that it makes running across those who oppose gay marriage especially frustrating. The only basis for denying same-sex couples the right to marry, then, is a religious one. And while the 1st amendment doesn't expressly guarantee the separation of church and state as many believe, several Supreme Court rulings do. If marriage is a secular arrangement, churches have no right imposing their beliefs on those who are not members. If marriage is a religious sacrament, then the government should get out of the business altogether.

I think that our society is at a very important time when it comes to gay marriage. Here, today is equivalent to Alabama in 1950 during the last big civil rights movement. The next few years are critical in the fight for equality. I fully believe that gay marriage will be protected within the next 30 years, but when that day comes is something we can influence. If those rights were guaranteed tomorrow, rather than 30 years from now, think how many more survivors will receive death benefits, how many partners will be allowed hospital visits, how many couples can have beautiful weddings and pledge to love and honor and hold each other in front of friends and family in a way that we as straight people take for granted. Those are some of the most important events in a person's life, and right now millions of people are denied those moments for no legal reason.

As someone who eats at Chick-Fil-A regularly, but not especially frequently, I am aware that a very small amount of the money I spend there makes its way into the hands of anti-equality groups. For a long time, I ate there knowing full well the politics of the owner. As you pointed out, chicken has little to do with marriage. But with Dan Cathy's recent reaffirmation (and really, doubling down) of his beliefs, and with us being so close to a tipping point, eating there just doesn't seem a viable moral option anymore. If I give 12 cents to a cause that I oppose with every ounce of my body and extend marriage inequality by just a few minutes, I'm making a difference in the wrong direction. It's especially unfortunate that all of the good Chick-Fil-A does, which is substantial, is tied in with this mess. That was my moral justification for going there for a long time: my money did more good than harm. However, I do fully believe what I said yesterday: until you get basic civil rights down, the rest just doesn't matter. People deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and saying that one person's love is not as valuable or as real as another's denies him dignity and respect.

Let's not forget where Dan Cathy made his remarks that reignited this issue in the public eye: he was giving an interview, attempting to establish his company as an example of the Southern Way of Life to attract the segment of the population to which that appeals, in which I generally count myself. This time, I think Mr. Cathy made a quick generalization about the way he and his coworkers feel, thinking that it would make them seem trustworthy and down-home to their fans, without realizing it would alienate many of them. The implicit support of that position by silence and continued patronage is much more harmful to the fight for equality than the few pennies that make their way from my pocket into the pockets of those I disagree with. I know that I don't have enough money to make an appreciable difference in the fight for marriage equality, and Dan Cathy isn't really donating enough to make a very big difference. What this whole thing is really about is that Chick-Fil-A as a company is attempting to cash in on its homophobia, and I find that to be an offensive position. For many, his beliefs make him and his chicken more appealing (look at the support of Mike Huckabee's Chick-Fil-A appreciation campaign); for me, his outspoken approach to the issue has made it hard for me to support him. Rhetoric is powerful, and symbolic gestures are often more so. As long as Chick-Fil-A is making them for the other side, I think they need to be met by those who stand up for equality.

Salvation Song: Are The Avett Brothers Prophets?

The word "Prophet" is a weighty one, as it should be. It's a large and important concept. A prophet leads people to happiness, a better life, salvation. A prophet feels the touch of the divine and is able to show others how to feel it as well. A well-timed prophet can end a war, or start one. A successful prophet influences the lives of millions or billions of people for generations upon generations.

I say this not because I don't think you know what a prophet is, but instead to prove that I know what one is.

I do, and The Avett Brothers are prophets.

The first time I articulated this thought to myself was about 2 months ago, but I think the seeds were laid the first time I heard "Murder in the City" performed on their album Live, Volume 3. For those of you unfamiliar with the song, pause a minute and listen:

I've long despised the idea of revenge as a destructive act without any positive consequences, but in this song Scott Avett sings of a type of forgiveness and letting go and moving on that just makes sense. If I get murdered in the city, don't go revenging in my name. One person dead from such is plenty. He dismisses the idea of revenge that many people still find natural, and hints that he wishes his theoretical killer no harm. He feels compassion for the man who ended his life too quickly, who stole his future with his wife and daughter, presumably for nothing more than the cash in his wallet.

It's not a new idea - you've probably heard something similar. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Love your enemies; do good to them which hate you." The Qur'an commands, "If thou dost stretch thy hand against me, to slay me, it is not for me to stretch my hand against thee to slay thee." A famous parable of the Buddha includes a father advising his son that, "nonviolence ends violence." So, pretty definitively, prophets from many times and regions have shared this idea that love will conquer hate and that we should not strike out against those that strike out against us.

But being a harbinger of peace and love does not necessarily a prophet make.

Instead, I turn to the spiritual awakening I have felt as evidence of their prophet-hood. For a long time, I counted myself as an atheist. I'm still not comfortable with the idea of God in the way most people probably think of it - I just can't imagine that there's a 100 foot-tall man with a flowing white beard, sitting on a cloud deciding who gets AIDS or cancer and who wins the lottery or meets the boy of her dreams - but I do now feel a deep and spiritual connection to the people and world around me that I was not in touch with before. A life force, of sorts, that flows through and around us. While this awakening was not entirely the result of listening to Scott and Seth Avett's music, it does seem like with every personal revelation I have, the two have a song to correspond. The messages of forgiveness and thankfulness that they preach in songs like "Murder in the City" and "Nothing Short of Thankful", the spiritual renewal they sing about in "The Ballad of Love and Hate" and "Tear Down the House", the flat out joy they exude in "Kick Drum Heart" and "The Traveling Song" speak to the breadth and depth of their own living, which in turn inspires me to continue along my road of discovery.

And there's the crux of it. Embrace life. Treat people well. Do good. They share this advice with millions of people who buy their albums, watch their YouTube videos, and go to their concerts. They preach and live by example a lifestyle and attitude that leads to happiness, a better life, salvation.

Historical prophets - Jesus, Moses, Muhammed, Buddha - tend to seem more than human. With Scott and Seth Avett, it's different. They fully embrace their humanity; I think you might be hard-pressed to find two people who are more acutely aware of their shortcomings and willing to express the darkest parts of themselves to so wide an audience. Other prophets are treated like God chose them because they were special. Or maybe they were special because God chose them. The Avett Brothers are special because they are human. They shine a light on themselves, good qualities and bad, and allow themselves to be beacons for all of us who want to do better than we have in the past. And for that, I will follow them.

We came for salvation, we came for family, we came for all that's good, that's how we'll walk away.
We came to break the bad, we came to cheer the sad, we came to leave behind the world a better way.

An Open Letter To Parents

Dear Parents,

Let me start by saying that we, as teachers, love your kids. Our jobs are hard - much too hard to put up with if we didn't really, really love what we do. And we can't truly love what we do without being heavily invested in the happiness and well-being of your children.

Too much of what I see involving students' relationships with their parents involves far too much apathy on the parts of parents. Moms who refuse to let kids participate in after school activities because they don't want to be bothered to pick their child up. Dads who don't at all care what their kids are doing in school, how they feel about what's going on in their lives, or much of anything else involving their children. Kids who say that nobody ever read to them as a child.

Those are the truly heartbreaking stories. And they are heartbreaking. I don't know a single teacher who wouldn't wince at stories like these, feeling emotional pain so real that it actually feels like we were beaten, scalded, or otherwise abused. Even my friends who got into the profession before deciding that it wasn't really for them would feel much sympathy for kids in these types of situations, and do whatever they could to help.

So, in looking at the big picture, the problem of an over-protective parent is a good problem for a teacher to have. I am so, so, so glad that you are there to listen to your child's complaints. That you care enough about what is bothering your child to contact the school about it. That your child's pain hurts you even worse than it hurts her. These are good things that compassionate and caring teachers recognize. I am relieved to find that your child is not one of the ones who needs my love, because she is getting it at home. But that doesn't mean that I don't still love her.

I know that when your child is struggling in my class, and finds it frustrating, it can seem like I am picking on her. I remember being absolutely convinced that some of my teachers were out to get me when I was in school. I was 100% sure of it. Now that I'm a teacher, I wish I could go back and talk to all of them and say how wrong I realize I was. Even the teachers for whom I was sure that spiting me was their primary reason for getting out of bed in the morning almost certainly had my best interests at heart. Their attacks on me were, at worst, mistakes in judgment or speech. More likely, they were imagined by me because of stress and frustration.

Being a teenager is hard. I think it's much harder than being an adult. I don't think there is a kid in any high school in America who doesn't sometimes feel awkward, bumbling, uncool, and like everyone hates him. And then we teachers expect them to deal with that, troubles with significant others, troubles with siblings, troubles with parents, exhaustion from working and going to school simultaneously, and all the work from their other classes while they listen to us talk about what we are teaching that day. Teenagers are fucking soldiers for dealing with all of that.

So I don't blame your child if he feels put upon in my class. I think it's almost inevitable at one time or another for your child to feel persecuted. It's an unfortunate fact of growing up that a teenager's emotional cortex develops well before his center for reasoning. I hope that your child is able to tell me when he feels that I have been unfair or he needs something so that we can work out a solution that results in both his comfort and learning. I am human and I make mistakes: I say the wrong thing, or something doesn't come out the way that I mean it to. I get frustrated and become impatient. I try my best to limit these mistakes, but they happen to everyone, and a slip up like that can make a child who already feels like everyone hates him be even more certain of that.

But I do not hate your child. I have never, will never consciously do anything to hurt him. If your student has a problem with something I did or said, please try to assure him that it was not malicious, and that any embarrassment or anger or resentment that your child feels was the accidental by-product of an innocent mistake by someone who wants nothing but the best for every single person in his classroom. It is not often that I run into parents who feel that I or another teacher hold special hatred in our hearts for students, but it has happened. Nothing has hurt me more as a teacher than finding out that a student felt like I really hated her. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are sometimes certain things about students that I dislike (The student I mentioned didn't even have any qualities I didn't like), but I have never once had a student that I wished I hadn't met.

It is really great that you love your child enough to stick up for her. But please, instead of attacking me like an enemy, ask me how we can work together to help your child succeed. That is what everyone involved wants.

Sincerely,

A teacher who loves your child and every other child who sets foot in my classroom.

Go buy Scrivener

This is going to be a short post. Most of my posts over the next month will probably be pretty short. I am still going to try to keep up the at-least weekly posting, but I will be focusing on attempting to get a novel written between November 1st and November 30th.

As I stated in an earlier post, I'm competing in NaNoWriMo this year. I was scared pretty much shitless by the idea when I signed up, but as the start date approaches, I am feeling pretty confident. In large part, that is due to the fact that I downloaded a trial version of the program Scrivener. If you happen to be a writer of pretty much any style or genre, I highly recommend you give it a shot. It has helped me organize and plan my novel in a way that has made this insane task I'm undertaking much more manageable and clear. I now have a general plot arc with summaries of each chapter, character dossiers, and plenty of other background research-type information at my fingertips. It has helped me realize that I have a lot more ideas than I thought I had, which was certainly a welcome surprise. Scrivener's user interface is simple, neat, and fun to use - something that is probably likely to help me stay motivated on days when I just don't feel like writing in November.

On a related note, I went to my first official NaNoWriMo event on Sunday evening. It was a kickoff party at Capital Ale House, and I really enjoyed myself. The people there were strange; many of them were even weirder than me. I guess a contest like this attracts its own unique set of participants, most of whom were a lot of fun. It was strange seeing the people who have done this for a few years, and how confident they felt when other newbies like myself seemed so terrified. The organizers provided notebooks for everyone, and we went around and wrote encouragements or ideas in each other's books. It was fun talking to such a varied group of people and hearing the ideas that all of them had. I expected there to be a lot of young people there, and I was surprised that it seemed like most of the participants were baby-boomer aged. I don't know why, but it kind of made me hopeful to see that creativity doesn't die in older folks - apparently, it's more alive there than anywhere else.

That's it for now. I suppose all that's left is to actually write the damned book. Piece of cake.

It Doesn't Seem Like That Much Has Changed in the Last 400 Years

This week at school has been the type that convinces me that teaching has to be one of the greatest professions a person could ever possibly have.

When I decided to get into this line of work, I did it because I wanted to be a coach and because I wanted to sit around and talk about literature all day. There has been less discussion of books than I imagined when I signed on - the fact is that most of my students don't understand a lot of what they read the first time through, which makes deeper discussion about meaning difficult - but I did find an unexpected joy as I really got down to do the work of teaching.

Most of the kids I teach are fairly low-level students. They don't understand a lot of what they read, they are generally unmotivated by either grades or the pursuit of knowledge, and a lot of them are just flat-out lazy. Thinking about teaching a group like this could be mildly depressing, but it's not all bad. No matter what we are doing, there always seems to be at least one kid who is interested. Usually there are a few in scattered pockets across the classroom. These pockets, though they may shift from day to day or week to week, are who I choose to focus on. It's inspiring and gratifying to see a student really connect with a piece of literature: they feel good about themselves for the positive encouragement they hear when I assure them that yes, that is pretty much exactly what the author was saying. Watching a student really understand a difficult concept (it sounds sort of funny, but you really can SEE someone understand something, I promise) brings hope for the future. I figure that if I can find and enlighten those students who open themselves up to be enlightened each day, everyone will gain at least some small shred of literary knowledge during their time in my room. Sometimes it's hard to feel like I'm leaving the majority of students behind, but I try to imagine the impact I'm having with the ones who are getting something rather than focusing on what the ones who are asleep or zoned out are missing.

This is how I mentally and emotionally deal with the frustrations I encounter every day, and make no mistake, it can be very frustrating. But then there are weeks like this one, when everything comes together and for a moment you see what is really possible in all of these students and in the universe. Instead of looking for hints of light in a room of darkness, you are overwhelmed with the brightness that comes at you from all directions.

On a day that started with my students complaining that poetry is stupid and insisting that they will never need to know any of this, they were dumbstruck by the beauty of Pablo Neruda's words. The boy who volunteered to read his "Sonnet 89" looked as though he were about to cry when he finished. The entire group not only understood the poet's words, but really felt them.

When we read John Donne's "Holy Sonnet 10", my classes engaged in an energetic debate about the nature of death with a degree of intellectualism that I didn't realize many of them were capable of. They brought up their own fears of the hereafter, and recognized the paradox of realizing that there is nothing to be afraid of and their inability to let fear go.

A creative writing project which asked students to write poems using conceits ended with some of the best poetry created by young people that I've seen. One student, a 6'5" bohemoth headed to Virginia Tech on a football scholarship, wrote a tragic and beautiful poem about his mother being struck blind that left half of my class in tears.

When we read the seduction poems of Andrew Marvell, Robert Herrick, and John Suckling, my students were eager to discuss each of these men and their writing. I don't think I saw a single students asleep or not paying attention all day. Like much great literature, the poems we read focus on men's attempts to get women to sleep with them; after reading the poems and discussing their arguments, one girl said, "it doesn't seem like that much has changed in the last 400 years!" I agreed with her and we all laughed about it.

I love that my students are connecting with literature in a way that is meaningful to them. I love that they are interested when they get in the room. I love that I feel like everyone in the room is really getting something out of what we are doing, and not just the few who feel good that day. I don't expect every week to be like this - teenagers really do have very emotionally taxing lives, and it's almost ridiculous to expect them to care about everything every day - but when so many great days are strung together in this way, it makes me know for sure that I am doing the right thing with my life.

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month, as decided by the good people at the NaNoWriMo offices. I first heard about the contest, which encourages participants to write a 50,00 word novel in 30 days, a couple of years ago. The younger sister of a friend had participated a couple of times, and she told me about her adventures in insanely fast book-writing. I was immediately intrigued - I used advice from the website to help my middle school students craft short stories during my student teaching just a few weeks later, and I based my entire curriculum around the website when I taught creative writing last year. I flirted with the idea of undertaking what is probably an act of near-lunacy last November, but honestly was just too scared to do it. November is when wrestling season starts, and when my life become exponentially busier, I rationalized.

But I just signed up for an account at the website. I entered myself in this year's contest. I am committed to finishing a book.

I have never been much for New Year's resolutions. I actually can't remember ever making one before this year, but last January I declared that 2010 would be the year of novel-writing. I did about 30 pages of character sketches, background writing, outlining, and general preparation, but only wrote about 10 pages of actual story.

So November is here, my last chance to finish a book this year, and I am determined to get it done. It's time to "nut up or shut up," as the fella says.  I love to write. It's why I started this blog. I would love to get a book published and make some extra money, but my probably-quixotic quest is more about the fact that I feel like I have to actually DO something creative in my life. Finish something of my own rather than just be an appreciator or a scholar or a critic. I feel like a writer, even though I haven't really done all that much writing in my life. This is my chance to earn that feeling.

I'm sure my book is going to be pretty terrible, at least on November 30th. Hopefully I can turn it into something that someone might actually want to read, but even if no one ever does, I'm excited at the prospect of doing something.

I'm anxious and giddy and fearful and curious to see what next month brings. 50,000 words is an awful lot. Nearly 2,000 words a day. I'm sure I will be exhausted and at times discouraged, but I hope I can keep up the resolve to actually get this thing done. I think I can. I've done things in my life that seemed impossible at the time, and I have always been glad that I completed such tasks. It's been a long time since I did something really difficult, and I'm looking forward to the challenge.