Procrastadabbler

I’ve not been doing much writing lately because I’ve been struggling with figuring out what I want to say or write about. Writing turned into an obligation rather than a way of sharing my thinking and participating in a broader dialogue about the things that are important to me.

Today I saved an article from a magazine that got me thinking about some things, and I was lamenting (internally) that I have no one to talk to about this article or the ideas this article captures. I do share them to some extent with my husband, and while he is kind and responds in a supportive fashion, he doesn’t have the scholarly perspective that I seek. I save the articles thinking I’m going to share them with my students, but for the most part, my students aren’t interested either. They read the articles because they are assigned them, but mostly their thinking is superficial. Not because they’re superficial people, but because they don’t have the same set of interests, or frankly the time to engage in ideas that are above and beyond their social realities of being novice teachers and working on their master’s degree.

As I was thinking about this, I realized that is the reason I write. I write because I am enthused or inflamed about an idea and I want to share my thinking about that idea, and I want to hear what other’s think about that idea. I’ve been struggling with my writing because (as I said the first paragraph of this post) I’ve been writing out of obligation not out of interest.

My task now is to rekindle my various interests and my voice in those interests. Because of my frustration, I’ve deadened myself to intellectual engagement lately. It is time to reanimate.