like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
like a heavy load.
— Langston Hughes
As I write this it is 6:30 p.m. and I’m exhausted. It’s the last day of what was supposed to be my fall break, but I spent most of today (and all of yesterday morning) grading papers. Now that the essays have been put away I need to blog. I need to blog because Georgia Mae is essentially the life support keeping my writing dreams alive. But my body and brain are both tired and for a long time now I’ve been tempted to pull the plug.
I’ve been wondering if I should just give up on writing and give myself fully to teaching? But if I do that will my deferred dream fester and run until it finally causes me to explode?
I left my job as a full-time reporter because I felt it was what God wanted me to do and because I’d had a desire since college to teach full-time. But now that I don’t write for a living I feel like half a person. I knew I’d miss some things about journalism, but I didn’t sweat it because I figured since I would no longer have obligations to a specific publication to write about particular things (most of which I had little to no interest in) I’d have plenty of ideas and creative energy for writing grand essays in my free time. Unfortunately, that free time doesn’t really exist and neither does that creative energy. The ideas are there. They’ve been jotted down in a notebook and they sit patiently like tiny seeds waiting for me to water them. But all I offer them is drought.