Putting It Off

It's the night before I go back to work. I have had just about 75 days of not going into work and doing my my profession. During this tiempo libre, I've ascended volcanoes in Nicaragua, hugged my mom atop a rock in the middle of the Pacific, moved my possessions from one end of the city to the other, played hours of tennis, watched the hapless Mariners on glorious August afternoons, kissed and loved my girlfriend, and the whole time I've been 30, which, at least for me, equates being thoughtful and increasingly pacifically lame.

During this time, I've thought about vast ideas, something I never used to, such as Privilege and Poverty, Waste and Commitment. My lack of focus on concrete details (to use teaching nomenclature) and instead ponder massive themes stems from another round of maturity I'm undergoing. (As I get older, I think of myself as Wile E. Coyote, an anvil locked to my leg, pulling me over the cliff, and my nails dig and drag into my remaining 1-60 years of terra firm, and the name on the side of that anvil is NOT Acme, but Maturity+Time.) Back in the day, I thought of my classroom, a single day's lesson, a single book, a single poignant image for a single poem. Now I think of the system of education, how my students will read and write come the end of the year, the poetics of contemporary literature. I think about scale of time and magnitude. I don't know how to write poetry anymore because I can't perceive single poignant images like I used to, like the Imagists did. I'm losing the micro and gaining the macro. I struggle to enjoy a day; I yearn to enjoy the lifetime.

And at this moment, I feel like I could write about the massive themes of my life and times. Right now I feel like I could sit down and finish the stories I've been working on. Right now I could write for the pure satisfaction of having written. Right now I could commit myself to the life of writing and sign up for classes at the Richard Hugo house and befriend strange Seattleites. (I can already imagine the awkward envies in a room with a frizzy teacher.) Right now I could halt envy and excessive criticism when reading writers my same age; I could concede, "Yes. Okay. They're good." Right now, in witty and profound prose, I feel like I could combine the energy I used to have with the wisdom and humility one gets through struggle and screw-ups. Right now, I could write well, and it feels like I could do it forever.

But. But. But: here's what I know: I won't. I won't because the school year is ahead; exhaustion is ahead. I see it like a storm, and I must shelter myself as best I can, starting tonight. And I won't because, maybe, I don't really even know how to do it anymore. Or worse: I won't do it because I'm not very good it.

I feel like I can write now because I know I can't now. My 75 days are up. My writing personality wants to pursue creativity and fame now when, as he very well knows, the teaching personality can't muster the energy, and the teacher is the one who wins our daily bread.

My teaching self watches from a distance the silly, childish behavior of the writer, now that reality and delusion are so segmented. He used to throw his hands in the air, upset, saddened by its compatriot. ("Just sit down and get to work!") But now, the compatriot's personality is accepted--the traits have set in--and the teacher turns around, gets in the Honda, drives to the poorest city in the county, gets out in the school parking lot, tightens his Nordstrom Rack tie, and walks briskly through the rain, to his classroom, ready to pragmatically do his best, given the circumstances of our time.