Daily Journal - Thoughts on Testing--Nope, Thoughts on Goals

 Hello Blog,

I'm right in the middle of things, but I need to journal or I'll forget.

Ok, that was fully interrupted.  I got a call after 20 seconds of writing that I needed to leave school right then.  So...it's now 3:40 in the morning.  I'm really bad right now about having Canvas updated.  I have a few more things to grade on Canvas, and a couple students who turned things in on Canvas will be mad at me if they look at Focus.  I just needed to put in some numbers so it wasn't blank!  I promise, I'll go on Canvas tomorrow after school, first thing!

I need to also make a plan for my Goal Sheet.  If my first semester goal is to compile all the notes from my journals about my Book Characters, so I can start making a story board, then I need to get a good place to compile all those notes.  I might need to print them and put them in a binder, so I can hole punch them and re-order them.  That will be a little bear.  I'll need to catch up with Canvas first.  And taxes.  And grading.  Oh boy, it never ends!  LOL at least I have creative writing assignments to read now.  English 1 assignments are 90% students who are writing just what they have to, either aiming for a C or for an A.  It's rare to get someone giving me "extra".  Well, Creative Writing is the other way around.  I have a few students who need the extra support, or who are lazy.  The rest: I'm getting some good stuff!  I need to keep an eye on those students who need the extra support.  I sometimes--often--take my creativity for granted.  Not everyone can think as quickly as I, and most students don't have the vocabulary.  I'll work on it.  :)

Ok, it's 3:45 am.  I could push through, but I should go to bed.  Plus, I don't want these journal entries to be too long, or the students will accuse me of cheating them longer than 10 minutes just to make them feel bad!  Goodnight blogger, and Pandora music!

Daily Journal - Back into it

 Hello Blog,

You have kept safe many journal entries over the years.  I suppose this is the best place for me to sit down and journal now.  I'm telling my Creative Writing students that we need to have a daily habit of writing, that it is the one thing that almost all writers agree leads to success.  Well, I don't have it, and I should be modeling for my students.  So I'm going to write about 10 minutes per day, and stop myself, so I can show them how much it is to write for 10 minutes.

I'm currently listening to "Miracles" by Two Steps from Hell, an amazing instrumental group that makes a lot of movie scores.  I've been binging them a lot more than my other people like Two Cellos, Break of Reality, or Vienna Teng.

I don't really know what to write about.  I'm so out of the habit!  I saw my last post was in response to the Men's Retreat a year ago.  The next one is coming up, but I'm wait-listed.  Tessa and I both thought the other person had signed me up.  [sighs]  If I can get a couple more people interested, we found a place that's very price affordable, but if not, I'll just miss out.  It's a beautiful retreat at Lake Lure, NC.  The housing is whatever; the kayaking is the big draw!  And of course, fellowship with other guys from church that I don't hang out with regularly at all.  I had three people ask if I was coming!  And I still failed [shakes his head].  But I got some amazing writing and praying done last year.  I really hope I can go.

I only have 3 more minutes to finish 10 minutes of writing.  I can do it!  But my neck is killing me.  I'm not sure why, but my neck has been hurting on the right side in a weird way.  I need to examine my bed and stuff and see what's going on.  I'm taking care of my sinuses, finally (and with surgery in the not-too-distant future), but I really really don't want my back pain to return.

I made it to 9 1/2 minutes.  I'll put a title on this and call it a day :)

Renewal, Appearances, and such

 Hello Blogger.com, which had another name way back when I started.

I was browsing entries today, or more aptly scrolling through them at a brisk skim to try to find a particular hymn that I was Sure I had written in here somewhere.  As it was nowhere to be found at the end, I tried at the beginning, and I made my way toward the center, seeing old and new in sporadic variation.

I thought that perhaps someone might read this, when I'm old and gone.  I turn 40 this year, after all, and I began this back in college.  And when they do, they might wonder who are these people that fill the pages of his thoughts...and the funny thing is that I've been married happily for 12 years now, and I'm quite certain that my college girlfriend and my after-college girlfriend take up a great deal of this blog.

It's not because they are more important, or because I'm anachronistic, wishing I could go back to those carefree days.  No, I do wish I could go back to those carefree blogging days, when I didn't have children taking up so much of my time.  I'm a teacher, and I have 3 kids of my own, so things like laundry and dishes are constantly struggling against my concerns for my students and my desire to spend playtime with my own.  Even now, I am writing this when I Could be heading out on the road to pick them up from after-school care.  In fact, I should be journaling in a workbook for a church men's group.  Or reading the Bible.  Or reading Acts 4 and 5 of Macbeth, since I don't know what happens and I'm literally reading it with the students tomorrow!  Or reading one of the two books I have to finish for book studies before mid-June to enable me to renew my teaching license!

But no, not much going on right now...

I thought about the well-spring, where can be found the source of my words.  It isn't dry...and it isn't clogged.  It just...isn't being dipped into!  I spent a weekend men's retreat a couple weeks ago, at the prompting of the Spirit, and I wrote 3 poems and a song!  The song melody was sort of done by me, but a couple of the other guys jumped in and wrote a full guitar line and co-wrote the chorus.  It was awesome!

And now I'm back to writing notes on sticky notes, reflection journal entries in the middle of grading or sleeping (or both!).  Lord!  What am I doing?  I love teaching, I really do, but I need to find time for writing.  And writing about Tessa :D

I will never forget how to swim across a page with my pen, or to close my eyes and write with only my fingers on the keyboard, such a familiar dance floor.  I'm going to try to come back, blogger, I'm going to try.

The Stony Heart - hymn

 A hymn that always moves me, but it took me forever to find online:

The Stony Heart

by Joseph Hart

1 Oh for a glance of heavenly day,

to take this stubborn heart away,

and thaw with beams of love divine

This heart, this frozen heart of mine!

2 The rocks can rend; the earth can quake;

The seas can roar; the mountains shake;

Of feeling all things show some sign:

But this unfeeling heart of mine.

3 To hear the sorrows thou hast felt,

O Lord, an adamant might melt;

But I can read each moving line,

and nothing moves this heart of mine.

4 Thy judgments too, which devils fear,

(Amazing thought!) unmoved I hear;

Goodness and wrath in vain combine,

To stir this stupid heart of mine.

5 Eternal Spirit! mighty God!

Apply to me the Saviour's blood;

'Tis His rich blood, and His alone,

Can move and melt this heart of stone.

Source: The Book of Worship #355

Hello.  Apparently, I need to let everyone know that Blogger.com and Blogspot.com, specifically my site, uses cookies to track information about what you (reader) like to read and click on.  If you're not cool with this, then please go somewhere else.  If you're ok with The Man tracking you because you know it's hard to avoid these days, then continue reading.

I found an old journal of mine.  It's pretty cool because the front of each page is a journal assignment from my freshman English class in high school, but the back of each page is something more recent, specifically from my last year in Houston and my first year or two in Florida.  Regarding the journal assignments, they get a single grade for their reflection journals for the whole 1st quarter...I may do that for my students, rather than doing them continuously, as I have been doing.

It inspired me to try and revive my LiveJournal account.  For those of you who read this a million years ago when I was currently writing them, I used Blogspot for journal entries and LiveJournal for poetry and story snippets.  I wanted to copy a poem onto LiveJournal, but despite resetting my password, it is not blocking my ip address for illegal login... yeah...

So: a poem from 2006 or 2007 entitled Fog, now finished.

In the gentle hours before dawn
peeks over the treeline with rosy cheeks,
before she waves tangerine fingers,
beckoning to her brother's glowing face,
which soon will crest in radiance,
In the still-shadowed hours after night
turns up cerulean sheets to cover
her head, and the moon with sandy eyes
looks toward her own secret bower,
On the days when zephyr plays
alone, gusting mischievously but only
half-heartedly, then turns to himself
and keeps his own tired counsel,
Then it is that soft waters in slow
river channels, or lying with eyes shut,
pretending to sleep in pastures and ponds,
cautiously raise hoary heads and creep
upward and outward from earthen cradles.
The sky sleeps lightly, and it tosses not from
dreams, neither good nor ill, while gentle footsteps
make their way across slate and olive lawns,
dew-soaked in the wake of blanketing clouds
playing softly in the stillness, all creatures treading
lightly in limited light, their sight consumed by
morning mist, their own beds so lately
filled and occupied, still inviting, warm
compared to the soft chill of pre-dawn
air.  Day comes soon, but not yet, giving
the fog its frolick and freedom, stretching
glistening arms across fields and roads,
through trees, lying on benches and flowerbeds,
the sky smiling softly, eyes closed, pretending
to still sleep and dream of a world at peace,
letting that illusion last as long as the fog
and the day and the sun will let it.

Hello Blogger.

Today is my 5 year anniversary.  I met Tessa June of 2008, and we started dating August 2008, when she returned from a trip to England to see where her mom's ashes had been scattered and a mission trip to Costa Rica.  I asked her to marry me with a big surprise event Easter of 2009, and we got married just after that Christmas 2009, technically Dec. 27.  It has been a thrill ride.

I just finished going back and looking at my blog, my livejournal, my facebook wall, my wife's facebook wall, and my facebook messages.  Nothing!  I mean, everything, but I was looking for my thoughts!  What was I feeling at that time?  What did I say to her, or she to me?  I barely found anything until after we had been married a few months.  There are lots of pictures, lots of adventures, lots of life happening, but not a whole lot I can quote.  I wanted it for a card, something to write to my wife in a card, right now, to give to her either before she goes to sleep, or more likely, to place strategically for when she wakes up.

Needless to say, I need to find a quote.  I'm thinking the Bible will be a good place to go.  Don't move, blogger.  I'm going to practice here before I write on the card.  It's made with Austrian crystals on the cover, so let's make it something work keeping.

"Unless the Lord builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman keeps awake in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early,
To retire late,
To eat the bread of painful labors;
For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.
Behold, children are a gift of the Lord;
The fruit of the womb is a reward" (Psalm 127, 1-3).

"Arise, my darling, my beautiful one,
And come along.
For behold, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers have already appeared in the land;
The time has arrived for pruning the vines,
And the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.
The fig tree has ripened its figs,
And the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance.
Arise, my darling, my beautiful one,
And come along!" (Song of Solomon 2, 10-13).

My love, I fell for you for many reasons.  One of the biggest reasons is that I believed in the life that we together dreamed.  I believe it still.  Though, perhaps I had forgotten to keep dreaming.  Looking back at all that I could find about our years together (on facebook mostly), I was reminded of the adventures we shared, the quests we completed, and the quests we yet pursue.  Family, a welcoming home, solid careers and an infectious faith.  I don't know if they are tarnished, but it is nothing that a little work (more on my part) can't help to shine again.  The Lord has built our house and guards us, and it is the spring time of our lives.  Come, beloved, let us tend the gardens of home and faith, together, as He meant it to be.

(Ok, time to put all that in the card!  Goodnight, blogger).

Eleven months since I last posted here. A lot has happened in that time. I met a girl named Tessa. We started a relationship, which we quickly realized was love. She swing dances, and teaches sign language to high schoolers as a foreign language, and leads mission trips, previously to Costa Rica, this summer one to England. She's british, and her parents moved here when she was 7. Come to think of it, moved here about when I was being born [laughs]. We are now engaged, as of Easter, when I swept her off her feet. We're looking to be married by the end of the year. And own two houses. And I am looking into getting my Master's degree, with certification to be a teacher. I'm loving it here at the dance studio, growing nicely, learning a lot. I look forward to my future here, though it won't be forever. Tessa wants three children, though not starting immediately. I look forward to my married life as well, with great bright eyed anticipation. I don't know where God is leading me, but it's forward, and that's all I can ask for.