What? No Draft Today?! (How To Not Heap on the Guilt)

48º ~ desperately seeking our normal beautiful spring temperatures, still there is sun and all the trees are at some stage of budding out with the sweetgum running last and the bleepity bleep privet winning, those tiny pale-yet-neon green flags are a heartening sight

Today, no draft for me.  Sigh.  I am struggling to avoid heaping on the guilt.  It seems that re-entering the semester after Spring Break has been a challenge for all involved this year and I am not weathering it well.  The last six or seven weeks of the semester are always hectic, and I’m trying to take a lesson from my friend RR who is also trying to go with the flow rather than getting pushed and pulled along.  But to the draft.

Today is one of those days when the Big Rock Reading Series and Drafting Day overlap, so I’ve spent the last few days putting things in place for tonight, only to wake up in the middle of the night thinking of three or four things I’ve totally neglected and need to add to my checklist.  Yes, I have a checklist that I print out each time one of these events approaches.  I’m a geek like that. 

So, how am I avoiding the self-punishment of feeling guilty about not drafting.

1.  Remembering student responses to previous BRRS events.
2.  Remembering that today is still going to be about writing and sharing, just not about my writing.
3. 
Remembering that the angry sisters (my current drafting obsession) will
still be there, just below the surface, and hoping that they won’t be
angry at me!
4.  Looking ahead to the weekend and thinking
that maybe, just maybe I can shift some grading and do some drafting
Saturday morning.
5.  Remembering that teaching is my paying gig
(and one that feeds me in other ways as well) and that I’m fortunate to
be able to take the summers off (please do not mistake me here, this
means NOT getting paid for three months) and write for days on end.
6. 
Chocolate & coffee, always, chocolate & coffee…and in the
a.m. that chocolate is delivered in a candy bar disguised as a fiber bar.  Hah!

Onward!

Tonight, we are going to have a wonderful time with local author Carla Killough McClafferty, who writes nonfiction books for middle grade children.  She began writing with a book about her spiritual journey in the wake of her young son’s death, and then she turned to what has become quite a lineup of these nonfiction books.  We are going to hear about The Many Faces of George Washington, which McClafferty likens to “C.S.I. meeting the biography channel” as it follows a group of historians, scientists, and artists trying to recreate the most accurate renderings of George Washington.

If you live in the area, I hope you can come out to enjoy!

See you on the flip side!