The school year began 47 days ago. That is also about the amount of time I have spent away from this site. Away from this site and, mostly, away from writing.<\/p>\n
Up until this week, I have kept on with nightly writing before bed, and morning art in a sketchbook. I even ventured back to the library to pick up some books about art and art styles. Though I could not read for most of those six weeks, as I still recover from eye surgery, I could follow the IKEA-like directions in many of these art books.<\/p>\n
The book on drawing and shading with colored pencils was a particular feat, as it taught me how to layer and smear, erase and smudge. My drawings still amount to little more than cave scrawls, but I am proud of my progress. If nothing else, drawing and using the books as an at-home course in technique and style allowed me to do something creative while my left eye recovered and my right eye worked overtime.<\/p>\n
Both of these pursuits screeched to their annual halts earlier this week, as the non-teaching task of Camp intervened. The planning, operation and direction of our school’s Camp is such an all-consuming task that almost all other parts of my life enter their September holding pattern.<\/p>\n
This was the fear I knew and, as I was prepared for it, it did not surprise me. These creative pursuits sustained me leading up to the full-life-pause that is the week of Camp.<\/p>\n
Now that Camp has ended, I am staying ahead of my other fear.<\/p>\n
Last year, when I discovered just how large the task would be, I put aside everything else, including family obligations, and any rational sense of when to stop. The comeback from the full-stop was unexpected.<\/p>\n
Every October since I began teaching, if I was not busy with work at the zoo, I dipped into a Fall funk. Last October, the Fall funk was the worst one yet.<\/p>\n
So, even as I allowed pieces of my life to fall away as we got closer to Camp, I made plans for how to stave off the worst parts of the Fall funk as soon as I returned.<\/p>\n
My eye bubble is almost faded, which means I will have no restrictions on workouts. I have an on-line art class that will begin soon. I have already written our annual Halloween letter (our version of the Christmas newsletter), and I will be able to read the\u00a0 printed page, as long as I have good lighting.<\/p>\n
Reclaiming these lost pieces of life should not be o difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The school year began 47 days ago. That is also about the amount of time I have spent away from this site. Away from this site and, mostly, away from writing. Up until this week, I have kept on with nightly writing before bed, and morning art in a sketchbook….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}