I'm back. I keep starting posts and never finishing them. Yesterday I wrote a post but decided not to publish it because it made me seem depressed. Depressed isn't the state, just busy and a little tired. Overwhelmed, maybe? I'm not used to that feeling of there not being enough hours to finish everything, where there's not enough time to sleep and iron my pants and do a brilliant job on a paper proposal for my class. Teaching isn't a job you go to and then forget about the rest of the time. There are lesson plans to be made. There are papers to grade. The students are going to be there, you'd better be ready. Then there are my classes that I'm trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to stay afloat in. I don't know if it's humanly possible to read everything I'm supposed to read. Should you read something even if you think it's boring or a retread of something you read last year? There's my dilemma.

Today I spent 20 minutes reading TIME magazine and it was like a breath of fresh air. I used to keep up with things like that--you know, news, important things going on in the world that affect us all--but lately I haven't kept up with the news at all. I haven't had time to read TIME in weeks. I read textbooks with breakfast instead of the El Paso Times. I'm becoming part of the ignorant masses, cloistered in my own little world. But today I got my fix of Hillary Clinton's health care plan and how Russia claimed the North Pole (or something like that), and it felt really, really good.

It was a good day in class, too. I've noticed that the times I'm most animated are the times I start talking about politics or social issues. Not surprising, since I've been interested in those things for a long time, so I know a little about them. But I guess it never really occurred to me that that was something to talk about in an English class.

So that's how my life is going. I apologize for the lack of posts. I miss writing here and I'll do my best to make it a more regular habit, for my own sanity if nothing else.