On dreams

For some time I've considered starting a writing blog, and this summer seemed like the perfect opportunity.  This past year has been a roller-coaster ride for me academically, as I've realized more about who I want to be professionally and that, no matter how successful I am, I will never find personal fulfillment in other people's dreams.  Even as I became more aware of what I wanted, however, I found myself with less and less time to make my own dreams reality.  This was mostly my own fault, for I've always found it difficult to say no--to both people and money.  So this spring, along with taking perhaps my two most strenuous graduate courses to date, I found myself teaching four undergrad classes, all literature, two of which were full of texts I'd never read before.  I also continued to work as an editorial assistant with The Scriblerian and to work with my department's Research Culture Committee, organizing faculty events and maintaining a blog about the work we were doing.  So all of these distractions left little time for what I really wanted to be doing--writing. And reading.  Or, at least, reading works that inspire my writing.  I was certainly doing plenty of reading; reading seemed to eat up every moment of my day.  I was reading for my grad classes or reading for the classes I was teaching or reading for my comp lists--but never reading for me.  So I was never doing the two things I longed to do the most, the two things I realized I wanted to give up everything else to do.

The semester ended last week--final grades have been submitted, my last two seminar papers (EVER!) have been turned in--and now the summer stretches before me, the first summer since high school in which I'll have true, uninterrupted writing and reading time.  Thanks to all those jobs during the school year, I saved up enough money to get me through a couple of months without working, so I gave up my summer class at Auburn and made arrangements to teach in Pennsylvania for six weeks, giving me from June 16 to August 18 off--two whole months to write and read.  Of course, I have to read for my comps this fall, I have conference proposals to write and I have editing to do, but I also have something I haven't had in quite awhile--free time.  Lots of free time.  Free time which isn't really free at all--because I'm dedicating it to those things I've long wished to have the time to properly do.

This blog is about keeping me honest on that quest, about forcing me to write and read even on the days when I'd rather be enjoying the summer sun or watching reruns of my favorite TV shows or sleeping until noon.  It's a way for me to connect with all of those who are enduring similar struggles as they impractically chase their dreams, and it's a way for me to connect with myself, the self I tend to lie to more than tell the truth, the self that always needs a little encouragement, the self that realizes that impossible dreams are the only kind worth having.