House on the Rock

  I’m here in Creative Writing Club, a small club I sponsor where 12-15 teenagers sit in a circle and write about whatever prompt we vote on that day. This week’s special is “What does your future look like?” So blog world, meet creative writing club. In the future I picture having a bit of a limp, possibly from that 13.1-mile marathon when I barely trained because I had signed up for it two years prior when I was in tip top shape - the shape of my life - only to have two Covid-postponed setbacks that found me in 2022, with one month left in my first year of teaching and more bound to pounds than I had ever been before. It was the year I tried to go on walks after school but also comfort-ate frozen pizzas by the triple stack and sat on the couch from dinner to dusk. We tried the Whole30 but didn’t make it nearly long enough to see measurable differences or really feel fit, plus I was more angry and more than ever, aware of my dependence on food for joy. So anyway, there’s the limp....

There's an Instagram challenge floating around where people are posting a picture with five of their favorite things listed as the caption. I'm taking a temporary insta hiatus (for reasons I might describe in a future post) but I also feel like writing. It's been a few full-speed weeks of hustle and I think it might be healing for me to write a similar caption, only in blog form. I always love looking back on fads I fancied at a certain point in time, so here's another one for the archive: 1. The promise of Spring. Cue Chris Renzema's Springtime on full blast as I drive with windows down and the heat all the way up. It's still not warm enough to really be comfortable outside, but it's warm enough to pretend, and perhaps in so doing we'll will spring into existence. I've also been really drawn to the metaphor of new life dawning; the resurrection of all things that comes after a season of darkness and death. It's no wonder Easter is celebrated in ...