Weblog entry:
- Make it happen
-
After teaching for about 15 or so years, my high school English teacher decided to quit in order to begin writing full-time. He was, and still is, very much a hero of mine — he’d encouraged my first efforts in writing, and eventually got me turned onto Milton. When he announced his retirement, he’d no significant opportunities lined up; he’d written two non-fiction books in the previous decade, and wasn’t known for much beyond the notes he scribbled in the margins of student papers.
We were sharing our last year at the school — I neared graduation and he, a kind of retirement. I remember asking him once if he was worried about his upcoming new life; the life of a writer wasn’t, as far as I could tell, exactly rife with security.
He said,
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit scared. But I’ve discovered that there aren’t really right decisions, or wrong ones — just those that you’re confident in at the time that you make them. That’s what I’ve got here. I need to make it happen.
I’m not sure what I’ve got here, I suppose; that’s why I’ve been thinking about that one chat we had by the lockers across from the school library. There are always, I suppose, things to consider, and paths to take. Suppose I’ve got to figure out which.
-
- 19th day of January 2004.
- Filed under Story, Memory.
There’s a WordPress issue that’s currently preventing old comments from displaying correctly. Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully we’ll be back online soon.