One year and 200 posts later…

• I enjoy writing this blog.  I was never a good journal-keeper, except in short, limited bursts (as with the summer journal that the Snork Maiden and I are keeping).  Now I can look back over the past year, see where I’ve been, and remember things I’d otherwise have forgotten.
• I am happy to have entered into a conversation, even in a very mild way, with other bloggers.  I’m particularly tickled to have discovered so many parallels between What Now? and me.  Can’t wait to talk about some of the books we are both teaching next year.
• I’ve made an unexpected but delightful transition from writer and scrabbling adjunct college teacher to writer and full-time high-school teacher.  Actually, I am still technically an adjunct, since I will continue to teach a graduate creative writing course at New RU in the fall–but I’m no longer a scrabbling (exploited, underpaid, anxious) adjunct (without employer health insurance).  I have a vague but nagging sense that using this blog as a space to record and reflect on the whole job situation–the juggling of multiple institutions, the forays onto the academic job market–helped me gather the conviction to make the leap when the opportunity came up.  Maybe this sense will become less vague as I go on.
• This blog, though, seems very separate from my regular writing life.  If my regular writing life were a professional sport (marathoning?), this blog would be something like backyard badminton.  It’s a little bit of exercise, and social fun, and a break, and it enriches my life, not my marathoning.
• I like it that about three or four people from my real life read this blog, but that’s it.  I love that Pym Fan, Friend of Long Standing (FLS) and EJB read it, and Stubb too, when he thinks of it.  But I’m glad that I haven’t told anyone else (that I can think of). 
• If you’re reading this, thanks.  I hope you enjoy it.