Busy life, and a couple updates

A quicker post today. I am the teacher on duty this weekend, and yesterday medical situations kept me down on campus a couple of hours past the norm. I’m also running the last day of a project-week of bread baking with students. Monday I begin oral exams for my English language learner students. It will be a full-on run from now at least until next weekend, and so I am using my energy where I have to, saving it where I can.

The truth is, nearly every week these days I have the feeling that I should go for a quick post today. Maybe it’s just life that is busy, and not me. I have many things going on, which in all its blessing and its curse–I’m really feeling positive about all this rush and tumble. At least this week, burnout isn’t on the table. I am busy with good things.

I got some good news the other day–another short story has found a home, and so I can place my first tick in that yearly goal of three publications. I guess I’m starting to feel like, I can perhaps do this after all. I can put in the time early mornings and weekends and school breaks and craft something that people think is worth reading. The stories getting published now I wrote a year and a half ago. I guess things take time, and the perseverance has been helping me so far. I suppose that that’s a sign I should keep pushing.

Reading-wise, in my spare moments before bed, I’ve picked up Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat. I first tried to read this work of Kenyan postcolonial literature nine months ago. I found it difficult because of the many historical figures whose names I did not know, and the tone, grandiose, overwhelming, I was not hooked. But I have come back now, and as I dive deeper I am appreciating it more. As the characters argue about how freedom can be achieved, they are drawing some powerful connections to Gandhi’s movement for freedom in India, which at the time the novel takes place was very recent, and the way they are discussing the Bible is interesting too. I’m trying to let the characters be more what Ngũgĩ wants them to be, to listen more and not make any decisions about liking or disliking. Just listen.

In the last week, the cold has broken. It is raining, and in barely a week nearly all the snow and ice have melted. It is sad to see them go, but the ground is open now, perhaps for spring. There are snowdrops starting to emerge in our neighbors’ yards. The light too is making its slow return. I am typing this at 7:40 on Saturday morning, and the mottled ceiling of the clouds is visible now, as it would not have been for another hour or more when we returned to Norway in early January. It feels good to note the slow changes of the world. It feels like, even in life’s hectic rush, I can pay some attention.

Best wishes to you for the week to come,
Jimmy