Reading Rainbow

"Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are." ~ Mason Cooley

Every day my Methods of Teaching Reading in Content Area teacher puts up a quote on the board before class. Often these are feel good quotes, and I wish I had copied them down more so I would have them (may need to ask her, see if she has a list). Today's quote was the one above, and it really got me thinking though. I'm sure many of us know the power that reading has and the places that it can take us, but I know personally that I have not been on such a journey in some time. For a variety of reasons my recreational reading over the past few years has seen a decline, to the point where now I tend to read short informational bits like Uncle John's Bathroom Readers. They satisfy the part of me that craves knowledge and likes knowing little random facts, but I feel the need for something more substantial. I remember the days when I read voraciously and without real regards to what it was; as long as it interested me it got a chance to go into my brain. Fiction, nonfiction, humor, drama, satire, poem. I have been longing for the time and drive to dive into a good long book recently, and seeing this quote made me that much more eager for summer to arrive. While I expect to be fairly busy, I should be able to make for headway into the growing number of books I own and haven't read. Here's hoping.

Isn't it funny how God can send you something at just the right time to give you a pick-me-up when you're going through a rough patch? I've got a good amount of papers and projects to do in the coming two weeks, along with a test and the usual quizzes, homework, and so on before finals come around. Not only that, but this weekend I was in some kind of a funk, and really had trouble getting through a paper that was due; I just wanted to curl up and sleep all day. I knew on Friday that my parents had sent me a package, but all they would say was that it was a "surprise". I finally got a chance to run and grab it before my first class, and was surprised that it was fairly small, like a 8x5x1.5 inch book. I wasn't disappointed, just surprised and curious as to what would be inside. Popping it open I saw first a book, small and green. Pulling it out I had to stifle a laugh at the title: i am neurotic (and so are you). I often give my mom crap for her neurotic tendencies, and also tend to recognize my own (oh yeah, they're there). This book is apparently a collection of quirky and true stories from people about their phobias, hysteria, and so on. Should be interesting.

Why does this even exist?

A new blog, a new introductory post about why it exists and what to expect. Hopefully this is semi-interesting enough to warrant a skim, at least.

So I've tried a blog twice before, and it went about as well as most things with no discernible feedback; lots of energy at first, and dying quickly and painlessly. Since then a few other things have lead me to feel that I simply cannot maintain something like a blog, which requires a fairly constant schedule of updating to live up to its potential. This part of me hasn't really changed, so starting a blog now seems to be a setup for failure, right?

Well there are two main reasons for doing this. First, friends are starting to, so it makes following their easy. The real reason though, is that I have felt the need to prove to myself that I can do something I've failed at before if I set my mind to it. I figure if I can keep this going and really make it not suck I have accomplished more than I tend to with most of my free-time filling shenanigans.

That's really about it. Oh, and hopefully this will get my writing back to a fairly consistent quality, since my output has been horrible this semester. I can't guarantee that you will find the thoughts in here always interesting, and they will likely be so scatter-shot in topic that plenty will be misses. However, in the end I hope people can enjoy this to some degree, and that I can maintain this thing enough to prove to myself that I can keep a multi-year project going.