Life teaching at a girls’ school on the Mainline. I step out of my classroom to  speak to a colleague who just has returned from visiting her new doctor who has put her on a routine cycle of scans to detect any early signs of breast cancer. At the same time, I am monitoring two students who need extra structure so they can complete assignments. Earlier I assisted a substitute introduce a new project to a class and realized she thought the project crazy because the girls were not expected to “understand” each poem but to get a sense of a general trend in poetic development over 200 years by comparing 10 different poems. In between, I try to answer questions about drafts and provide guidance for revising papers for clarity, and grade papers, and plan a new lesson, and update the various class websites.

And I wonder why at the end of the day I don’t want to to anything more than go home, take a nap, knit, walk the dog, and ease my brain.

At one point in my life, I was an intellectual creature. I had gotten a ph.d. an the esoteric field of medieval comparative literature from an august institution — so august that the name is sometimes embarrassing. Now I wonder if I have the mental capacity to read anything for a sustained length of time. There must be something left since I did read Greenblatt’s study of Hamlet and purgatory and Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History. But reading is nothing like writing. Writing about something actually creates knowledge and understanding. Reading is a superficial skimming compared to the depth and energy required to write even a paragraph.

In between the ph.d. and now, my life got absorbed by three children all two years apart and a job. At first that job was teaching at a university but that shifted to high school teaching 12 years ago. Now two of the children are grown and have gone off to college and the third will leave next year. All three are fully capable, independent people. I like each one and find them quite interesting. My husband the doctor gets home late most nights and he is a committed, accomplished scientist-physician, a bench-to-bedside researcher.

So how will I fill the time when I am alone in the evening? Knitting is not an answer since I can tell that full-blown arthritis is waiting for me if I over do it. I could exercise more and I should if I want to live a longer and healthier life. I would like to practice piano (harpsichord) more but some days the mental effort to open the keyboard is too much. My husband swears that I need something to do with my brain or I will go crazy. He is probably right but what?

Right at this point, this blog entry is 461 words long. The other night I toyed with the idea of trying to write at least 1,000 words at a certain interval of time. I always tell my students that writing regularly is like building muscle, that writing gets better only with practice. I expect so much writing of them — with sophisticated diction, complex syntax, insightful observations. But I am not certain that I can even live up to that ideal.

What would happen my writing if I made this commitment for a month? My oldest son who hated writing too a challenge to write a novel in a month. He managed it and the very activity broke a mental block he had about writing. I wonder if I could achieve the same benefit with a similar exercise.

The words written would not have not have to be public. They could just be a series of unposted entries. Maybe over time a narrative would emerge which could upon reflection be shaped into something. T.H. White kept a journal about training a goshawk. From that journal he created a book called The Goshawk. I just finished reading it and it was an interesting account of how a broken man (T.H. White does sound broken because he is avoiding most human contact) mail orders a hawk from Germany and tries to “man” it. (spoiler) He loses the hawk because he is too lazy to trade the rotten twine he is using to tie the hawk for a stronger twine. So ends the first part of the book. I skimmed the second and third part because without Gos, those just weren’t interesting. Both White and this reader lost heart when Gos flew away. White is careful to squash any romantic visions of Gos flying free by saying he probably died danging upside down by his jesses from the branch of a tree. Depressing.

I only picked up the book because the New York Times reviewer of H is for Hawk said that this book published in 2015 must be read against its predecessor by White. Since H is for Hawk is on endless backorder at Amazon, I decided to read White’s account of an austringer. I don’t think White’s book would ever be published now. It is too narrow, but then who would have thought this other book would be published – -and given a major literary award (don’t ask me which one).

So much of what gets published and read now rests at extremes.

1) the personal memoir — everyone can write one now; you don’t have to be old or famous or anything to justify making others read your thoughts

2) pornography — just that; thinks of Fifty Shades of Grade and all the vampire and werewolf porn

3) political mud slinging — take your pick; all of the parties do it

4) weight loss and cooking — we starve ourselves to eat in a vicious cycle. Anyone ever hear of moderation?

I have read that we Americans read more now that ever before. And that we write more than anyone in the history of the world has ever written. But is anything we read or write worth reading or writing?

In many ways, that is my question as I look into the future and the possibility of time to begin thinking and writing again. Writing is such a painful process so why would I make myself do it?