For the past year at least, I’ve been struggling with writing. The struggle is against a sense of futility about words that begin in my journal as reflections on my own mind and experiences. Who cares about my son’s bedtime, the trees leafing out along a bus route, the music the metro escalator makes as it howls and sings along its rusted track? My words are outdated vehicles for tired ideas, or so my jerk-brain tells me. I “should” be writing well-researched pieces about student development. Or finely crafted poetry. Or even fiction. But I don’t. Instead, snapshots of this little corner of the world (and my bumbling interactions with it) fill my journal and eventually make their way into my roughly drafted pieces.
Shannon E. Williams 