How long has it been?  Months.  A year, maybe?  I haven't forgotten my AD friends, people who have let me know that sometimes my words worked, that something sparked a reaction.

But as all of you know, life is the force that move us along, one way or another.  Sometimes we're riding on the crest of a wave of inspiration, promise and hope.  Sometimes we wipe out at the bottom of that wave, crushed by depression, false vows and hopelessness. 

I plead guilty to have being under the wave way too long, not trying to fight my way to the surface.  I wrote, I read--I just didn't let it be the part of my life it had always been.  I didn't let  it matter.

And that embarrasses me.  As tough as times are for everyone these days, I know that what keeps us hanging on are those dreams, those integral parts of us that may be writing or sitting in a corner drawing, or braving the ugliness out there to stand on a street corner and ring a bell.  Sometimes others question the sanity of hanging on to those "useless" parts of ourselves, but in mind--they're all that we have that's real.

So goodbye to that other, petulant me, mad at editors and rejection and the politics of education and so on and so forth. 

One of my students turned in an essay once.  He wrote that "the turtle said blah, blah, blah."  Filled up the whole darned page with "blah, blah, blah."

Time for me to quit borrowing from him and use real words again.  No more turtle talk.  Time to be me again!