I really enjoy teaching, especially the students who spend time in the Math Lab (don't dare get any swelled heads any of you who currently or formerly fit that category ☺). But people who have never taught don’t realize what a time-consuming job teaching is. I bring work home two-to-three nights per week, and I regularly spend my entire Saturday doing schoolwork. Finding time to keep VISIONS OF PARADISE on its quarterly schedule is often very difficult, so that my other writing becomes totally nonexistent. Even reading crawls to a near-halt during school so that magazines are pretty much all I can read because books require too much long periods of concentration.

Thus, Christmas vacation is really a bit of a tease in this regard. I’ve enjoyed all our family activities the past two days, and anticipate enjoying the rest of them the next ten days, but they are time-consuming, as are a lot of other required chores I must do as well. I spent a lot of time both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day writing college recommendations. I still have to grade tests, write the Spring IHC Math League competition, collate and mail the overdue Fall issue of VoP, as well as other chores that I’ve put off for weeks or months. There will be no work on the first draft of my planned immigrant book, nor any writing fiction. There WILLl be reading though. I try desperately to find time to read for one-to-two hours each day, because that is probably the single activity which most gives me peace of mind (something everybody needs!☺). Tonight I’ll start reading John M. Ford’s alternate history about Richard III THE DRAGON WAITING. Hopefully it will live up to its considerable reputation.

All of which means that thoughts of Tom Halliwell have been slipping into my mind lately. Tom was probably the best teacher at PHS until he took early retirement about four years ago. Now he spends his time birding and writing and traveling to his heart’s content. That sounds so delightful to me. Imagine writing fulltime for the first time in my life! Of course, I would definitely miss teaching, and I’m not totally sure the trade-off would be worthwhile. But when Mark and Andy graduate in three years or so, I need to assess my financial situation and make an important potential life-changing decision: teaching or writing? Time will tell...