I’m excited to be a part of this reflective writing club, which is motivating me as both a writer and a teacher. I might switch these posts out to a separate blog from my writing and consulting blog, but for now, here I go.
My first #CCCWrite blog post answers the following prompt: What do you know now that you wish you had known then?
Simple: it’s ok to try something without knowing how it will turn out. Duh, right? But it’s taken me a few decades to understand that taking certain risks won’t kill me. Trying something out and seeing what happens: something I am always telling my students to do, with their writing, but which I was hesitant to do, myself, for a long time, with anything else.
Drinking and driving–yes, that could kill me. Taking a two-week visiting lecturer gig in New York, which could potentially affect my employment status in San Diego (where I adjunct in English at Mesa College)–well no, it actually didn’t kill me. It did, in fact, affect my employment status. But it also opened up other possibilities, and I am reveling in some of those now. And while part of that opening up was luck or fortune, and being in the right place at the right time, I wouldn’t have been in that right place, had I not taken a risk. The other thing I know now that I wish I knew then: I can’t sit around and wait for things to come to me, as if my merit had some gravitational force. It doesn’t. I have learned that I have to broadcast it, and that broadcasting takes time, risk, possible humiliation, and potential loss. I’m cool with that now.