And so I pause...

I am going to take a break from blogging for a bit. Getting spit on last week hurt and the truth is, it kinda all goes back to grandma's old rule: if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all.

With pink slips flying all around my school district - heck, all around our state - and our district preparing to hire me back next year at a pay cut of up to 12% (on top of the 3% we already took this year)... and I am one of the lucky ones cause a host of folks are being "chopped" from their positions... and the dragon of NCLB allowing the tests from ETS to be the tail that wags our entire institutional dog, well... I need to pause.

Will I rise like a phoenix from the ashes? Of course. My life is GREAT and I wouldn't trade it for anyone's. I love teaching, I love writing, I love working with teachers and students and I get paid to do it. My avocation is my vocation and how many people can really say that?

Yet, before the Phoenix rises from the ashes, well... people forget the part about what it's like to descend and be mired in the ashes. There is a period of gestation when one is down and to blog my way through it, well... I just sense it could be a little ugly, cynical, jaded and dark.

Like our profession really needs that kind of energy right now.

BTW, it's not like I don't have some other writing to do. I am under contract for another new book of YA fiction for Disney, another new book of YA fiction for Penguin, the BookJams are just roaring right now (best teaching I have ever done) and I already have 2 new books for kids in the hopper due to be released in the next 12 months (meaning 4 in the next 24 months on top of the new BookJams as well).

So essentially, yes, I will be writing like a fiend and yes, I might return to blog sooner than I think (I feel a bit like an addict being that I have become so prolific over the past 14 months as a blogger) but, well... it all goes back to grandma's rule.

I don't really have a lot of nice things to say right now about school/education so I am not going to say them. However, this doesn't mean there aren't a heck of a lot of nice things that ought to be said.

But getting spit on was the straw that broke this camel's back and right now, I am in a funk that requires a bit of time to sharpen the saw and figure out a few things.

Thanks for being a reader/responder/supporter/compadre... more to come... eventually.

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