In-Between Days

Summer is over, and in many parts of my life, I'm in a strange, transitional period.  My son, who was in 3rd or 4th grade when I started this blog, leaves next week for college.  My beloved rabbi, whom I've known for a dozen years, has resigned his post, and since he was the main reason I'd stayed a member at the synagogue, I'm out the door as well, once his final months are done.  At work, a half-dozen colleagues have left:  five taking early retirement, thanks to a generous buy-out offer, and one leaving for greener pastures in Florida.  (Do they have pastures there?)  This leaves me as a senior member of the English faculty, a role I'm not at all used to--and it comes as I've finally sent off the manuscript of my co-edited collection on Romance Fiction and American Culture, a book five years in the making, and as I've been steered back to teaching more poetry by the departmental Powers that Be.

One way I've coped with all of this change has been to go back and re-read some of the early months of this blog.  Very few of my first few years of posts were about me, at least personally.  I was blogging about poetry, and the teaching of poetry, mostly, with a lot of material that I'd forgotten.  I'll use some of it in my courses this fall, and perhaps post more such material here as well, at least as a repository for my future self.  I feel oddly done with Facebook and Twitter, as the summer ends.  "With what I most enjoyed, contented least," as the sonnet says.  Maybe it's time to go back to the older, slower social media?  We'll see!

A strange time.  In-between days.