Starting From Down Under

It’s an interesting feeling as I sit in an unexpectedly quiet part of SFO, starting up this blog I fitfully kept in previous years, usually when I was traveling and thought family and friends might be interested in updates.  All the doubts come back--why bother, don’t take yourself seriously, don’t waste your own or others’ time, etc.  I don’t follow many blogs myself (still reading new on dead-trees, at least occasionally), though I have noted some patterns that I want to avoid and some I’d love to cultivate (at least occasionally I have laughed out loud reading some of the funny people out in the blogosphere, but there sure is a lot of drivel, too)--more on that anon. 

Enough navel gazing.  Time for me to take my own writing-teacher medicine, “don’t get it right, get it written”--though perhaps without enough of the concomitant “and then revise like crazy.”

Ideas as I sit here at SFO in strangely quiet corner: I struggle with texting on new-old phone, never that good at it anyway--but I’m struck at how strange it is, this contrast between constant connectivity (and the expectations both ways--of connecting and being connected to) versus the old way (snailmail, expensive landline calls, long gaps where no one actually knows where you are in your journey, etc).

I’d like to put in something on the aerie, our temporary home for a few weeks because we sublet our regular house.  Strange transition, not home but just up the street, far less traffic noise, far more nature noise (and yappy dog noise), someone else’s choices of layout / furnishing / books etc, living out of a suitcase in effect, but all of it also making me realize how much STUFF I don’t actually need--hence more trips to Goodwill are in my future. 

Here're some pix, no time or energy to format 'em:

 

Fears and anxieties in response to all the people who’re saying “Oh you must be so excited” and all I can think about is being petrified... about unfinished business from the previous year, about logistical details still unsettled, about the courses I’ll be teaching, about possible idiocies / idiots to deal with amongst the students--hell, after my experience in Summer 2011, about the students themselves, about Alex and whether we can get into a regular school here or whether we’ll be having home-school struggles in an alien environment--will this be a nightmare of arguments and teenage sit-down strikes, as part of our Europe time has been of late. 

But hey--this is the adventure and I am on it.  I can do anything if it's only 90 days long...