Even though I am, like every other teacher, exhausted and keen for that bell to ring at the end of the day, I am still trying desperately to keep the kids on task and get things finished before then.
The problem is, they’ve already checked out. They just don’t care. They’re restless. They’re talkative. They’re twitchy. Their eyes have glazed over with the promise of freedom, of late sleep-ins and no school uniforms or restrictions on their social media life for the next two weeks.
If you’ve ever watched a squirrel running around in a park or a forest, that is the precise image of the mental and emotional engagement in my classroom today. One or two are evolving into chipmunks as I watch.
Except for that one kid at the back, who is working like a champion to get everything completed. I don’t have favourites, but today I really love that kid.
Guess who got nominated again for Top Female Author 2019?
I did, that’s who!
‘Smoke and Shadows’ has been nominated in the Poetry category – the same one in which Nova won in 2017.
It’s fair to say I am excited!
It couldn’t have come at a better time. The crazy busy pace and emotional demands of the last three weeks and the stress I have been under because of things outside my control have really worn me down, and while I’ve enjoyed the release of ‘A Rose By Any Other Name’, I haven’t really given my books or my writing the attention they deserve at all the past month or so. I’ve started a number of poems lately, but haven’t finished any of them… yet.
It’s really nice to know someone loved my book enough to nominated it. I love it, and I’m proud of it for so many reasons – but that is no guarantee that anyone else is going to. The reviews have been good, though, so I have reason to hope that others will enjoy reading it, too.
It’s also very timely reminder that there are things which transcend those times of stress and exhaustion in our lives that seem to take over and leave no time or energy for anything else.
Of course, we know that, but sometimes we forget to keep that thought in our mind. It’s amazing the difference a little bit of encouragement and support can make.
Winners are announced on July 8th. I’ll be sure to let you know if I win!
I’m proud to say that this was one of my first-ever Snapchats.
Snapchat has been the subject of much controversy in the past – mostly from people who have never used it. I know a lot of people have been vocal in their criticism of the ease with which teens could use it to send pictures of their naughty bits to one another. To be honest, they haven’t ever needed SnapChat to do that. And, in a further moment of not-so-surprising honesty, I’ve never used Snapchat for that either.
It’s like anything: you can use it sensibly, and be careful who you add to your contacts, or you can be an idiot and endanger any bit of credibility you ever had. Snapchat is definitely not alone in that regard.
Contrary to all the negative press it has had, Snapchat is actually pretty cool.
The process is simple:
Take a snap, choose who you want to send it to, and send it.
If you want everyone to be able to see it, you add it to your “story”.
If you don’t, people will only see your snap if you actually send it to them individually.
You can choose how long you want the photo or video to last. Once the time you set expires, it’s gone.
It’s important to remember that people can take a screenshot, and people can be offended, so common sense and decency are still required.
I have great fun using Snapchat for quick, easy contact with my family and friends. It’s also a great way to quickly and easily share a moment in your day in ways that are hard to otherwise express.
In that respect. It’s super duper effective.
It’s actually great for introverts because we can communicate meaningfully without actually having to make, or answer, a phone call. I have found that if you send enough Snapchats, they know you’re okay and what you’re doing, and don’t actually try to call anywhere near as often. That may sound awful, but if you ask any introvert you know, they’ll tell you it’s a fact of life: talking on the phone for any length of time is hard, especially if you’re tired or unwell.
I also use it to share my comedic genius with the world. You’ve got to take your opportunities where you can get them, after all.
When you can’t put into words how bad your hospital food is…
When you want to show kids these days what life without a phone was like…
My absolute favourite use of Snapchat, though, is when my family use it to send me baby spam. I’m one of those aunties who can never get enough pics of my babies so Snapchat offers a great way for them to send me pictures without all the cranky “we don’t want baby spam” whiners on Facebook and Instagram getting their noses out of joint. Snapchat makes it easy to be a lot more direct and “one on one” with your pictures.
You don’t even have to take a photo every time. You can just use the instant message function if that’s all you want to do. But then… why wouldn’t you take a photo every time when you’ve got those filters to play with?
Seriously, the Snapchat filters are fantastic. One minute I’m a washed out, permanently exhausted 50-something English teacher, and the next, I’m a cat… or an emu… or a pirate… or whatever the filters of the day offer. Sometimes, I have instant makeup and smoother, younger skin. Sometimes I can add a piercing or a tattoo. Finding out what the filters are each day is as much fun as using them.
Its easy to edit a picture using the menu at the top right of whatever picture you take This allows you to:
add text, labels, and/or stickers
crop your photo
doodle or write on your picture
attach a URL or website to your image
cut out part of your picture to create a sticker
You can also easily save any picture you like to your phone’s camera roll, using the little down arrow icon at the bottom left of the image.
There isn’t really a lot that annoys me about Snapchat, but I probably should mention:
The silly, click-bait stuff they post on the “discover” page. Ugh. Once I’ve looked at my friends’ stories, I swipe away from the page.
On specific dates – Christmas, New Year, that kind of thing – the ’Snapchat Team’ send pictures or videos that you have to watch to get rid of them. Some of them are clever. Others… not so much.
Occasionally, there will be a filter that makes me look uncannily like my brother. I’m really not so keen on those, but it is kind of fun freaking out his daughters and our sisters with the pictures. And no… I’m not going to show you what I mean!
For me, the frustrations are very minor compared to the fun I have with the app. It’s a keeper.
Macbeth is a play that has always fascinated people, engaging their superstitions as well as their imaginations. For this reason, its often called The Scottish Play by actors and theatre folk, as it’s believed to be unlucky to say ‘Macbeth’ in a theatre.
It’s a cracker of a story. The supernatural ‘weird sisters’ tell Macbeth he’s going to be Thane of Cawdor, and then tell him he is going to be king. In response, Macbeth does everything in his power to make it happen, only to be haunted by his victims and unable to actually enjoy his success when it does. You really do have to wonder how it would have all worked out if he’d responded with, “That’s nice!” and let things happen as they would.
Of course, you can’t just blame it all on Macbeth. His wife – whom I like to call Lady Macdeath – plays a significant part in engineering him onto the throne, mostly by bullying him into doing things he doesn’t really want to do.
The play has some fabulous macabre moments— the witches are spooky, their prophecies are uncanny, and you can bet your last dollar you don’t want to eat what they’re cooking in that cauldron. Even better is the part where Banquo’s ghost shows up for dinner shaking his “gory locks”: that is my favourite scene in the whole play.
Laced with suspense, intrigue, and dramatic irony, ‘Macbeth’ keeps the audience hooked to the very end, even though we all know by now how it’s going to work out. There’s more magic than just “Double, double, toil and trouble / Fire burn and cauldron bubble” in this play.
Strangely enough, reading the text has brought me some odd comfort this weekend as I contemplate the fate of people who manipulate, lie and use others for their own nefarious purposes. I have taken dark satisfaction in seeing those who chose to do evil get what they deserved in the end. It may not be gracious, but it is quite therapeutic to think that maybe the Fates really do have things under control. Sometimes you need to take your catharsis wherever you can get it.
That, of course, is the genius of all Shakespeare’s plays. He deals in the emotions we all understand – ambition, greed, love, anger, jealousy, pride, and the experience of being at the receiving end of the bad behaviour of others. The language may have changed slightly, but human nature certainly has not.
Shakespeare doesn’t have to work hard to make the audience dislike Macbeth and his cold-hearted shrew of a wife: we get it. We have all seen people succeed by means of deceiving and manipulating others, or by stabbing someone else in the back, and we don’t like them, either.
Today, I am feeling very low. So, I am trying to focus on things for which I am thankful.
I know it won’t fix things, but it’s a positive distraction from my own misery.
Most of these are in no particular reason, although the first four are in the right place at the top of the list of what I am thankful for today:
My best friend. For so, so many reasons that I can only barely start to count.
Encouragement from friends. Even when life really sucks, they have my back.
My dog. Abbey the Labby always knows when I need extra love.
Scout Kitty purring on my lap. She, too, has been extra attentive.
The lovely quilt with which I have wrapped myself. It was a gift from my best friend at Christmas time, and given that I can’t hug her today, it’s the next best thing.
The audiobook I’m listening to. It’s good to give my mind something else to do.
Peanut butter on toast.
Coffee. In all honesty, I am thankful for coffee every day. You all should be, too… because even if you’re not drinking it, I am.
Downtime, and the fact that I got all those exams and reports done. I really don’t think I could have maintained that pace much longer.
The fact that I do not have to sit upright on stupid courtroom seats for one single minute of today. My spine has been brutalised this past week.
Pain medication. Enough said.
A Poet’s Curse. I’ve been reading it for therapeutic reasons last night and today. It helps.
They say having an email list is crucial for an author. It’s the one sure-fire way to reach your readers.
I am clearly the exception to that rule.
Either I really suck at creating newsletters, or my subscribers signed up for the wrong list. It’s why I am very reluctant to send out newsletters now.
When I send emails with other people’s books in them, my subscribers click through to those books.
Do they click through to mine? Nope.
And sadly, I get as many clicks to unsubscribe as I do on the links in my newsletter.
It really is quite depressing.
Yet I don’t do anything different than any of the dozens of authors whose newsletters I receive. Well, that part isn’t strictly true:
I don’t spam my books repeatedly. I don’t email every week, let alone every day or two, like some do. I don’t use high pressure sales pitches. I don’t beg, and I don’t whine. I don’t even include only my own content. I always share other books and bookish events that readers might be interested in.
I have observed all those things happening in various different authors’ newsletters at different times, and have always tried to avoid doing anything I have found off-putting.
Honestly? I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I appear to be doing it consistently.
I do suspect that maybe newsletter writing is not for me. I’ve given it a fair crack and it hasn’t been at all well received.
I don’t write this to complain. I am, however, starting to feel like I need to account for my whereabouts. If this post sounds even remotely whiny, I apologise in advance.
The past few weeks have been brutal.
A horrid throat infection a few weeks ago laid me low and set me at least ten days behind in my work schedule just before my students sat their mid-year exams. Trying to get those exams marked and into the Semester 1 reports by the deadline was always going to be a challenge, to say the least.
That task, however, has been complicated by my being at court since last Friday, in the pursuit of justice and hoping for closure in a matter very close to my family and my heart.
That, in turn, has limited the time available for grading exam papers and writing reports to the weekend and evenings. It also meant that every lesson for this week and next had to be fully prepared, resourced and assigned on the school system before I left work last Thursday afternoon.
And thus, my waking hours have been fully consumed by matters of high priority that cannot be put off. I’m pulling successive 18 hour days with very little downtime.
There has been no writing. There has been no reading. My friend taught me to knit on Saturday afternoon, and I completed four rows while I was with her. I haven’t had time to pick that up again yet, either.
The only relief I have had is the audiobook I am listening to on the drive to and from court each day, and the few minutes I have taken over lunch or dinner to write the day’s blogpost if I am not using one written in advance.
I honestly don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, but I am going to have to try.
I should finish the exams tonight, but the there is a stack of work and assignments that my students are turning in this week while I am away from school. I need to check, grade and return all of that as soon as I can so the kids get the feedback and help they need to keep on learning and improving.
I don’t know when the court case will finish. I don’t know when I will get all this work done or when I will be able to write again, or read for pleasure.
Term ends at the end of next week and I am determined to take a well earned break then. Maybe I will sleep for the entire two weeks.
And if you are one of those people who like to comment on “all those holidays” teachers get?
Don’t.
It seems to me that people either love Twitter or can’t stand it. I am definitely in the former category, for several reasons:
It’s direct. You follow someone? You see their tweets. You don’t follow someone? You live in blissful ignorance. My feed is full of creative, positive people and exactly zero politicians. It’s a great way to filter reality.
Everyone who follows me can see my posts in real time, without any interference from the platform itself. Twitter sends every tweet into the world without trying to make a buck out of me to do it. That in itself is a refreshing change among social media platforms.
Retweets are brilliant for extending your reach easily and painlessly.. With one click, someone else can share your post with all their followers, too. Not only does this take your content further, it can also result in new followers and interactions.
It’s brief. Say what you want to say in 280 characters, preferably less. And that includes your hashtags.
Hashtagging is easy. Start typing a hashtag, and Twitter will actually suggest the most popular tags for you that start with those letters. It doesn’t get easier than that.
Connecting with others who have the same interests is easy. Once again, hashtags ply a key role here. Searching for a tag you are interested in is a simple way to find people using that tag in their posts. I have found great people, interesting content, and some excellent books doing exactly that.
I also like just scrolling through my feed and seeing what pops up. There is invariably something I want to respond to with a like or a bookish or bloggish post that I want to check out. I can spend as much or as little time as I have, put it down, and come back later. In that sense, it’s pretty cruisy.
Lists. You can create lists of accounts you want to group together. I have lists for authors in different genres. I also have a list for my favourite accounts called “Don’t Miss a Tweet”.
By going to a particular list in my profile, I can see only the tweets from the accounts in that list. It is a great way to cut through the voluminous white noise of the Twittersphere, and saves heaps of time when I am busy, because I see exactly what I want to and nothing else.
Lists can be made public or kept private. While I keep my “Don’t Miss a Tweet” list to myself, I make my genre lists public so that if someone is looking for Fantasy Authors or Poets, they can find a ready-made collection in no time flat. I may not have every author of a particular genre in my list, but you may be sure that the ones on my lists are worth checking out.
That all sounds pretty great, doesn’t it?
However, no social media platform is without its pitfalls.
My dislikes include, in no particular order:
Trolls and fake accounts. It’s easy for people to hide behind a social media account with a fake name and create mayhem. Whether it’s bullying or bullshit they are into, there’s not really a lot to stop them.
I overcome this by being very choosy about who I follow, and by making extensive use of the “unfollow” and “block” functions the minute my spidey senses start tingling.
Direct messages. Some people appreciate direct messages, but I am not one of them. It seems to me they are all either spamming a product or creepers trying to seduce me into giving them money or naughty photographs.
I overcome this by never looking at my inbox.
Tweeting can be hot-and-miss. The life cycle of a tweet is short, and I f followers aren’t online when you tweet, they can miss your content.
I overcome this by recycling my content, using different tweets on non-consecutive days so it doesn’t get repetitive or boring.
Clickbait. This is the term for anything exaggerated or sensationalised to make you click on a link to read the story. Ugh.
Once again, the blocking function has proven to be really effective in getting rid of these accounts from my feed.
Overall, I find Twitter much more user-friendly than Facebook, but I doubt that I would if I hadn’t taken the time to learn how to keep my Twitfeed positive and focused, and free of politics, gossip and drama.
It was spent in the presence of someone I’d rather never set eyes on again. It was spent in pursuit of justice. It was spent blinking back tears and swallowing my revulsion.
There is still anger burning within me that I cannot quench. My heart is heavy with the reopening of old wounds.
And I am powerless, unable to do anything but look on and observe.
I suppose it’s a good thing that I don’t have the psychic power to set someone on fire from across the room. I could do so, quite willingly, if I were able.
It’s fair to say that if a certain person did happen to spontaneously combust, I would make good use of my bottle of water by drinking it.
I do not, as a rule, harbour such feelings toward other people. I am fully aware of my own sins and imperfections. But when people commit to the unconscionable and then defend it, any concept of “benefit of the doubt” or “we all make mistakes” is well and truly cast aside.
I can feel another horror story coming on, but it’s not ready to be written yet. The ideas need to percolate more. And so, I must bide my time.
Today, with encouragement from my friends Kim and Helen, I am undertaking a new challenge: I’m going to learn to knit.
It is a skill that has defied me in the past. I have tried— and failed—several times before. As humiliating as that has been, I have remained a little jealous of people who can whip up a scarf or pair of gloves, or a lovely sweater, with relative ease.
My first project is going to be a scarf. I found some wool that I really love, and will look wonderful as a warm, wide scarf that I can wrap around me when it gets cold. I bought the wool and some bamboo knitting needles just the right size, so I’m ready to start. Helen has promised to teach me this afternoon.
I’m excited. I’m keen to put my past failures behind me. I’m super keen for the scarf. To be honest, that’s probably the biggest motivator, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Right?
If I catch on and manage to make a go of it, I will update you on my progress at some point. If I don’t… we will never speak of this again.
WordyNerdBird 