This year is harder than others. I don’t know why. I didn’t expect it–I have one of the best schedules I’ve ever had in all my years of teaching, I’m starting to see some legitimate change in the district, and in general, I don’t have a whole lot of waves going on.
Yet I’m restless. Unsettled.
Last night before I went to bed, I thought I’d read for a bit. The last book I read was so mind-numbingly boring that it put to sleep every night. It was a fantasy-alternate-world-fighting-dragons kind of book and I hated every page. But I’ve committed to reading the books on this list,
So next up was the book “Shiver” by Maggie Stiefvater. It is just shy of 400 pages and from what I could tell was a book about wolves.
Ew.
I crawled into bed, exhausted from my day, opened the book and read a page. The pace wasn’t bad, so I read another page. And before I knew it, it was midnight, I was wrapped up in the story, and I had to force myself to turn off the light and get some sleep.
I found pockets of time throughout my day, and finished it before school was over. I was lost in that book. And while I was reading, I didn’t have to think about grading papers, planning lessons, district demands. I didn’t worry about my nieces and nephews, or my parents or my sisters, or think about how I need to start coming back to terms with the fact that I will likely never date again, and definitely won’t ever marry. My thoughts were concerned only with the characters in the book, what was happening to them, and how the story would end.
There are two more books in the series; it’s taking all the willpower in the world to not sink back into the story.
It was glorious to be lost in that world for a day, to just not be really living in mine.
