If It Were Easy...

 

...everyone would do it.

Someone teased me about writing another book so I asked on FB about what I should write about - if I even should think about writing another book.

One of the responses was to write about what was in my heart.

Good advice.

Now, if I only knew what was in my heart that needed to come out in written form.

Writing can take many forms.  Fiction, of course.  Non-fiction, naturally.  Memoir?  Pretty niche market and who would be interested in my life but me, anyway?  And, as one person put it, do I really want to share those formative experiences publicly?  They were pretty much negative, out of which I managed to find lessons that have stood me in good stead.  But honestly?  I dunno.

I could talk about teaching, but I'm not educated in teaching.  Everything I know I learned as a student, mostly from the 'bad' ones, knowing that what they were doing was not helpful to me.  It was definitely off putting in more than one instance.  But I took the lesson to heart so that when I began teaching I knew I never wanted to be *that* kind of teacher.

I could talk about learning, but again, I'm not educated about how we learn, just have my own experience to draw on.  But how we learn is quite personal and what one person thrives on, another...does not.  I've seen that over and over again in the teacher evaluations I've received.  I am not the 'best' teacher for everyone.  And I'm ok with that.  There are other teachers who have a different approach and might be better for that student.

My intuition has been valuable as has my ability to 'read' body language and intuit what a student is really asking when they don't know what they want to know and therefore don't have the words to put their question to me directly.  I can't count how many times I've been asked a question and wound up figuring out what their actual problem was and answering that rather than the question as it was posed.

I've woven long enough, made enough mistakes, that I can usually diagnose a problem with only the sketchiest of descriptions, to the point that some people are shocked that from a few words describing their problem I was able to pinpoint the issue and then tell them what to do.

(Sometimes my answer is 'cut it off, start over'.  Just saying.)

A student recently emailed to say that her therapists were delighted that I have taken the time, effort and money to consult with experts about how to weave ergonomically.  That I care enough about the health of my students and their physical well being to try and keep them from injury.

Perhaps it's because I have lived with chronic pain all my life and needed to find these things out for myself?  But I really want people to be able to weave without pain and injury resulting.

So do I have another book in me?  

I really don't know.  The first two were clearly needed (*I* thought) and so I was willing to put the time, energy and money into producing them.  

Some told me to 'tell my stories'.  But I do that here on the blog.  So maybe I need to just cull the blog to make a book of essays?  But y'all can read them here, for free.  

Blogspot tells me the metrics for what I write and frankly, I'm astonished so many people have read what I have written.  As of 10 am this morning, Blogspot says I have published 3431 posts and have a viewership of nearly 2.25M page views.

That's not nothing.  But neither does it make a 'book'.

As of this morning, I've pretty much talked myself out of tackling another book.  But I won't say 'never' because I refused to contemplate book #2 until I saw the need.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll see the need for the 'hat trick'...