I’ve been feeling less Darkly Academic lately, so I haven’t written. Ironically, it’s because of actual academic pursuits–I switched my youngest kid to online school and now my usual reading and writing time is mostly taken up tutoring her. It had to be done, and of course she’s worth the effort; I’m not really complaining. It’s slowed down all my hobbies and projects, though, and that’s what I usually write about.

I’m still deciding whether I should change course and include more quick pictures and recommendations, or whether I should continue to focus on nerdy middlebrow book reviews and armchair philosophy, just at a slower pace than before. I wish I had the energy of Shirley Jackson, who managed to churn out humor, horror, and everything in between while raising four kids and even dealing with a difficult marriage. I’m no Shirley Jackson, that’s for sure, but I’ll soldier on in one way or another. Today, that means a quick post with a few small thoughts.

1. Once upon a time I was into micro horror, super short scary stories. Sometimes you only have time for a quick scare, you know? I vaguely remember trying to write a couple of micro horror stories but I must not have finished and submitted them. I hope I’d remember if I had a story published, even for free online. I think a Dark Academic micro fiction site would be a cool idea, but clearly a woman who can’t even blog daily has no time to launch such a site. Feel free to steal the idea–if you do I would try to write a nice little story or two for it.
2. DA seems to be part young people in plaid miniskirts and part actual adult professors and librarians, and sometimes I get jealous because I’m neither. I sometimes feel like family dysfunction and a cultish upbringing ripped me away from my true destiny as an occult librarian. Sometimes I run into people who are living my dream and for just a moment I hate them for it. I imagine a lot of dreamers feel this way. My life is better than a lot of peoples’ but sometimes I still wish I’d been dealt a different hand.
3. I discovered piñon coffee a week or so ago. I’ve been trying local New Mexico products, including local coffee, and when I picked up the bag of piñon coffee I didn’t look closely. I thought it was just a name but it’s actually coffee with piñon nut flavoring (a lot like pine nuts). It’s amazing, with strong coffee goodness and a smooth, rich finish. I’m in love. It probably tastes a lot like hazelnut coffee, actually. (I’ve heard hazelnut coffee is mostly low quality and artificial, so I could act like a snob and say I’m too good for that swill, but really I’m very allergic and I’m worried there might actually be hazelnut in some of it.) It’s probably not easy to get outside of New Mexico but if you ever get the chance you should try it.
4. Tutoring my kid through online school is proving an interesting experience. She’s my opposite in many ways, extremely grounded and logical and obsessed with sports and physical prowess. She’ll work through an hour or two of lessons and then want to hit the climbing gym. She’s always struggled with language arts because it doesn’t flay out into neat rules and techniques in quite the same way math or science does. I was trying to explain how you need to do it a lot to get a feel for how to write a good paragraph or skim an article for information, and she said “oh, so it’s hard like skiing.” Sure, maybe. Whatever works for ya. But it has been working–she’s suddenly looking at her assignments differently, looking for context clues and zeroing in on keywords to help her find the underlying logic of what’s in front of her. She’s becoming a big fan of outlines–for her, writing an outline for a paper is like using a math formula. At Point A you insert a topic sentence and the subpoints are where your evidentiary sentences slot into place. It’s so different from the wholistic way I think but it’s really connecting for her. The differences are illuminating.