April Coffee Date

Pull up a chair and grab your favorite caffeinated beverage, dear reader.  It's been awhile, so let's catch up.  Here, in no particular order, are some life updates:

• We'll start with the heavy stuff.  One reason for my lack of writing over the last several months is I've been enduring a personal life tragedy.  Sorry to be so horribly vague, but I really don't care to get into it other than saying I've been in a fair bit of emotional pain lately.
• Life marches on, though.  Parenting a toddler and working a full time job as a high school teacher don't just stop so I can take time to reflect and process appropriately.  I've been dealing as best I can, which is to say, not great.
• I'm still running Boston next week, but the aforementioned personal tragedy really took a lot of wind out of my sails this past winter.  So many of my runs have been hampered by the existential question of "what's the point?"  I seriously considered dropping out of Boston, but I knew that come race weekend, I would probably regret it.  So I slogged through training as best I could, but with a lot less heart than I would have liked.  I'm in good physical shape now, but not great.  I'll survive Boston, but it may not be pretty.
• I got tickets to an afternoon Red Sox game this Saturday, and I'm going to try to work in a Sam Adams Brewery tour, and meet up with people from Who's Up? who are also running.  Overall I am definitely looking forward to this weekend.  I'm sure I'll put up several more posts over the next week telling all about it.
• Because the Boston Marathon always falls on a Monday, most people have to take a day off of work.  I'm taking two to allow for travel back to New Jersey, but because the race also falls directly after our spring break (all four days of it), and the administration doesn't like teachers taking days off directly before or after a break, they are docking my pay for one of those days.
• Speaking of school, I'm busy planning another trip to Germany with my students. Last time we went was April 2015, and this year we'll be going in June.  I'm taking 14 students and they're all very excited, but this will probably be the last time I plan everything myself.  It's just too much work on top of all my other responsibilities.
• I'm writing a book.  It's a young adult novel set in a dystopian future where kids battle each other to the death.  Just kidding.  All I'll say is the main character is an 8th grader, so it's aimed at middle schoolers and the problems they face.  Who knows what will come of it, but for now it's a fun hobby, and it's nice to give long-form fiction a shot.  Look for the book to hit shelves around 2032.
• That's the long and the short of it on my end.  How have you been?