Second semester begins tomorrow; my classes start on tuesday. I will spend the day duct-taping together my syllabi, my assignments lists, and my course policies. Each semester, my course policies statement gets bitchier, and its tone gets more caustic. I regret that, but I also regret that about 80% of my students just don’t get it. I’m trying something new this semester: less is more. I’m going to assign fewer tasks, with greater value and weight, and spend less time lecturing and cajoling. We’ll see if it has any impact at all.

Amy and are making some tough financial decisions. Our lifestyle is being drastically affected by this economy that traitorous conservatives keep telling me is “in great shape.” We each have a good job, with good benefits. We eat at home, I drive a hybrid, and we haven’t had a vacation in about, well, never. We have a normal mortgage structure. Yet gas prices, food prices, the prices of utilities, clothing prices, and the pressure to try to maintain a middle class lifestyle is taking its toll. What must be happening to single-income households? Or to those with resetting ARMs? Or to folks whose income is dependent on fuel prices? Viva la revolucion.

One of those tough decisions is whether to continue the active practice of law, or to go “inactive,” which means I put my license in abeyance and give up the privilege of practice until I pay a fee to the state; this also means I no longer have to go to goddamned CLE’s, pay my fees to the bar associations, or to the State Bar of Ohio. I’m really happy with the way my “virtual” firm has operated, organizationally, but I must admit it’s difficult to generate fees without giving in to the telephone-book world of advertising.

Mostly, I need to clear my mind and focus on the things before me that really matter. that’s what I was getting at with this post, a few weeks ago. Part of my general psychological “touchedness,” is that I get involved with more projects than I can effectively manage. Then, what happens is I do none of them excellently–usually, competently–and that’s just not enough for me. I really need to teach and ECC and write my novels and be done with it.

AWP is next week. I look forward.