Leverett Butts - Musings of a Bored English Teacher

Occasional web log from Southern writer Leverett Butts.

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Location: Temple, Georgia, United States

English Professor in Georgia. Writer of Southern lit

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Recently, I have received comments and emails from my readers complaining about my lack of posts and threatening to quit reading my blog altogether.

I appreciate everyone who reads my blog. I have been doing it for over a year, now, and I'm constantly amazed at how many total strangers tune in every week to see if I've left more ramblings. I expect my friends and family to check in, and as much as I enjoy hearing their comments about my entries, it's the people who don't know me that really mean the most to me. Perhaps its the narcissist in me enjoying the effect (however small and insignificant) I have on the lives of people whom I will never meet face-to-face.

It's kinda humbling.

Oh, who am I kidding? It's fucking amazing, and I can't get enough of it.

I realize, therefore, how frustrating it is for my readers to drop by week after week and not have a new entry. I drop by several blogs, myself, and get disappointed when I see the same entry from last week or the week before.

That being said, though, I have to ask that you all be patient with me. If I don't have an entry for a while, it's probably due to one of a few reasons:

1. Nothing important happened today: Remember that I live in a rural town in Georgia, not war-torn Iraq or the politically intriguing Washington, D.C. I'm an English instructor at a small community college, not a great mover and shaker with my finger on the pulse of our nation's culture and politics. An average day consists of my teaching students how to make verbs agree with their subjects and how to communicate a complete thought. Afterwards, I usually go home and watch T.V. or play a video game until I'm sleepy.
These entries would would bore you quicker than T. S. Eliot reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby cover to cover.

2. Important stuff happened, but you wouldn't care: I have had an ongoing correspondence this week with Rosanna Warren, Robert Penn Warren's daughter, gathering background information on a possible paper comparing Frodo Baggins to the heroes in RPW's fiction. I have also been contacting the Jesse Stuart Foundation in Kentucky to discover which of Stuart's stories were published in the Southern Review during the thirties and forties. While I find these happenings extremely exciting, I sincerely doubt the majority of you would find much entertainment in them. Again Eliot reading Fitzgerald might be more attention grabbing.

3. Nothing unimportant happened today either: I realize that my best writing usually deals with the amusing minutiae that happens to me from time to time, but not all minutiae is worth writing about. If my shoes are untied, I tie them. I don't write long articles about it. If I'm eating lunch, it's not really worth letting it get cold while I tell you today's menu. Some things just aren't that amusing.

4. I don't get paid for this: While I enjoy writing these blog entries and appreciate your tuning in, I'm doing it pro bono, usually when there's free time at work. Teaching, grading, and committee work put food on my table, a roof on my house, and clothes on my back, not observing life's amusing anecdotes on a weblog. Sometimes I have to let my hobby go, so I can keep enjoying my hobby.

So . . .

If you get bored with the same old entry week after week, read someone else's blog that day, or read a book, pet the dog, and love your family.

Or get back to work, slacker.

Don't get upset with me and take my blog off your reading list or something; that's just silly. I haven't gone anywhere. I promise I will write more when I have time and something worth observation happens.

If I trip on my untied shoes and fall face first into my lunch while grading papers, I promise you'll be the first to know.

Now, if you'll excuse me I've got a stack of essays calling me.