{"id":824,"date":"2010-09-10T21:23:21","date_gmt":"2010-09-11T04:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/?p=824"},"modified":"2010-09-10T21:23:21","modified_gmt":"2010-09-11T04:23:21","slug":"this-may-be-the-day-that-i-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/?p=824","title":{"rendered":"This may be the day that I fail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve pulled off a 9 day streak so far on writing 750 per day for the blog if you count yesterday&#8211;admittedly questionable&#8211;when I wrote it, erased it, and replaced it with something else much shorter.  It has been quite a little writing marathon on my part, I must say.  It&#8217;s made my life interesting, and maybe it has achieved my original goal of strengthening my writing through the sheer act of practice.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot promise 750 words tonight, however, because it is late, and I am tired, and I have written well beyond that many words in comments on student drafts today.  But here I am in front of my blog, thinking I might give it a try even though I might also fail because that&#8217;s the only way anyone ever accomplishes anything.<\/p>\n<p>Today was a day.  It was indeed a day.  I had an avalanche of ungraded papers.  I told myself it was a feet to the floor, butt to the chair, no distractions allowed sort of day.  I sat down at my desk with every good intention, read a student paper, typed out a longish response, and hit save only to see that pretty little error message that means the Internet is out, and everything you&#8217;ve just typed has been lost.  Repeat this process over and over, and you have my morning.  I hope you are properly awed at my capacity to refrain from tossing the computer out the window.<\/p>\n<p>The Internet went in and out, which I believe is worse than just being out, and I believe is also something that could possibly be sung to the tune of &#8220;The wheels on the bus go round and round.&#8221;  This could be a source of entertainment while the Internet is out.<\/p>\n<p>So I persevered, plowed my way out from under one avalanche by the grace of God and a home wi-fi system.  Then I went to a smell-good-bath-stuff home party, a somewhat brave move considering I&#8217;m allergic to everything that smells good.  I sat next to E of eLearning, who is also allergic to everything that smells good.  Someone asked us why we weren&#8217;t laughing, and we said in unison, &#8220;It&#8217;s been a long week.&#8221;  <em>The Internet goes in and out, in and out, in and out.  The Internet goes in and out all day long.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><object width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/fnupL42gmF4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/fnupL42gmF4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p><em>All day long<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>But there were prizes to be had at the smell good party.  E drew wrinkle cream.  I drew something called monkey farts.  At that point we were laughing.<\/p>\n<p>Wrinkle cream and monkey farts might just be the best you can hope for at the end of a day like this.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow it will be a butt on the couch, feet on the coffee table grading marathon via the old home wi-fi system.  I fantasize about a life in which weekends belong to me, but only the coffee table belongs to me, and that&#8217;s only because it came cheap at someone&#8217;s yard sale.<\/p>\n<p>And so it is that I find myself still short of 750 words after 11 at night when I have a hard Saturday ahead.  I have to ask myself now if I really care that I fail.  The answer is hazy, says the Magic 8-Ball.  Nah.  Probably not, says Sharon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve pulled off a 9 day streak so far on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}