I’m a big fan of the pulp fiction writers from the early 1900s. Their work ethic and attitude towards writing was outstanding.

At that time there was no such thing as author advances, or even treating writing as some kind of high form of art. It was work.

These writers would sit down for eight hours a day, typing story after story, sending them off and getting paid per word if they were accepted. Many of these stories didn’t last beyond the paper they were printed on.

Sometimes a few of the better ones got reprinted. Whatever happened though, they just kept going.

They didn’t treat any particular story with some great thought that this was going to be the greatest piece of art on the planet. They put their egos aside and worked their butts off. In other words, they did what today’s writers fail to do.

I try every day to mimic their attitude a bit more. Keeping in mind, however, it was a different time period. The circumstances under which they were writing were very different and the world they were writing in was also a different place.

But I often wonder if we were to bring those pulp fiction writer writers to today, with all the tools at our disposal, what could they accomplish?

First of all, they were typing on manual typewriters and editing was a big big pain. It was in their benefit to get it right the first time, or with as few errors as possible per page. There was no spell check, grammar check or any on-the-fly editing function. They were also bound to wherever their typewriter was.

Imagine them with the tools we have today.

We have a device that fits in our pocket that can literally transcribe every word you say. We also have larger devices that are paper thin with detachable keyboards you can use anywhere to get some work done. Also, these devices make editing work ridiculously simple.

You can also use these same devices to publish your work to the entire world for free and put that work into distribution systems to get you paid.

I’m pretty sure if you brought those writers to today with the tools that we have, they would put today’s writer to shame.

This is where my contention lies (myself included). We’ve forgotten the work habits of the writers of yesterday, except for a niche few that some academics feel constitute “real” authors of “proper” literature. We haven’t built upon what they did.

Writers are caught up in the business and marketing aspect of publishing and forgot that writing was a simple labor… a labor of love… but a simple labor. You sit down, write, produce and go on to the next story, hoping to get better each time.

Athletes, on the other hand, have learned from their predecessors. They have amazing tools, knowledge, information and equipment at their disposal that the athletes of yesterday would gush over. The difference is they now know that every little thing they can learn about themselves and their performance, and about their previous performances, to better themselves is going to give them an advantage over the playing field.

In many ways, I wish the writers of today could be like the athletes of today and learn from our predecessors, rather than believe we’ve transcended them.

There’s a great scene in Good Will Hunting where Ben Affleck tells Matt Damon the best moment of his day is when he walks from the car to the door in the hopes that when he knocks, Will (Damon’s character) won’t be there anymore.

He didn’t say goodbye–just got up and left.

I relate to this scene because my favorite part of the day is when I pull up to my daughter’s daycare. I take her out of the car and we have these few moments where we run to the door, really fast.

And she laughs the entire way.

Then we get inside, do our drop-off routine and she’s off.

In that moment from the car to the door, I forget about any frustrations, lack of sleep or things I have to do for the day.

Anything else on my mind is just gone.

I’m very lucky in that I get another moment like this when I pick up my son from school. He gets his stuff together, then we run from the door to the car and I ask him how his day was.

It’s those two times in the day that I get to be fully present in the moment.

I get to forget everything else that’s on my mind and just enjoy the joy of my family.

I’m thankful I get those two moments in the day.

I’m cherishing those moments.

Because they’re not going to last forever.

All things happen within their season… and then they’re gone.

2020 will be the fifth year that I’ve been writing for this site.

My plan of action was to just have a platform in which I was writing consistently because getting out of the habit of writing was always a downfall of mine. So while there are many instances where I wasn’t doing creative writing, I was writing here. And now I’m doing more creative writing while still posting.

I somehow managed to leverage technology to make this work in my busy schedule with a full time job and family.

The traction from having written almost 1000 posts is showing.

I don’t pay attention to traffic all that often because I don’t want to let it influence what I do on my daily basis. I check in from time to time to see what people are enjoying and it appears I’m getting more than enough traffic to completely just do book reviews.

I also get quite a few hits on many of my articles that I wrote years ago. I forget what I wrote and have to recheck, but it’s neat to see what I was thinking at the time.

It’s quite outstanding to see the long tail of my work and to know some of you have been with me for since the beginning. In fact, some of you have been with me before the beginning when I tried different iterations of this site. I truly am proud and thankful that you’ve kept in touch with me, reached out to me and kept me going.

For the first few years, it really didn’t seem like much is happening.

Nor did I expect much to happen. I asked myself that if I wrote every day, and nobody read it, what I still be happy doing it?

And the answer to that was yes.

The process of sitting down and writing every day, putting it out in public and defending my craft was more important than any traffic that I could be generating, and any marketing shtick I could be using.

And now it appears something is happening. The seeds that I’ve been planting for quite some time now are sprouting.

There’s been some contacts. Some pitches.

And certainly some traction.

Nothing may come of it right away, but it’s coming.

The seeds are planted, and now the seeds are growing.

I often tell my students human beings are horrible long term planners. We’re the worst.

We always overestimate what we can do in a short amount of time.

It’s about taking small steps, then giant leaps and trusting the process to guide you along the way.

Even when it seems like nothing is happening, trust the process. Something is always happening.

This is quite a popular thing to say whenever we look at a new generation and think, “What the heck is going on with them?”

But consider this conversation with one of my students:

“My uncle told me he was homophobic, but not racist. For the 70s, that was pretty good.”

And he’s right that it was good for the time, but I also appreciate the recognition he gave about how things have changed. This generation of young people have a much better handle on those problems. Even more so than my generation (I give ourselves a solid 6/10).

Despite what you may see in the media, racism is something we’re hyper aware of and challenging, even on a systemic level. Homophobia is another systemic problem we are slowly edging towards a better place every day. This is thanks to the young people today.

My observations over the past ten years is that kids these days haven’t changed much, but there are a few things that have changed with them.

In person, they’re actually a lot nicer.

I say in person because people’s addiction to online services, I’m speaking specifically with social media, have a tendency to bring out their inner troll. However, that just doesn’t apply to young people–it’s everyone.

They’re are a lot safer and many things in the world are a lot better. For instance, they have access to technology that we could only dream about growing up. Also, extreme poverty and violent crime is at its lowest since we’ve been tracking it.

We can’t blame them for having these comforts because we created a society that gave it to them. What I hope (and see) is they figure out how to use this inheritance for the betterment of the planet and everybody in it.

So yes, kids these days…

Sometimes I look at my classroom full of hormonal teenagers and just shake my head.

Other times I get pretty frustrated with them.

But most times, I just smile. On the inside, I know the future is still looking pretty good. Provided, of course, we don’t kill ourselves before getting there.

It’s my birthday.

I stopped celebrating this day years ago. It’s not because I feel bad about getting older, or I have some kind of personal qualms against celebrating a year of my life, but I like to think of this as a quiet day to reflect on the past year.

After all, it’s been a year and a lot happens in that time.

I would like to say there were many life changing moments for me this year–even the insignificant ones that didn’t seem like they would have a long term effect.

One thing I learned is that all things in life (good and bad) happen within their season and then they go away. I remember this time last year: my daughter still wasn’t sleeping through the night, our family just moved, it was very chaotic and my classes were excruciating… almost bringing me to the point of quitting.

This time things are a lot more calm, smooth and everything seems to be in order. Looking back at last year, especially for choosing the time that we did to move, I realized it was timed perfectly.

I made a lot of choices to make significant improvements in my life and in my health. Perhaps it’s with the age of 40 looming in the next few years and I might just be early for my midlife crisis.

But I can see that taking all the steps I can to be the best version of myself is an investment in me, my family and those around me.

I’m eating healthier, I feel better, I’m reading more, my mind is sharper, I’m still learning new skills and I’m trying new things every day.

I learned how to take advantage of the pockets of time that I’ve had, and the tools available at my disposal, to get more writing done.

The past few months, you may have noticed an increase in volume of the writing, not only for each post, but the amount of posts.

That’s because I taught myself how to use dictation. My commute to work allows me to dictate some of my writing and my car to and from work has become a joyous part of my day as a result. I look forward to my “writing sessions.”

I’m launching another book that’s been in my drawer for quite some time and it’s one I really love and very proud of.

I made a new circle of friends that have kept me accountable, pushed me to greater things and it’s a group of wonderful people that I can rely upon.

I’ve cut off those people in my life who have been a negative influence.

I’m seeing the benefits of many of the things I’ve built upon come into fruition.

Piece by piece and little by little, the path I’ve set for myself years ago is slowly coming together in ways that I didn’t even think it would.

It’s affirming to know that I’m on the right track for once.

Well, actually it’s affirming to know that I’m on any path and not just hopelessly wandering and hoping life gets me somewhere. Although, that was a fun time in my life too.

This year I’ve really learned that whole idea that you can overestimate what you can do in a year, but severely underestimate what you can do in ten.

I’ve been taking the baby steps this year for the ten years ahead.

I also learned that tomorrow isn’t promised to anybody.

So while I plan for ten years, and hope for it, I understand that anything can happen.

I spend way less time on distracting websites, social media accounts and video games, replacing that time with my family and books. Sometimes both (my kids love having me read to them).

I’ve recognized that I have a lot more to learn in life and the lessons of the people before me should really be taken into consideration… rather than just a smile, polite nod and a thank you.

The big realization this year, however, is that I’m still young.

Provided I take care of myself and those around me, I have a lot of life ahead.

And I’m excited about that.

The hardest part about improving as a teacher is trying to find the particular areas that give the greatest impact.

This is difficult because researchers are constantly telling us what one thing will improve teaching, students learning, and get them to a level beyond their current achievement status.

Unfortunately, all of them miss the nuances of the classroom.

There is no one particular, simple thing to “fix” all of education.

A simple explanation is not going to suffice to solve an entire education system full of students with a wide assortment of backgrounds, abilities, motivations and character traits.

Good teaching is a multitude of things that come together. It’s an art of making hundreds (if not thousands) of tweaks that work in a particular environment and it will look different for every school and every teacher.

This isn’t unique to teaching, as we do this in society as well.

We like to point to a problem and say the solution is this one simple fix. Just look multitude of daily clickbait articles that tell you you only need these three things… or this one simple thing will…

No. The answer is no.

It’s not that one simple thing and it’s not those list of things. You can’t reduce a complicated problem to a simple solution. The problem is more nuanced than that.

Solutions to major problems are not simple.

They’re doable. We can work at them. There are many solutions and we should implement those, but there’s not one single solution that’s going to work.

So for those who are skeptical that one solution will fix everything–you should be. But don’t disregard it as something to not even try.

Big problems require many solutions.

It’s just figuring out what’s going to work here and now.