Thursday was the best day of riding so far for this trip!  I left Greenville after a wonderful visit with incredible friends and headed for a visit with great friends in Wilmington NC.  It was also the first day that I took my time, reflected, and wrote in the journal.  Excellent.

One of the challenges of journaling and riding is trying to remember all of the salient musings in order to capture them in writing when I do pull over.  This leads to a sequence of events like the ones I experienced that day.  Here's a brief description of what that looks like: 

1.  Ride
2. Think
3. Come up with brilliant idea(s)
4. Try to remember these little mental nuggets
5. Make up a mnemonic to promote recall
6. Think of new idea(s)
7. Realize I can't remember that many ideas at one time
8. Pull over
9. Dig journal out of saddlebag
10. Write in journal
11. Put journal away
12. REMEMBER TO CLOSE SADDLE BAG (can you tell I've forgotten this step a few times?)
13. Five minutes or so down the road, realize that I didn't adequately capture some of the previous thoughts OR new thoughts that just came up
14. Repeat steps 7-13 as often as necessary....

Let's see a real life example:

In my last blog posting, I think I chose a few words poorly.  (Alright, all you English majors stop snickering - I know what your thinking; "He thinks he only chose a few words poorly?")  I may have intimated that I was full of self-loathing.  I really was trying to enumerate various manifestations of depression, knowing that some people do go down that particular rabbit hole.  I heard some feedback on that entry and wanted to let you know that I'm not hating on myself...

Okay, okay, let's get back to the process...

I'm riding down the road.  Now, let me try to give you a visual...  I'm riding with no radio, iPod, or soundtrack of any kind.  Well, that's not necessarily true.  I do spend a fair amount of time singing out loud while I cruise down America's backroads and the song that emerged from my lips Thursday was 'Across the Universe' by the Beatles.  As I was singing, I became acutely aware of the lyrics in the refrain...  "Nothing's gonna change my world, nothing's gonna change my world..."  After a fashion, I pulled over and wrote the following entry in my journal:  "YES! NO THING is going to change my world - only I can do that!!!!"  I really like this conclusion; however, it's exactly that - a CONCLUSION.

In order to arrive at this conclusion, I had to mull over it's germination...  As I first considered these lyrics, I thought to myself, "Nothing's gonna change my world?  This means that I am doomed to live out the rest of my life mired in the struggles which I have illuminated within this blog...  Essentially, I'm destined to be what I've always been."   As that fatalistic idea coalesced in brain, I literally sank into my seat.  I'm doomed, I thought...

But you know what?  IF I am truly 'doomed' to be ME for the rest of my life, I thought to myself, this is a good thing - remember, as I hope I've said previously, I like myself.  I like who I am.  I'm kind, generous, considerate, fun to be around, self-aware, etc.  I do like who I am, I just want to be better...  I want to be a better friend, father, companion, student, and lover.  But, most of all, I want to be a better teacher.  My students deserve nothing but the best.  ALL students deserve nothing but the best.  Teaching is not a profession in which one should dabble. 

I'm going to end it there for today, because this issue is so important to me...  Once we begin this conversation, there is going to be a lot to say, and today's entry is long and boring enough already....

Now get out there and live! 

Much love.