Right. A promise is a promise:

Jeff Tweedy, and his beautiful band, Wilco. Live at the Civic Center in Asheville.

I had the best seat in the house. I feel tremendous guilt for sitting there, when Amy, Sarah, and Hannah couldn’t all join me (we got the last four tickets; they weren’t together). I got some nice photos, though, and we all had a splendid time.

I’m not apologizing. So I haven’t written in a long time. What happened?

What happened is a priority shift. Or priority addition. Or whatever it’s called when you have too much on your plate, and “blogging” kind of falls off the edge, to be discovered by the dog two weeks later, and gobbled up and forgotten. I don’t want to give you all the “Sorry, I’m just so busy, and I couldn’t get around to it” that’s sure to make some eyes roll. I’d like to think that, having been a blogger for about four years now, I don’t need to explain myself anymore. Yeah, alright, so I’m a blogging snob.

Although it really has seemed like I’ve not had any real free time lately. Don’t get me wrong: it’s been time well-spent. I’ve had some fun adventures lately, and been as productive as a person can be, all things considered. I’ve really been very economical with every single second of every single day. I’m either studying, or in class, or working, or cleaning house, or keeping myself from being friendless and alone. I’m always doing something.

The other day, some of the high-schoolers at Hopewood were accusing me of not being “teachery” enough. Of course, they were only joking around, but it kind of hit on some things that had been bugging me. It’s hard for me to have enough time to devote to teaching, like I want to have. Lesson plans and stuff.. it falls through sometimes. Or I get distracted when I’m teaching by an exam that I’ve got to take, and I know I slack off.

Maybe I’m not “teachery” enough. If I had anything other than blue jeans to wear to work, would I? I don’t know. The fact of the matter is, I still catch myself joking around with the high schoolers, like I’m still in their class, instead of teaching it. I still like corny jokes, and playing video games. I still like to go see movies with people, and go outlet shopping every now and then, and go to the park. Heck, I still watch Disney movies. Even taken literally, I’m only a year older than some of the students at Hopewood. How does one go about becoming “teachery” in that amount of time?

But then, I’m not so much a student either, even in my own classes. I was so delighted during this morning’s Spanish class, when Dr. Whitsitt asked the routine question, ¿Cómo fue el fín de semana? ¿Qué pasó?, and I was able to match the round of “Fui a una fiesta”s with my own thrilling tale of a rock concert, in whatever broken Spanish I could muster. I was excited, not only because of the post-Wilco-concert high that I’ve been on all weekend, but because normally I just keep my mouth shut. I don’t know how to say “lesson plans, laundry, and out-of-town meetings” in Spanish, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort if I did. Obviously, I am completely unable to relate to my peers. At least, the typical-college-student peers: the ones that go out drinking every Thursday evening without fail, and the ones that skip their 8, 9, 10 AM classes because they’d been out late partying or procrastinating. No, if I sleep through my 8-AM, it’s because I was catching up on long-overdue house cleaning until the wee hours.

The thing is, I don’t really want to relate to peers like that. I don’t want to wake up at 11 every Friday with a hangover and a missed exam. But I guess it’s kind of hard to walk that fine line between teacher and student. It’s hard to have to put report cards together in the middle of midterms. It’s a constant mind-switch, a dual-persona. And then there’s the fear that I’m going to be caught by one of my students doing something that isn’t “teachery”. What if they catch me plugging a bucketfull of quarters into the Galaga machine at the skating rink? Or buying a handful of newly released CDs at Sam Goody, maybe even a couple with “Parental Advisory” stickers? Or dressed up in full costume just to watch the release of a movie? And what about the people I hang out with? I mean, I can keep myself in check just fine, but if I tried to narrow my friends down to the ones who didn’t drink or smoke or curse on occasion, I think I’d have about three friends left. I can’t reprimand little Timmy for saying “crap” at school, and then have him learn twenty new “bad” words sitting next to a few of us at a restaurant.

Fortunately, I haven’t had any big problems with this yet. I’ve been fortunate enough to only run into my students in grocery stores and public events, places where I had no trouble putting on my “teacher” suit. Still, it’s bound to happen one of these days.

Oh, yeah. That Wilco concert.

You might be seeing some photos from that soon.