The Wisdom of Students

 It is amazing how an offhanded comment by one student can really start me thinking–can really start a tumble of dominoes in my mind.

Shortly before class on Friday, while wondering aloud where some of the more punctual students were, one of my bright students explained that the subway trains were running slow. Because she was a regular reader of my blog, she then pointed out that I should have already known that.  While I was acknowledging the truth of her statement, she let forth with the offhand comment that has been rattling around in my brain ever since.

“Maybe you should think about changing the name of your blog,” she explained, trying to point out that quite a few of my recent posts were not really “Perfect Moments.”

It kind of stopped me dead. I freely admit that a number of posts have been focused on interesting moments rather than perfect moments.  I had hoped that these were interesting explorations rather than whiny rants–but now I might need to readdress that.  Perhaps she was right.

I started looking for perfect moments to brighten my mood. To a great degree this worked.  I can honestly say that right now I am pretty happy.  Sure there are tons of things that could be better, but I feel confident that those things will get better.  I am also not really bothered with the negative things.  However, I don’t think that means I should give up the basic premise of this blog.

I tried that before. I changed the title to “A Quest for the Better Me”  which seemed reasonable, but since I couldn’t change the address without starting a new blog and importing all the content there, it confused new readers. It also didn’t seem to resonate with readers.  I concluded that was because I didn’t really seem to be on a quest–no new diets, no new life plan, no exotic location, and no new philosophical outlook.  It also had no definite numerical targets–pounds lost, pushups done…that sort of thing.

Lately, I have been writing about things I find interesting not only to improve my mood, but also to practice my writing skills. Though I don’t talk about it as much, I would still like to have a writing career.  I still have short story and novel ideas rattling around in my brain.  I would still like to escape the grind of the ESL world before it decides it can do without me.  Writing scenes from the bus or the mall or anywhere is a literary exercise as well as a therapeutic endeavour.

But I digress–as I am wont to do.

I am not desperately searching for those Perfect Moments right now, but I still need them and I still find them (today, for example, they had cherry coke at the dollar store–actually $1.25 store but that just doesn’t sound nearly as cool).  I hope you don’t think I am being selfish with them, when really it is more about the writing of them.  While effective for me, the writing of them sometimes feels sort of “samey” to me–and I worry about this.  I  really don’t want to bore the twenty or so of you who read this blog.  I hope my diversions into the weird, sometimes off-putting part of my life is at least somewhat entertaining.