July 11, 2021
I will retire from teaching a-year-from-now. I have noticed that I am starting to lose my Mojo (after 42 years of teaching). Was it A.E. Houseman who suggested that one should get out on top of their game so as not to die before the name?
I thought that moving to the online teaching format would help me with my hearing difficulty — and to a certain extent it has — but moving back to the classroom in Spring \’22 is now a frightening proposition — even with hearing aids.
I\’m also becoming forgetful — unable to recall important data and concepts and names. I\’m making more typos now than I did in Typing 101.
But the most disturbing development to me is my diminishing ability to engender laughter — that dynamic which creates classroom cohesion and culture: so necessary to absorbing the content being presented.
I\’m feeling like a dinosaur, a fossil, a relic…no longer relevant…ironic in the fact that the reason I began the The Doctor\’s Inn was to critically examine the contemporary American educational system and point out its many weaknesses — hoping to proffer possible solutions to a system that seems to function in spite of itself.
I somehow drifted into socio-politics and joined a herd of voices (many of which were more knowledgeable and profound than my own*).
The problem with retirement is that as things stand, I won\’t be able to afford to retire in my beloved California. It\’s just too goddamned expensive — and my pensions and social security won\’t be enough to sustain a $3000.00-a-month gap in take home pay. So it\’s either move out of California to a place where they don\’t like Californians; or, get another income stream. I just learned that FEMA is looking for workers at a rate of $2800-a-month. Hmmmmm…
As I observe these younger entrepreneurs on the Internet (Tik Tok and Facebook) — I\’m thinking that what they do is definitely not my style — but you know how the old saying goes: either keep up or die. So my children, some producer friends and others are pushing me to do something more contemporary (less pedantic) with The Doctor\’s Inn.
At first I thought I could charge my Doctor\’s Inn readers a nominal fee to read new installments — but this was when I thought I had 70,000 readers or more. After a recent content analysis I found that I\’m lucky if I get 10,000 reads per installment. I know I could get more readers if I used provocative catch words or catch phrases in my titles…and I still may have to do that (I know I\’ve had a million hits with certain titles!!).
Folks seeking to upgrade me want me to attempt something else completely out of my comfort zone! So look for a transformation of The Doctor\’s Inn in the-next-couple-of-months!
The14 years of prose will most likely be relegated to the archives *(where some errant researchers might realize that I tended to discuss issues and problems from perspectives out-of-the-mainstream framings long before other pundits began to express similar ideas).
I may need a Go Fund Me drive to keep me in Cali!!!