The Sabbatical is Over

 I cannot pretend that the handful of followers of this blog have awaited another post from me, but I do regret having been away from this blog for so long. Much has happened since my last post in 2018. I have moved, I have changed jobs, I have earned another graduate degree, and we have lived through the worst of a global pandemic. 

I have a stack of books that I have meant to review in this blog for some time now. I am going to endeavor through work through this list in the coming days. I find myself on Spring Break from my current position and have just returned from a writing conference energized. I attended this conference to participate in a panel for an anthology on the subject of La Llorona. An essay of mine, "Living with La Llorona" will appear in this anthology in the fall of this year. 

I completed the requirements for an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Creative Nonfiction in the fall of 2021. My advisor recommended we establish social media preferences and I suppose this blog is the sort of thing he had in mind. Unfortunately, I did not maintain this blog during the three years I worked on that MFA, but now I feel the itch to return to some more regular schedule of writing. For 15 years from 2005 to 2020, I wrote an op-ed column for the Topeka Capital-Journal. For the first five years I wrote every week and I truly enjoyed that round-the-clock schedule which forced me to write or think about writing for most of the week. 

By the end of my time as a columnist, the column came out twice a month, the immediacy had been lost. I am feeling inspired to write again based on the reception to my Llorona essay at this conference. While the type of writing I blog for is not the same as op-ed writing, it is still writing, and writing about books and ideas. 

Once I find myself in a more regular rhythm, I will introduce this blog to my social media accounts in the hopes that more folks may follow my writing. Though I have not written for the TCJ since 2020, I have maintained a writing routine through my work on the journal, Law Wise, published by the Kansas Bar Association. No, I am not a lawyer, but my eldest son is an attorney in New York City. I serendipitously fell into Law Wise through Facebook. Law Wise is an outreach journal published by the KBA for teachers of social studies, civics, and American History and Government. I have written for Law Wise since 2017 publishing issues on a variety of topics related to constitutional and legal issues. The most recent issue found here is on the Age of Majority/Emancipation. 

Writing for Law Wise has been another form of education for me as I have learned a great deal about the various topics covered in these issues over the years.  

Well, I am back, Ides of March and all.  

Keep Reading, 

Czar