Spring Break is just one week away. I’m grading like a fiend and shuffling all sorts of paperwork just to ready myself for NINE glorious days of writing just because I want to. It’s a special Spring Break present I’m giving to myself.

I’m fantasizing a string of days when I loll around until noon just playing with words and making delightful strings of nothing in particular. I’m imagining padding around in house shoes and sipping truly hot coffee while warning everyone I’ve got writing to do. And I’ll close the door. And I’ll make whatever I want.

When I’m through with that, I’ll read books that have no academic purpose. I’ll reread Absalom, Absalom again and then some completely ridiculous trash fiction that doesn’t include words like curriculum, comp theory, or paradigm.

I’m going to turn off CNN and finally discover what it feels like not to have my days narrated by Wolf Blitzer.

I’ll drag my typewriter down to the coffee shop and bang away at the keys and drink iced tea out of lidded styrofoam cups. I’ll collect words all day, like I used to before they all became, “use more detail here” and “embed this quote.” After I collect them, I’ll make stunning poems and tape them on the fridge.

That way, every time I walk past them on the way to freshen my coffee, I can remember who I am.