What is with the obsession with personal health?

 Is it the long-game strategy in the search for immortality?
Are we that afraid of death?
Are we that full of fear?
Or the efforts to disperse morality?

Who wants to live forever?
Freddie got it right.
Somebody to love?
Now that's worth the fight.

Of course we should take care of ourselves,
But not by stocking health books on our shelves.

Health is of the body and the mind.

We can increase both by being kind.

When we care for others we also see the world.

The world needs kindness,

Not the selfish blindness 

We've become accustomed to.

Personal immortality is not the goal,

That is impossible.

The kindness and care we bring into the world

Will keep the place we live whole.

**This is the first poem I have written in over a decade. It is part of the process to refine the goals and ideals that drive my writing. The poem was inspired by the book I am writing for NaNoWriMo: Once Upon A Dystopia.

Insomniac Reading

So last night I couldn't sleep...at all.  I finished a book around midnight and spent a good half hour or so trying to fall asleep.  I was as awake as I was at noon (most likely due to the large amounts of coffee during the day), and decided to start another book.  I didn't want anything too heavy after reading a first person military account of Alexander the Great, so I picked up a murder mystery.  I received a couple dozen from my aunt about a year ago, and figured I'd whittle down that pile a little.  To my dismay and delight, I finished the entire book by 5:00 in the morning...and yes I was still awake.  The book was a page-turner, but it wasn't so great that I didn't want to sleep.  I was just having temporary insomnia that gave me the chance to shrink my physical to-read list.
     I started a new book in the same genre after that, but figured I should get some sleep.  I did manage about four hours total, but I don't want to be doing that again any time soon.

Speed of Life

     Talking to my mom this morning about life and what we are looking forward to in the new year, I was talking about the students I teach and the lessons I want them to learn.  Most of my students are not used to very high expectations and not having a second chance to do the work if they decided not to do it.  I am trying to teach them that "Life does not move at the speed of When You Want To." As I prepare my students for high school and the world outside of private education, I want them to know that most things in life just need to be done, whether or not it's something you want to do.
     It's a commentary on society when this is something that is generally absent from the upcoming generation, but I love teaching and I want to help the next generation succeed and make this world a better place than they found it.  Teaching is my passion and my choice occupation, even with it's myriad of hard lessons I need to learn and the constant threat of disillusionment.