Don’t let the picture fool you. As I type these words, it’s a dark and rainy morning, and I’m nestled under a blanket with my laptop to keep me warm against the pre-dawn autumn chill.
Blogging can be a deceptive genre. Just because I post a picture of sun-drenched pumpkins doesn’t mean it’s sunny here, and even the concept of “here” is murky in cyberspace. I snapped these photos on Monday afternoon on my weekly drive back to New Hampshire after another weekend in Newton. I lingered at Sunset View Farm in Winchendon, Massachusetts only long enough to snap a few pictures; the farm-stand isn’t open on Mondays, so I couldn’t buy anything even though I have purchased pumpkins here in the past. Thursday or Monday, New Hampshire or Massachusetts? If you’re not from around these parts and thus knowledgeable about local landmarks and weather, you’d have little way of knowing when or where, exactly, I took this picture; if you don’t know me in the flesh, you have even less reason to think you can surmise my state of mind–my inner weather–while typing these words. All you have is this tiny blog-window to gaze through, and as keeper of the house whose windows you’re peeping, I get to choose what I do or don’t display.
I occasionally get emails from regular or first-time readers who express envy over the presumably pastoral life I lead. Based upon the pictures I post and the sentiments I share, some readers surmise I’m living the life they’ve always wanted. A year or so ago, for instance, one woman wrote from her desk at work, where she’d been idly Googling to pass the time. “You live such a wonderful life,” she enthused, “traveling and taking pictures and writing. How can I get such a life?” I had to stifle a chuckle when I read these words, this woman’s email coming on a grading day when I was stuck at home facing another seemingly interminable paper pile. Oh, I can tell you how to live the life I lead: quit your 9-to-5 job with its health benefits, year-round salary, free weekends, and endless opportunities for idle Googling; accept adjunct teaching gigs at three different institutions; and spend both your weekdays and weekends grading papers, answering student emails, and prepping a seemingly endless string of classes. How do you like them pumpkins?
I don’t typically get angry with folks who envy my life, which in many ways is truly enviable. I don’t have to spend endless hours at a desk, I can do much of my work at home, and I don’t have much daily contact with clueless co-workers, supervisors, and the office politics that go with them. But with every enviable bit comes an accompanying sacrifice. Yes, the academic year affords long breaks in winter and summer…but I don’t get paid when I’m not teaching. Yes, I can do much of my work from home…but that also means I always have my work before me: the trips that reader envied were taken with laptop in tow so I could teach even while I was on “vacation.” Yes, I make a decent living doing what I do, even in tough economic times…but as an adjunct, I have minimal job security, and I make a “decent living” only because I teach a more-than-fulltime course-load, relying upon moonlighting and multi-tasking to save up for the lean, paycheck-free “breaks” some folks apparently envy me for.
And so here I sit in the pre-dawn chill, having gotten up unspeakably early so I can grade one more batch of papers before heading off to teach another full day of classes. If I worked a simple 9-to-5 job, I’d still be sleeping, having left my work at the office last night…but I know that 9-to-5 desk jobs require their own kind of sacrifice in exchange for free weekends, health insurance, and other perks. If you’ve landed here through some idle Googling of your own, I don’t envy you for your life, so please don’t envy me for mine. Every life has its own hidden heartaches, and the life you imagine while you peek through my blog-window is probably far different from my own. You don’t know how or where I live, when or why I write, or what or who sustains me. All you know for sure is that I lingered long enough at Sunset View Farms in Winchendon on Monday to snap a handful of pictures of pretty pumpkins. More than that is mere imagining.