1. The first news is that as of this week I have a new job. Come August I’ll be teaching with Regina Caeli Academy: a classical-education homeschool-hybrid where kids learn at home three days a week then come in for Socratic discussion two days. I’m taking on high school-level American History, US Government and Economics, and basic Theology, which means I’ll have to brush up on those topics over the next month or so.

2. Yes, I warned them ahead of time that I was a Monarchist, but since the idea is to encourage discussion and thinking among the students rather than lecturing them, the powers that be didn’t mind. So rest assured, I won’t be trying to cultivate a tiny Loyalist army of homeschoolers…yet.

3. The job’s very part-time, so I’m also gonna have to figure out a way to make ends meet. Ideally I’d make up the difference with writing, of course, but we’ll have to see.

4. All that means I really need to correct my problem with actually getting things done. It’s not just laziness; I seem to have some kind of psychological block that regularly rears up and intercepts my good intentions. On Wednesday I wrote two separate posts and several thousand words across two pieces of fiction, so I know I can work diligently and enjoy it. But sometimes it’s as if my brain is a stripped-screw and nothing hooks onto it, or I sit down to work and somehow can’t make myself start. Feels like some kind of kidney stone in my brain. I don’t know, but it’s been a plague upon me long enough and I mean to have it out.

5. Listening to a documentary on King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem the other day. For those who don’t know, he was known as ‘the Leper King’, since he suffered from that disease for his whole reign and it killed him before his 24th birthday. Didn’t stop him from leading his men from the front and defeating Saladin multiple times (by the end, when he was blind, lame, and too weak to ride a horse, he had himself carried on his bed at the front of the army. By that point, Saladin had learned to retreat as soon as he heard Baldwin was on his way).

Anyway, it seems that, late in his reign, his brother-in-law and would-be successor, Guy of Lisignon, fled to his own city of Ascalon on the coast, since he knew that Baldwin meant to dismiss him as his successor. The Leper King summoned him to Jerusalem, and Guy answered that he couldn’t come… due to illness.

One can only imagine the Baldwin’s thoughts when he got that message. But what he did was to spare the poor sufferer and travel himself to Ascalon instead (remember, he was in the late stages of leprosy at this point). Guy shut the gates on him, which of course just proved Baldwin’s point, but if a sarcastic retort was ever expressed in journey form, this was it.

6. Maybe I’m overly cynical, but when I hear of people doing extreme things to ‘raise awareness of’ or protest stuff like bullying or animal cruelty or whathaveyou, I can’t help thinking, “The only people who care that you’re doing this are those who are already aware of and invested in the issue. To everyone else, you’re either just annoying or a sideshow attraction.”

7. By the way, a principle I’m discovering in fiction consumption is; once you’ve completed or put down one work, it’s usually best to clean your pallet with a definitely different genre. I found this when I reached the end of the My Hero Academia anime and decided to try Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Only, I found I couldn’t get into it, because it was similar enough to remind me of the other show without being the same, so it just kept the craving for the other show alive without satisfying it. But turning from MHA to Anne of Green Gables, for instance, I got quickly absorbed because it’s a completely different flavor and so I could enjoy it all on its own.

(I mean to go back to FMA, of course, but when the timing is right).