I'm a fan of Natalie Goldberg, author of several how-to-write-and-be-enlightened books. I am realizing that currently, I'm in a period of blogging only on Thursdays.

I go to school on Thursdays instead of going to work and then, at 4 p.m. I go to my shrink. So on Thursdays I feel, as Goldberg says, like a cow needing to be milked. Sometimes writing is like milking, as the simile goes, you need the milk and the cow feels better for you having done it. But most of the time writing is a chore, a burden.

At least 3 times this term (it's not even Thanksgiving yet) I have come up against the Thursday deadline without material to polish. No, I face Thursday with material to assemble, to craft, to hone. I know better than this. I, in fact, have DONE better than this. Yet I persist.

For some reason this term, this term where I am only taking two classes, two classes that should be SO up my alley "Feature Writing" and "Magazine Writing" and it's pulling fucking teeth every time.

Worse. I have two instructors (duh, two classes) one of whom is cool and groovy and has the "world beat" beat for the Chicago Sun Times and one of whom is bottle blonde, in her 50's, and has the real estate beat for the (republican) Chicago Tribune.

I am so, so much more invested in the blonde's class than the world beat's class.

I don't like this about myself but there it is. I agree with "worldbeat's" world view but the truth is I didn't go to class last week (too depressed over the election). We had to declare our topic for our final (e.g. most-worked-on) project today and I grabbed a topic that I was interested in, oh, 18 months ago (Gay enthusiasm for NASCAR).

Real Estate on the other hand, real estate reminds me of my high school algebra teacher. I have zero affinity for math and, in fact, this teacher accepted that no one was enthusiastic but, rather, everyone needed to be DRILLED.

Today my bottle-blond instructor said that she was fed up, just plain fed up with our class. We had to go around the room, one side to the other and each repeat this phrase.

"The word 'Internet" is capitalized"

This was dorky, breathtakingly dorky. On the other hand I remembered to capitalize Internet. And I appreciate that she took the effort to preface the whole exercise with a lengthy anecdote about how some classes develop tics that annoy her.

At some point she mentioned that she was raised in Kentucky and perhaps it is this Southern-ness that I am responding to.

Bless our hearts, every one.