Choices

Yesterday I gave a guest lecture to a delightful writing class at Arapahoe Community College, down in Littleton. The professor, Dr. Josie Mills, has a whole series of speakers coming throughout the semester, with a different student assigned to coordinate each one. My student host couldn’t have been more welcoming and gracious; she told me in an email that she was even going to bake dessert bars in my honor! The class itself had students of all ages, from just-turned-eighteen to senior citizens, all yearning to write and be published. I felt I had so much I could share.

Now, I could have used the same afternoon to work on my own book, or face the third round of revisions for a detested philosophy article, or the philosophy talk I need to give to our Center for Values and Social Policy on Friday, or the publication I’m guest editing for the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland. So in some sense I’m now more behind than ever.

But in another sense, I’m farther ahead. Because I had an afternoon of pure fun, surrounded by wonderful, talented, aspiring writers. And I had dessert bars (well, they turned out to be snickerdoodles, but equally delicious) made in my honor.