Ch-ch-ch-Changes

One new year long ago, back when I was in graduate school, I made my new year's resolutions. "Don't waste so much time sitting in the philosophy department lounge." "Go into New York City more often." Those are two of the resolutions I made on January 1, 1979.

Little did I know that by February 6, 1979, I would have left philosophy graduate school forever to accept a job as a secretary/editorial assistant at Scholastic; their offices at that time were at 50 West 44th Street in NYC. I was to spend the next year and a half going in to New York City every single working day. I was never going to sit in the philosophy department lounge at Princeton ever again. I remember the date because that was the very first day of my new job at Four Winds Press/Scholastic, the job that would launch my career as a children's book writer. But on January 1 of that year, I had no idea, none at all, of what was to come.

For this new year my main resolution for the year is to be radically open to new possibilities, whatever they are. And I already do know, on January 4, 2011, that it is 98 percent likely that I will be accepting a visiting position at another university for the 2011-12 academic year - details to come when it's all finalized. I will be living somewhere else, teaching somewhere else, meeting a whole new cast of characters, growing in ways I can't even imagine now. I just got off the phone from a thrilling 45-minute conversation with the professor who issued this invitation to me, the invitation that I have accepted with so much joy and trepidation. Well, actually, to be honest, with so much joy and no trepidation at all.

If I already know this much about the changes that await me in 2011, this is going to be one wild and wonderful ride of a year.