TITLE: Am I a Writer, Too?
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 12, 2006  6:00 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
[Written on a plane between Detroit and Minneapolis
yesterday, returning from an OOPSLA 2007 planning meeting
in Montreal.]

I have at various times in the life of this blog proclaimed
myself a
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/cat_5.html">
   runner</A>
and a
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2006-12.html#e2006-12-02T10_42_40.htm">
   programmer</A>.
(The latter post has drawn comments from several readers,
including an out-of-context "Me, too" from
<A HREF="http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/">
   Joe Bergin</A>
in a Montreal restaurant Friday night!)  My many posts on
teaching my courses leave little doubt that I also think
of myself as a teacher.

My flight home today leads me to to want to say "I am a
writer", too.  Over the last year or more, I have gone
through occasional droughts posting here, and even when I
have written I have not always felt particularly inspired.
But stimulate me -- send me to a conference, or to a meeting
with interesting people; give me a good book; turn me loose
in a new course to teach -- and the flood gates open.

A few moments ago, the flight attendant told us to turn off
all portable electronic devices, including laptop computers.
So here I sit, scribbling this message on two small Northwest
Airlines napkins received as part of the beverage service
earlier.  Two napkins, filling both sides and now writing
up the margin.  The words won't stop.

Flying home led me to think about what I had learned
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2006-12.html#e2006-12-11T19_29_30.htm">
   about my job as communications chair</A>,
and suddenly all sorts of ideas for new articles began to
flow, and ideas for how to grow, merge, and finish up ideas
that have been sitting inchoate in my "blogs to write" folder
for days and weeks.  Some of the ideas were triggered by
reading I'd done on the plane; others, from conversations
over the weekend; yet others, from who knows where.

Let's just say that my hopper is hopping and should serve
well in the coming days as I take time to blog.

Can I be a runner, a programmer, a teacher, and a writer --
and a husband and a father -- all at once?  Yes.  I certainly
admire many of my colleagues and friends who seem to be so
many things, so well.  Perhaps such breadth is just a part
of being human.  We are certainly lucky to live in a time
and place where we can be so many people at once.
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