This is a page from my writer’s notebook after an especially wrenching day back in 2006.

Possibly I have given the impression that my days teaching in Houston were nothing but hard work and success. This is what happens when you tell about challening experiences through the blessed buffer of years. In fact, though, this page from an old writer’s notebook reminded me how teaching can equal great challenge (and great rewards), but also some pretty big heartbreaks at times, especially when best efforts are met with disregard or outright hostility.

Here’s the next page from my writer’s notebook, full of antidotes for dealing with a doozy of a bad day. (A transcript follows in case you can’t read my scribbles.)

From Brian Andreas’s Traveling Light:

No hurt survives for long without our help.

Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me, but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That’s what takes a real hero.

Wisdom from A.P. (aka Arnulfo):

Just do your job tomorrow, and that’ll be enough.

Stop worrying about the whole world.

Know what you are going to do when things don’t go how you expect them to.

Don’t expect things to go a certain way.

Know who you are on the inside, and let that be enough.