Me and Bruce - Born to Run in 2016

Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA changed my life and rocked my world as a fourteen-year-old boy growing up in small town southern, Illinois in the early 80s. It would become an anthem for a generation, and while I was undoubtedly a rock-n-roll fan by then, Bruce's songs and stories opened up a whole new world in terms of understanding angst amidst the American Dream. The raw honesty of the story-telling and the rugged power of a rock guitar made sense to me, and the boxed set of the E Street Band I received for my birthday a year later was an early chapter in my American education. Now, as I sit comfortably in middle age, celebrating a slow march nearing the age of fifty, the Boss has once again graced my coming-of-age with a manifesto of "Growing Up."

So, here I am at the beginning of 2017, reflecting on the past and the dawn of "another year" in front of me. And as I glance back at the past two January 2 posts, I am wondering if this is the year that I just "get on with it" and take a few more steps toward living the life I have imagined. I haven't established the more comprehensive "A Teacher's View" website yet, and I haven't made any progress with the more scholarly writing that I have been planning. And, of course I am certainly not David Brooks or Malcom Gladwell in any professional sense. That said, I did manage to finally complete and publish an up-dated version of my critical work of Douglas Coupland, McJob: Life and Culture in Douglas Coupland's Early Novels, and I think it's even sold a few copies at this point. There will hopefully be some more extensive Generation X writing in the near future, and I hope to increase my academic output with a few more pieces of cultural criticism, and maybe even a conference paper or two.

We'll see. Hoping 2017 and the age of 47 is my "best year yet."