A note from our founder
My least favorite question to answer is, “What do you do for a living?” The short answer (and the one that people seem to be most impressed with) is that I’m an English professor. This is the answer my parents give to their friends and the one my grandma tells to her cousins. It’s the answer that made my kindergarten teacher say “I told you so!” through a symphony of woohoos.
My mom’s favorite story to tell is one where I was four years old and set my stuffed animals up as if they were students in a classroom. She often laughs as she explains the way I made markings on sheets of paper, wrote out the alphabet and spoke to my toys as if I were actually teaching them something instead of playing pretend.
Teaching English is something that I’ve always known I would do. I knew this from when I was four and realized it even more when my sisters were born and I could help them learn to speak. My friends knew it in the first grade when I reminded our teacher about the homework she forgot to collect and, as I grew up, my instructors whom I idolized began to see it too. I became a star intern and teaching assistant. I had a knack for listening to others intently and being someone they could seek guidance from— two of the most important skills of teaching in my opinion.
Becoming a teacher was one of the greatest decisions I’ve made. Some struggles come with the job, as I’m sure there are with any. There are weeks when I feel so mentally drained that melting into my couch feels like the only way to recharge. Times when emails wake me up at 3 am and so do the nightmares of appearing naked in front of my class with nowhere to hide. (Yes, those dreams happen for teachers too.) These weeks happen so often that they become routine. As a teacher, you don’t get to leave your work at the office. It comes home with you. You answer the panicked emails from your students about their writing. You can’t stop thinking about the break-up one of them went through and the way she couldn’t stop crying in class. You brainstorm ways to make her feel safe and comfortable without singling her out, and when you can’t think of anything, you bake the whole class cookies instead.
You do these things because you love your job and end up loving the kids you teach daily. You cry at the end of every semester and kick yourself for all of those nights you prayed for the months to fly by. You think that no other class will ever match up to the previous semester. And then you get to do it all over again with new students who bring new energy, passion, and tears. So when people ask me what I do for a living, I’m proud to say that I’m a teacher. Teaching is in my blood. It’s a part of who I am and it’s what makes me, me— but it’s not the only piece of me.
Lines get blurred for people when I follow their questions with the fact that I’m also a writer. The once shocked and impressed looks on their faces quickly shift to stares of confusion. Being a writer doesn’t typically hold the same power in its title as a professor does if you have nothing to show for it. I have yet to publish a book and my few essays captured public attention for a few weeks but have since lost their spark.
As a writer, I’ve always felt as though you need to prove your worth. That’s why it’s the part of me that I tend to hide away so deeply. I’m terrified of public critique and if I have to show you that I’m great at something, I might as well just invite you to observe my class. These pieces of my personality that I deem the more insecure ones are elements of myself that I don’t show often. They make me feel weak and undeserving of the title of “Writer” that sits on my LinkedIn page. But something happens when I teach writing to my students. I constantly tell them how important their voices are— it’s my favorite thing to watch them realize over the semester. I love seeing their stories evolve and hearing the confidence arrive in their voices. It’s incredible to watch how effortless it is for them to read their work aloud during our final class (something they swore they would never be able to do at the beginning of the semester).
This admiration is something that I shared with a former student of mine recently. In the sweetest conversation about his hopes and dreams, I felt comfortable enough to share mine as well. I talked to him about my own writing career and the way that I’ve neglected it for the last two years that I’ve been teaching. I caught myself, realizing that it was selfish of me to tell him about my dreams when I should’ve been focusing on his, and quickly applauded him for feeling secure in his desires and chasing them as fast as he could. And as soon as I did, he reached out for my hand and said with a smile, “I only learned I could do this because of you. Take your own advice for once, it’s great.”
In that moment, the roles reversed and I felt as though I were the student in the room instead, the stuffed animal perched on the couch in front of me. I thought of the work I’d done as a teacher— the success I’ve seen in my students, the class activities I planned, the hundreds of cookies I’ve baked. For a moment, I thought about my writing that I’ve neglected— the countless unfinished essays, the ideas for my memoir I never got around to completing, entire journal entries scribbled out. And while all of this is stuff that I hope to finish one day, something else came to mind instead. Something that I could do to join the two parts of my world that make me who I am: teaching and writing.
Out of this conversation came the genesis of Ditch Life Publishing. Ditch Life is the publishing house I have always dreamed of but neglected for years out of fear and indecision— two feelings that I teach my students to push through instead of shrink away from and am now teaching myself that same thing. While in its beginning stages, Ditch Life Publishing will stand as a haven for new and emerging writers. A place that welcomes the quiet and shy voices, the ones that need an extra hand to help them grow, and the ones that are loud and eager to be heard but just haven’t found their home yet. This newsletter will be the first stop along the way for all of our writers. If I can make any promise to you, it’s that your work will be cherished here and so will you.
If you would like to stay updated on the latest news from Ditch Life Publishing and our upcoming literary magazine, please email us at ditchlifepublishing@gmail.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!
With love,
Mia