Ever wake up in the middle of the night, competely awake and unable to even think of getting back to sleep? This happened to me last night, around 1 a.m., and I think my mother-in-law slipped me some regular coffee (instead of the decaf she "claimed" it was) at my nephew's birthday party. Or it could've been the XXL slab of birthday cake I ate... But I like the mother-in-law slant myself. ;)

In any case, after staring at the darkness for an hour, I got up, booted the computer, checked email, thought about twiddling with my novel revisions, and ended up lying on the floor next to the pooch and reading an awesome collaborative story about the first and last concert Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Janis Joplin gave together after they died (by Dozois, Swanwick, and Dann). I love these kinds of stories. They get better the more you think about them, and bear re-reading. I finally was tired enough to go back to bed 'round five, and slept in 'til 8.

I guess the whole job-up-in-the-air stuff is getting to me. That and the "decaf" coffee late at night...

So, I've been thinking about teaching again. Elizabeth's dad teaches at a local community college, Wake Tech, and I taught a fiction-writing class there last year, as well as a couple other classes a few years earlier while I was in grad school myself. What really got me excited was thinking about online courses, which would take a lot of work to set up, but would be fun to moderate and run.

You see, my biggest dislike of teaching has always been lecturing. I love working one-on-one with people or in small groups, but I don't like being in a position of authority (I have too much contempt for people in power that I don't like being one myself, as limited amount of power as one gets as a teacher, that is).

More than anything, I get way too nervous in front of a class full of people, though I did start really enjoying my class this summer, with the youngsters (though their energy levels sapped me!), as well as my fiction-writing class last year. The secret, I know, is practice -- I just have to get used to being in front of people and talking.

And I know the best answer to getting rid of the nervousness is preparing extensively and having lots of interesting things to do along with lecturing. In-class assignments, small group work, discussions, and so on.

I think I'm ready for a change -- I've been doing technical writing and web stuff for six years now, and the time has just flown past, without much to show for it. Plus, I get tired of staring at a computer screen all day long, and then trying to squeeze in more time at the computer for my own writing. Teaching would be a nice challenge for me, it would get me off my duff, and it would force me to face my occasional bouts of social anxiety (I'm not a people person, but I can fake it quite well!). And damn, I think it would be much more rewarding than putting together marketing Web pages that no one will ever read...!

Drawbacks (other than the social anxiety ones!) would be lower pay, of course, as well as lots of prep time for that first year of classes, and grading papers (aaiiieee!). But right now, as I sit here at the Day Job with no projects to work on and the morale in the office at an all-time low, with half of us not knowing if we'll have jobs tomorrow, the benefits of teaching outweight the drawbacks; it would just be a rough, busy year as I got used to teaching again. And maybe I'd get a little bit of time off, if I get the axe here and don't start teaching until the Spring semester...

Okay, fellow teachers -- what pros and cons have I left out? I didn't mention the lack of respect teachers get and all that, but I'm used to that: I'm a fiction writer.