My name is Collin Varney, and I’m a writer and high-school English teacher of 11 years. Each pursuit fills me up in ways the other can’t. I love—and need—both.
Although these worlds overlap in unique and unexpected ways, teaching is my job. It demands more of me, as it should. I chose a profession of service, and my students deserve the committed, passionate me that chose it. I’m proud to say they get that. Too often, though, I allow teaching to claim too much of myself.
Too often, though, teaching claims too much of myself, and I’ve tried to be more cognizant of when I need to adjust.
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will control your life and you will call it fate"
This quotation from Carl Jung is one of my favorites (and one I frequently share with students). It urges us to take action, but it first requires that we discover what that action must be.
Even though I was conscious of an imbalance for a long time, I did little about it.
Ironically, students were often the only reminders of my negligence. They would pocket my references to personal creativity and ask about my writing when I’d damn near forgotten it. Surely, I could hear them assuming, you don’t spend all your energy on school alone, right? In those moments, I recalled all the times I’d tried to reveal to students their own potential with language, the necessity in coaxing out the creative voices they didn’t think they had—while mine stayed quiet.
“I can’t wait to read your novel,” a student once told me after urging me to share an idea I’d incubated for almost a decade, leaving me at my desk in silence, papers to grade, emails to write, lessons to plan, tired.
What I mean by "balance"
Rather than calling this “fate,” assuming it’s out of my control, I’ve learned that what I really need is to hold up one life aspect to another—teaching to writing, writing to teaching—to reflect their worth to each other. Teaching makes me a better writer, and writing makes me a better teacher.
By not recognizing balance as an ever-changing skill to practice consciously, I assumed the circumstances were no longer mine to shape. But we can always tinker for a realistic balance. We can all embrace risk while finding poise in the chaos.
For me that means sharing my work. It won’t be perfect, but it’s better to practice publicly than not at all.
And as my blank-faced logo suggests, this site is also an invitation to anyone else who wants to (re)engage with a passion of their own. Fighting imbalance becomes easier when we’re willing to share our struggles with each other.
My "write" balance
There is no “right” way to balance these pursuits. I just want to brave the tightrope again and again, away from my comfort zone, and the only way I know how to do that is to replace the idea of “right” with the commitment to “write” more and share it. There are countless ways to fall into procrastination, neglect, fear, doubt. This work is my way of looking up instead of down.
If you want to be a reader of my work (wow, you’re incredible), then you will be a reminder to keep looking forward, that creating is worth it.
