DON'T BACK DOWN

We saw the movie "Don't Back Down" today and it truly inspired and motivated me both for my job and in my writing life. The story is about a group of parents and teachers who take on the school board in an attempt to make the school more effective. It's based on a true story, one I'm not familiar with and I will do some research on it. I want to know how they changed the school to make it better.

As a school administrator working with a system and bureaucracy that are more interested in saving money than providing services for children, I know what it's like to be frustrated and angered at the powers that be. I know that it isn't easy to make changes. In a time when job security is hard to find it often seems nonproductive to fight the system. How do you risk your own financial security in order to make things better? Better yet, how can you possibly sit back and watch kids continually get short changed? The movie brought a lot of questions. I need time to ponder. But I also know I can't easily step in and go along with things that don't make sense to me.

And therein lies the title, "don't back down" and the connection to my writing life. I believe I am a writer. I have enough publication credits to prove it to the world as well as to myself. So I felt, after this movie, that I can't back down from this dream. I must keep plugging away, finding more and more time to write. I need to be more determined to get this thing I want so badly.

Sometimes sitting in a dark movie theatre brings it all to light.

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