About Me

My name is Collin Varney. I write, and I’m a 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. 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.

But teaching can easily claim too much of myself, so I try to stay 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 first it requires that we discover what that action must be.

We can be conscious of an imbalance for a long time and do little about it.

For much of my career, students, ironically, were often the only reminders of my negligence. They pocketed my references to personal creativity and asked about my writing when it felt like I’d damn near forgotten it.

Surely, they said with their eyes, 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.

Me too, I thought.

(The novel is done, thank goodness.)

What I mean by "balance"

Rather than calling this “fate,” assuming it’s out of my control, I’ve learned to hold up one aspect of life to another. To reflect their worth to each other. Teaching makes me a better writer, and writing makes me a better teacher.

But only if I tinker for realistic balance. Only if I embrace risk, find poise in the chaos.

There is no “right” way to carve out time to write—I just need to do it. That means sharing my work. I know it won’t be perfect, but it’s better to practice publicly than not at all.

And as my blank-faced logo suggests, The Write Balance is an invitation to anyone who wants to (re)engage with a passion of their own. Fighting imbalance becomes easier when we’re willing to share our struggles and successes with each other, after all.

There are countless ways to fall into procrastination, neglect, fear, and doubt, and whether you’re a teacher or not, we all have a balancing act, and this is my way of looking up instead of down.