My Tent on The Beach

So I’ll admit that even I’ve been fascinated by my bold statement yesterday–”this year will change my life.” I try to avoid epic proclamations because, usually, they mean you have to do something. You’re now on the hook. Something had better become a life changer.

So I set out this morning with that in mind and managed to fully recapture the feeling of old. I completely went about my activities today in total shitshow fashion. I’ve cantored probably 1000 masses by now…I actually forgot a piece of music only to realize it after the service started…not good. And in the moment in which I was trying to understand how this was any different than the usual, I actually saw the difference and I came to understand more about the challenge of this year. It’s about fear.

I did something today I’ve never done. I panicked about it. But the lesson I walk away with is that I lived through it. And it was something I couldn’t solve and someone else could. That started me thinking that my challenge and my fear is to see what happens when I let go…when I stop trying so hard–which I know I can do but in the end will kill me. The challenge is to see what can and will happen when I don’t have control of the reins, either because I’m stupid (for which I can love myself) or I have no ability to see how things will end. What happens if I don’t try so hard? Or if I don’t proceed with the intention of pleasing anyone but myself? What happens when I stop gripping on so tight? Or when I lose my grip against my will? What will become of the “usual”? In these same terms, then, I wonder what becomes of that someone of something that flies in the face of their fears? What happens when someone becomes fearless? How do they get there? And what are the outcomes?

I sure did live through today. It was uncomfortable. I panicked for a little while. But in the end, it worked out. Others stepped in. The world kept turning. And I walk away feeling supported and nourished in a way I may not have even known was out there. And this is just about forgetting a piece of music and the ensuing flurry to get back on track. I can’t help but think that if I can take a deep breath and dive in to all of that that continually scares me…not just worries me but actually terrifies me, that I can make some progress…and not just for its own sake. But actually to find paths I never even knew could exist.

Or I could just jump off a cliff. It all feels the same.

In some ways I want to ask, “How did a new year get here so fast?” In other ways, it seems like I’ve earned the right to a new year and everything it promises.

And I believe this year will change my life.

I usually don’t have that feeling on this day or time; I’ve watched the New Year’s celebrations on tv (Dick Clark’s Rockin Eve used to be the absolute go-to until he had a stroke and now he just creeps me out…so I don’t really watch anymore…) and the ball would drop and everyone would make a big deal. And I would just feel nothing. I wanted to be that excited, that enamored with the idea of new and clean, a fresh start, a new canvas. Instead, I could never turn my head away from the past. More often than not, I live in what happened and treat what’s happening with an equal amount of apathy and disdain (what happened is much easier to handle…you’re dealing with facts and reality and not the tempting ether of what could be.

But this year is different. And I’ve felt this coming on for awhile. It’s almost against my will. But I feel that some material has shifted. The stars have aligned and something new, of which I have no knowledge, is definitely on the horizon. Whether it’s looming or perched ready for a grand entrance I don’t know. But the air smells different–like it does right before a thunderstorm when that first crack of lightening spiders through the air. The leaves blow upside down and for just a moment electricity becomes sensible, almost tangible. And as much as fear might instruct you to move to shelter, adrenaline rules that moment and begs you, no demands you, to stand right where you are and entertain the possibility that that spindly lightening hand or that peal of thunder might be the moment that you and your maker meet.

I am in that moment right now. It is a moment of alignment and as many of these moments (I believe, although this is my first) go, it’s not sprung on you. I’ve been doing yoga for years now, very intentionally, communing with whatever Universe is out there that determines all things including the tightness of my hamstrings. I’ve been singing in church for HOURS every week–more communing with the Universe, although dressed up in one particular way there. Nonetheless, I have spent some major, committed time asking open ended questions.

I think it’s been indicated to me that I should be ready. That I have been heard. There are answers coming…and I’d best be ready when they show up, whatever they are. The only way I know this to be true is the electricity of the air around me. There are few times in my life (but all incredibly precious) in which I have just known. I haven’t even needed confirmation because it’s all so clear. This is one. Things are about to change. And it’s mine to walk through that door or to stay so safely comfortable right here. And therein lies the challenge of change. While we all say we want it, we want the dream of it. We want the version we’ve laid out in our heads. We want to command it. And change is not to be commanded. Either rejected or embraced. We control the action, not the detail.

So, here I am. For the first time, maybe ever, I’m ready for this electric change. I’m embracing that this time next year, everything…EVERYTHING…will be different. And whether it’s better or worse…well, that’s my story to write.

So I believe it’s true that fortune, especially good fortune, works in incredible, mysterious ways.  My life has changed. And fortune is to blame.

My counselor says, “no….this is not fortune…it’s you finding your path.”  Normally I’d agree.  I love looking for my path and then talking about it in that very Tao-informed way.  But I’m not sure I can take any credit in looking or finding anything.  My life has changed because, and I completely mean this, the universe asserted itself and demanded that I respond.  And I responded…yes in a thoughtful way.  Yes in a responsible way.  But not because I wanted to…because I had to.  And lo and behold…I don’t know if the choice was “right”…but almost literally everything has changed.

Maybe this is a perspective thing: everything changed because some fundamentals shifted in this choice.  I now feel as though I can support myself and my near future is more stable.  Helpful, definitely helpful.  I now feel I have more power to govern some of the more toxic relationships in my life…I have new found weight to shift that I didn’t have before.  Also, very helpful.  I don’t hate what I’m doing…this is very good.  Never good to use “hate” as a regular descriptor in your day. But the effects of all of this seem exponential…If I’m a tree, even the tiniest little twigs are gathering in a new-found sense of life. It’s like I’m breathing again…after six years of not.

And here’s the crux, I suppose…I didn’t really have to do anything but make a choice…a choice which confronted me and not the other way around.  I just had to respond.  It is fortune, I think.  That mysterious hand that reaches in and intervenes when you, yourself, are unable.  It’s the answer to a prayer or the acknowledgement of a desperate cry for help.

Whatever it is…whew…it’s a life saver.

I always have a feeling that I wish I wrote more here.  Oh well, there are times to be busy and then there are times to reflect…I guess I’m just having more of the former at the moment.  But since I do have this minute and I haven’t written a list in ages, I thought I might take the chance to write down the stuff I’m actually aware of that really scares me…that I am actually afraid to think about.  I’m not going to examine why I am in such avoidance or what that says about me as a person (although I’m sure all 3 of you armchair psychologists…and Nori…hi Nori…will have fun having a go).  Here they are in no particular order (or to you armchair psychologists, in a subconcious primary order):

1. Learning French. I think it’s because I cannot imagine ever making the sound required to do that correctly.

2. Skydiving or anything that involves defying gravity.  No and no.

3. Telling people that they really bug the hell out of me.  Not collectively…just certain individuals.

4. Losing out or being left out of things. Just things.

5. Being forgotten.

6. Going blind.

7. Losing my voice…both literally and metaphorically.

8. Having kids…like giving birth to a child of my own.

9. Being humiliated.  I only know this one after the fact and I’ll tell ya…the moment I realize I feel humiliated my palms actually sweat. I feel like I’ll never recover from it.  And then I do and everything’s fine.

10. People who are intimidatingly free. Like they live only on whims.  I need a plan…always.

11. Other drivers.

12. The feeling that I’m missing opportunities right in front of me because I’m thinking too big.

13. That I’ll never be able to really relax.

That’s all I can think of right now and I’m falling asleep so that’ll have to do.  But 13 is enough, isn’t it?  Much more and I’d raise a lot of red flags…although this really does feel like the tip of the iceberg.

I’ve known a lot of interesting people over the years–for some reason, maybe random, I was vaulted back to thinking about a particularly exceptional guy I knew back in the early days of the journey.  His name is Steve…I assume he’s still doing his thing.  There’s a lot of good reasons to remember him; he was full of resonance.  He radiated: wisdom, love, grace.  I’ve never really met anyone else that can do that.  And still be a normal kinda “guy” too.  He was (and I’m guessing still is) a phenomenon. And this morning I woke up with his resonant baritone in my head–it’s literally the first time I’ve thought about him in probably five years–but there his voice was giving me the first thought of the day…and it’s a good one.

Usually I wake up with some trace of pop culture looping through my conscious.  It’s not rare for Lady Gaga to be all up in there; yesterday I woke up to the Black Eyed Peas suggesting, “I have a feeling (ooh-ooh), that tonight’s gonna be a good night, that tonight’s gonna be a good, good ni-igh-ight.”  Even if I tried I couldn’t tell you how the dial in that random jukebox up there works.  But last night I went to bed upset–always a major no-no.  I can’t even say that I was upset “at” something or that the feeling was even clear.  I wasn’t anxious, I wasn’t nervous or sad…I was just…”not feeling great” about things.  Lot’s of things.  I’ve taken to being bolder about taking risks lately and hanging myself out there to be critiqued or called on the carpet.  I, like many, want to take the least riskiest risks; I do things that might be out of my comfort zone but that seem to have the probability for a predictable outcome.  Go ahead judge me…I like to plan my risks.  Anyway, of course nothing has turned out the way I thought it would.  I expected people to respond in certain ways and when they didn’t it threw me off.  And it kinda stung.  It’s still stinging, actually, and last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was feeling particularly lost as to what I should do. How could I fix all of these things so I could feel better about them?

“Always do what love requires,” Steve whispered in my ear this morning as I woke up feeling guilty about choosing sleep over yoga.  And his voice intoning that refrain over and over played like a loop in my head for the first hour I was awake.  And it was (and is) the answer to all of the questions I had last night as I was drifting off.  It explains how to deal with the ways people have disappointed me over the past couple days, it prescribes for me how to graciously handle all of the good wishes yesterday when that is really hard for me and makes me incredibly uncomfortable.  It gives me a guide to consider in how I talk to myself in those moments when relentless critique seems the only correct action.  In so many ways it just is the answer.

Structurally, it’s about as close to a perfect answer we could ever hope for.  When? Always. What? Do. Do what? Whatever love requires…requires. It’s 100% responsive in nature; it acknowledges my love for different people and things is 100% unique in each case…and therefore, what that means depends on each case, each circumstance, each interaction.  And it roots my intention; not in selfishness, not in an agenda…but in love.  It is the prescription for compassion.  It asks me, out of love, to respond to what someone else needs (or what I need).  That is the challenge of love, I think.  It requires we know we’ll do something we would not choose otherwise for the sake of the person(s) we love.

Obviously, I think I need not dwell on how hard this is in reality.  It implies accepting others as they come to us, with their own needs and constraints.  It means consistently standing on that line, knowing you may not get this in return.  It means challenging your own fears for the sake of someone else.  It could mean having to let someone go.  Ugh.  Just thinking about the challenge of this makes me nauseous; this is a lesson in advanced compassion.  Even now, and every minute, I wonder if I’m up for it.

And then I think…I just have to be.  It’s such a good answer, the answer I was asking for that I cannot ignore it.  I guess it just means I’ll try.  That’s all I can promise.  Because I just cannot receive a gift like that, in such a timely manner and in response to such a direct request for help, and disregard it.

“Always do what love requires,” he said to me as though he was just standing there right next to me, waiting for me to wake up to share the notion.  Thanks Steve.  It’s good to hear your voice.

I was sitting in my dining room yesterday, contemplating the possibilities for new paint colors.  Yes, I was sitting and staring at the wall.  But it was not without intention.  I got lost in thinking about the day that Kristine, Tim, and Mike came over to put the first color on the walls–I can remember what they were wearing, what we talked about, and the fact that Mustafa got sick and tired of the noise at about 10pm and we had to call it a night. And then I remembered thinking to myself on that painting day, “It’ll be a weird moment when you stop and think about this very moment sometime in the future.  I wonder what you’ll be thinking about?”  And I found myself in “that moment”–and realized that things are moving in very real, visceral ways.

I’ve always played that little game with myself.  It’s a more abstract way of throwing down breadcrumbs–purposely–to remember and reflect on the differences between the way I think things will happen and the way they actually unfold.  Whenever I hit a “that moment,” I’m consistently amazed (and sometimes awed) by the incredible ways things work out.  It didn’t used to be my mantra but one of my new favorite phrases to insert anywhere doubt lives is “It’ll all work out.”  It’s my game that allows me to know that’s the case.  And even more incredibly, I’m never dissatisfied with the ways in which things work out.  It turns out life is a much better storyteller than I…it always throws in a plot twist I never could have dreamed up in a million years.

What’s interesting about the way the game has changed for me over the years is “that moment” used to be determined at the start of something big: when I started grad school, I wondered what it would feel like the first time I said, “This is the start of my 6th year” (sadly, I never imagined saying things like “this is the start of my 8th year” or “I’ve been doing this almost a decade” but I’d better start getting prepared).  In my first year in Chicago, I wondered where I’d be living 5 years down the road.  (The answer turns out to be “here.”)  And when it comes to people…well, those are stories I never could have even dreamed.  It seems, almost, that Chicago has upended almost everything I expected when I first got here.  My best friends are people that, upon meeting them I thought, “I want to be their friend but I don’t know how.”  Somehow, I figured it out–we figured it out.  Others I thought I’d know forever have fallen into the “friend ‘everything’ drawer.”  You know that one, completely jam-packed drawer of not even organized chaos that you just shove random things in and think, “I’ll definitely have to organize this drawer one of these days.”  That “friend drawer” is full of partial acquaintances or those “lost” forever in that morass of “I knew you really well once.”  I wonder what that moment will be like…the one immediately after I realize I’ve mostly cleaned out that drawer?  Aw, let’s face it: that drawer and my living room will never be really free of clutter…there will always be fragments of friends hanging out in there.

And here’s the most curious part of the “that moment” game: there are whole categories of things I’ve dared myself not to even imagine.  Things I want so desperately, so completely, that the thought of not having them actually gives me pain. The thought of missing them makes me irretrievably sad.  I specifically remember a series of moments like this when it comes to singing.  I remember walking out of contemporary choir and thinking, “It’s never going to be more than this and that’s okay,” but secretly wishing in my heart it would be, but I didn’t know how.  And “that moment” is here now…and some days I wonder where that path will continue to lead…and I can’t know; I just have to not ask questions.  When I use perfect, gut-wrenching honesty, my game has proven to me that a majority of things I’ve asked for, wished for, hoped for…I’ve gotten.  And when I examine the means, I know it’s a story I never could have created myself.  Had I undertaken it my way, I never would have reached the end I wanted.

Basically, my dining room reflection allowed me to conclude that I’m a crappy writer of fiction.  But I always knew that.  More importantly, though, if I allow the better writer of fiction to work…the ends…well, they’re always a story worth waiting for.

Yowza…let me talk to you a little about how my schedule has changed in the last 3 weeks.  For the past 2 years (2 YEARS) I was gifted, granted, held hostage by these fellowships I had which explicitly stated I could not work anywhere else.  Realistically, that translated into 2 years of wasted time…completely unstructured, completely free, completely solitary time to mess around with.  Some would consider that heaven and, in theory, it sounds good.  But doesn’t all theory sound good?  This blog has chronicled the actual nightmare…and it was a nightmare.

Enter Situation Today: yesterday I worked in my office at school for 14 hours.  In a given week, I have about 5 hours to play around with…the rest of it is spent either in a structured activity or getting to a structured activity.  I’m running. And it’s actually heavenly.  That’s right…heavenly.  Will it stay heavenly for long, who knows.  All I know…right now…it’s very good.

But there is one thing that I’ve reacquired that I’m not so thrilled about: the feeling like time is slipping away.  I have to schedule bathroom breaks; I know to the minute how long each light is on Lake Shore Drive; I have figured out how to whittle my morning routine down to exactly 30 minutes.  On some days that means choosing between mascara and toast.  As much as I like the structure, I’ve lost a little purchase on the whimsy, creativity…on the felicity of the open road of time.  I’ve gone from all options open (which is overwhelming) to one option open (which is fascism)…and once again I find myself pausing (for no longer than 14 minutes) to reflect on where the balance might be.

I was thinking this yesterday as I was walking home in the veritable fall evening and I thought of two possibilities.  One, I find the felicity in the moment (why does the answer ALWAYS seem to be in the moment…it’s getting annoying….damn Buddhists, they know everything apparently).  I’ve noticed I already do that.  Even though I’m scheduled as I used to be, I’m utterly not stressed about it.  I think that’s the effects of yoga and Tom (don’t know Tom…yeah, get over it…you won’t know Tom).  Two, I’ve found a lot more surprises than I expected to people-wise.  My schedule forces me to get out of my own way when it comes to allowing people the chance and the time to initiate contact and express a desire to hang out.  I’ve been jumping the gun for years now…now that I’m forced to give people a chance to do what they will, they’re doing it…and it’s fantastic.  Who knew.

As it turns out, time is not on my side.  I’m working against the clock all day long, starting at 5:30am and ending about 9:15pm (and even at 9:15 I’m fighting…Just one more chapter in this book and I’d be ready…).  What is on my side is the hard work I’ve done to CHILL OUT, the effects both physical and mental, stemming from yoga and the fact that I’ve been reintroduced to the fact that I have to be plugged in to the greater world out there…I’ve got some work to do that has nothing to do with nuns, IRB, or the word “problematic.”

Lesson Learned: Keep the fellowships, folks.  I don’t want ‘em.  No, I can’t want ‘em anymore. (That’s a quote from a musical…of course I won’t tell you which one).

That is not my title.  It’s actually a book I’m reading right now that is really changing my life.  I love that books have the power to do that…if we heed them…well, some of them.  I think this particular one is brilliant because it falls into that “magical realism” genre in which everything and nothing makes sense all at the same time. It’s a story for the ultimately story-teller…it seems it’s completely unreal…until you start trying out some of the ideas and then watch as what seems impossible merges with possible.

It’s goofy and profound at the same time. A rare combination, I find.

So anyway, one of the ideas I stumbled across that’s really amazing is this push/pull situation he introduces.  I’ve always struggled with the idea of “letting go.”  That sounds terrifying to me.  Letting go generally means that for 2 seconds you feel weightless and then are introduced to a world of fantastic pain…that last longer than 2 seconds. In my book, letting go has always meant giving up.  Instead, in this story, I ran across this idea which has revolutionized my way of thinking: when something is pressing you in a particular direction, instead of pushing against it, why not pull?

Wait.  What?

That sounds absurd.  Won’t I just be falling then? (And I always envision this as happening with a door such that I’m pulling, they’re pushing, and I’m falling backwards.  The answer is actually no…you’re not falling necessarily.  You’re just not spending so much energy resisting the flow of things.

Wait. Whaaaaat?

I’ve never, EVER considered this idea before.  Whenever I’ve approached letting go, it’s always ultimately been temporary…probably because that’s the way I envisioned it.  Just thinking about it required an overwhelming amount of change on my part, so it seemed.  I like to hold things.  So just to let everything go is completely ridiculous…and not doable.  But the push/pull scenario…well, that’s event-related…I can do that…and it’s fairly small scaled…and it makes sense…and it seems easier.

And it is.  I’ve just tried this in small ways throughout my days over the past week or so…it has literally changed the fabric of my life.  Shockingly, nothing concrete has changed…I still walk in the same direction, my goals are still my goals and the troubles still my troubles. But there’s none of the weariness in dealing with all of it, a symptom brought on by the degree to which I was standing vigilantly and waiting to resist things.  If I’m pulling, not only do I not initiate the action but I also don’t work hard to stop it.  (This is ultimately “going with the flow”…but that always sounded condescendingly “new agey” to me.  I’m not a river…what does that even mean?!?)  But, like Liz Lemon, “I’m a pusher.  I push people.”  Turns out, being a puller is way better.  If pushing is trying, then pulling is being…I think.

I’d rather just be.

I’ve been doing this for a couple days and the degree to which I can breathe more freely and feel and see things more clearly astounds me.  Of course, like any good crash diet, the devil is in the maintenance of it.  Can I sustain it?  I’d venture to say only, “I don’t know.”  But my experience with crash diets has been the loss of the will because the demands are just too great to bear.  I’m not sure I’d lose motivation with something that makes me feel so whole. This may be a crash diet I can get behind.

It’s the Path of the Peaceful Warrior…the book, I mean.  That’s the title of the book.

A friend of mine who shall remain nameless cracks me up with his yoga malapropisms.  Let’s just say he’s not a yoga practitioner…and because of that, I love when he humors me and asks about how yoga is going.  The other day he opened with, “So…how’s downward-seeking dog coming?”  This is a hybrid of mockery and sheer not-knowery, but the actual pose is called downward facing dog…which makes the new title a darker, perhaps more morbid version (although more closely connected to my actual experience of working in downward facing dog which is just generally sheer torture).  Although, I digress…I don’t want to talk about downward facing dogs or even yoga.

I want to talk about the insights I’ve stumbled on this week…and they’re really about going inward.

Oh this single, solitary life.  Oh this PhD, dissertation-devising life.  I think I can imagine no situations more isolating…put them together and…well, you’re the equivalent of a hermit…no, you’re the troll that lived under the bridge.  At least a hermit sounds, in some faraway place, honorable.  But the troll…just warty.  And that’s what this summer was for me…warty and horrible…and friggin hot.  So it’s not coincidence that within hours of it cooling off, I’ve come back around to some of my senses.  But not without effort and a commitment to cleaning out the dark little corners of my life that I’d rather forget are there….the places I retreat to when I feel warty…and thus breed more wartiness.  If I wanna get out from under the bridge, I gotta start clearing that stuff out.

When I started to work at clearing out the underbrush, I realized a really interesting (and potentially devastating), nasty little habit I have.  When warty, I spread myself really thin.  Not with work or not enough sleep…I call and contact everyone I know in a (often futile) attempt to “be acknowledged.”  “Hey guys, I’m Heeeerrrrrre.  No, over HEEEEEERRRRRE.”  I’ve always thought that keeping social contact would soothe the wounded soul.  As it turns out, not really.  In fact, in this experience, it’s not unlike the Horcruxes in Harry Potter. Though not intended to make me immortal, each little speck of social interaction I would try to create would spread me out literally too thin.  No one was home.  People weren’t answering the phone.  I was getting the “text message response” (you know the one…when you’ve called and they return the message not with voice mail or a call but with a text…regardless of what it says on that phone, just the action says, “riiiiiight….I’m not going to talk to you today.”)  “No one cares. I’m insignificant. I’m an afterthought,” says my warty, trollish internal chatter.  Thus ensues more panic, frustration…ultimately isolation.

So, on this last round of wretchedness, out of nothing other than just not wanting to talk to anyone, I sat with the silence.  I sat with the aloneness.  I actually moved away from people.  And it ended up being a strengthening experience.  In a myriad of ways.  When I stopped flailing around in a panic, thinking I was moving toward making a better situation, and just was there in my world, in my moment…things actually transformed.  People responded in new ways.  They met my change with changes of their own, changes I had hoped to have but could never see how I’d get them.  It was incredible, actually.

I think my struggle in yoga with downward facing dog is not a coincidence to this story.  The whole spiritual point of that pose is strengthening in places that we don’t often use for protection.  When we protect ourselves we cover our vulnerabilities with our stronger parts.  We turn our shoulder into oncoming force or use our shoulders to fully absorb the weight of force, whether it’s our bodies falling or hitting into something.  We tense the neck and turn the head.  We firm our hamstrings, preparing to spring into action.  We cover and run.  Downward facing dog requires you to kind of reverse all of that…you’re deeply stretching your shoulders and hamstrings, thus rendering them not the strong points but the stretched points.  You open your chest to the floor, use the muscles of your torso and upper and lower arms to push you away from the ground…you relax the neck and jaw.  You open…you uncover…you dis-cover…or if you’re me you start sweating profusely as the muscle fibers in your shoulders and hamstrings audibly rip.

Interestingly, though, it mirrors what has to happen in order to be an inward seeking dog.  As I have to open my chest and torso in downward facing dog, I have to open myself to being alone, by myself, quiet, not panicking.  As I strengthen those tiny little muscles (that kill to the 12th power when you pull them) around your back and ribs, I also strengthen my resolve to emotionally support myself and not need to outsource my troubles.  As I learn to breathe through the hellfires burning in the backs of my legs and shoulders, I learn to withstand the heat of that panic that tells me, “no one cares what happens to you.”  It’s a journey that has to be settled into…and one that requires an acceptance of the challenges and an acknowledgment of the good sure to come, even if in the present it hurts like sideways facing sonofoabitch.

I am an inward seeking dog…and I think I’m in the process of learning to be okay with that.  But I already know this much.  Inward seeking dogs aren’t really warty…not warty at all.  Let’s put a “w” in the win column on that insight.

The start of school.  There’s nothing like it, although it never feels real until 1) after Labor Day and 2) after the weather starts to act like fall.  But regardless, I’m teaching 5 days a week this Fall (a tremendous increase from what I was doing last year) and I’m just really happy about it.  And relieved, actually.

The longer I’m in grad school (and it’s getting very long…this is the start of my 6th year) the more real the toll of working solitarily starts to take hold.  Writing is an isolating process–alone with my ideas all day–and I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon when it comes to writing–it actually makes me a fragile person.  I’ m moody and emotional.  I’m restless and discontented.  It’s taken a long time for me to realize that this isn’t something I’ve become totally; it’s only who I am when the overwhelming weight of this “dissertation” takes hold.  And as it turns out, teaching is the natural counterpoint to writing.  Through it I personally find a great balance.  It is therapeutic…and not in a needy sort of way.  It’s the space I need to synthesize things.  I think it’s the best of both worlds when both student and teacher can benefit from the experience.  Things “get done.”

I also happen to be teaching at 8am on MWF, so that means a lot of early mornings are in my future.  There was a time I would be less than thrilled with that proposition…and I am epically tired today (the 2nd day of school) because I still can’t make myself fall asleep in enough time to get in the recommended 8, but eventually exhaustion will take over and I’ll get to where I need to be.  But the thing with mornings is that it’s really the best of myself.  Though I always thought I was a night person, I think I’m actually a very, very early person.  It’s the time when the weight and worries of the day haven’t formed yet…I’m very clear (surprisingly clear) at that hour.  It’s been a nice discovery.

So far, I’m into both my classes at two different schools and I can’t deny the fact that this turn of events…going back into the classroom…has been nothing short of a godsend.  This will be exactly how this dissertation gets done.  I’m committing it to writing so that every time I get coerced to think about another way I can return here and remember this.  For good.

I’m a teacher.  And with students is where I need to be.