I tried to write on the day that contract teachers were back to work after the summer. I tried to write on the official first day of school. I thought I might write on my birthday, but none of those days afforded me the time or the focus or the desire. And that’s fine… no one is beating down my door or waiting on the edge of their seat for my blog posts. Mostly it is just a good way for me to process things and if someone out there wants to read along, welcome.
These past few weeks have marked a new beginning for me. Leaving my teaching position was a massive decision and a huge change. My feelings have been all over the map, but are mostly positive. I kept waiting for the waves of regret or fomo or sadness, but they haven’t come. It isn’t that I don’t miss it, it’s just that I don’t mind missing it. It was time for a change, I would even say it was long overdue. For some reason that was something I fought. I tried my best to quiet down the little voice in me that kept whispering that it was time to let go. Time to accept that I am not my job and my job is not me and I am not responsible for…well, anything really.
And while I am absolutely filled to overflowing with ideas and things I could do and might do and usually feel like I should do, instead I find myself being increasingly okay with quiet and stillness and just being. I am becoming more comfortable with asking myself what it is that I need, sometimes I even dare to ask myself what I want (gasp) and then…I do it.
I recognize that being a single person with no children affords me a great deal of flexibility. But also…not. Sure, there is no one else that I am responsible for housing or clothing or feeding (other than the cats…meow). But in the same breath, that also means that it all falls to me. There is no back-up, no shoulder other than my own to carry the load. Pros and cons, as with everything in life.
I really don’t know what this year will end up looking like. I realize now that I was trying sooooo hard to map it all out when I first made the decision. Like I knew there would be a massive hole in my life and I was trying to plan out in advance how I could fill it. But now that I am here, at the beginning, I actually like all this empty space. It isn’t so scary.
I like taking it slow. Watching and listening and thinking. If I had to guess, I think this year might be a time of unraveling all that has been so tightly wound in me for so many years. But, I don’t know that for sure and for probably the first time in my adult life, I’m okay with that.