A Room of One's Own

Let me preface this by admitting that I have not yet read this seminal text by Virginia Woolf. I was introduced to the concept 30 years ago through the lyrics of an Indigo Girls song and have held the idea in my heart.

A room of one's own.

Growing up as the only girl in a family with two brothers, I had my own room. But it wasn't a room of my own. It was in my father's house, and there were rules about what could be put on the walls (nothing) what color it could be (white) and what furniture it contained. A quick internet search revealed the exact suite that was deemed appropriate for me.

Needless to say, the charm of this set wore off after age 10. It wasn't really my room. It was the room for the person my father envisioned his daughter to be.

I bought my first house with my fiance when I was 22. It was a 1970's ranch with carpet in shades of green, blue, and red. Formal drapes in the living room. A house clearly left behind by an older person or couple when they moved into assisted living. 

To me, it was a blank canvas.

It was my own home to create with my future husband. 

So it wasn't truly my own. Compromises had to be made on the bedding we chose for our wedding registry. I had to accept hand-me-down living room furniture from some of his coworkers who had a very different style than my own.

That was the first of five houses we owned together. Each one chosen for the price point and suitability for our family with minor consideration given to location. Style of the house was not important; everything was driven by practicality for a couple with 3 young children living on a single income.

The last house we co-owned was the only one I felt a connection to. I used to think it was because of the quirks and charms of its age and style. Later, I came to realize that it was the closest to being mine of any house I'd ever lived in. My now ex-husband got a job out of state and never moved into it. I lived there alone with my children for 4 months before we moved to join him. I maintained it as a rental property in our absence. I returned to it, without him, to finish the renovations when our tenants moved out. The design choices were almost entirely my own. The blood, sweat, and tears that went into its renovation were mine. He moved back to the house 11 months after I returned, and I made the decision to separate less than a year later.

I started this blog to chronicle the work I did on this house, and record my thoughts along the way. As I read back over it nearly 8 years later, it has been a journal of my own renovation. I have stripped off layers of other peoples' design choices that did not suit me. I found my solid bones and began rebuilding myself. 

I am building a room of my own.

stickers

 As a child in the 80's, stickers were EVERYTHING. Be they puffy, shiny, scratch & sniff, or just a favorite cartoon character, stickers were something to cherish and perhaps trade, and were often displayed in a sticker album.

The problem with most sticker albums was object permanence: once you removed the paper backing and adhered the sticker to the page, it was there forever. I remember one sticker that was so precious to me that I refused to put it in an album. It was a silver castle, in raised metallic glory, on a turquoise background. I probably still had that sticker somewhere in my desk well past my college years because I was to afraid to stick it on anything.

Today, stickers are still popular decorations for water bottles and laptops, and I have a few stickers displayed on these items. But I have an envelope with dozens of preciou
s stickers waiting for the perfect, permanent place to be displayed. Some of them have been in hiding for more than 8 years. These are lovely reminders of places I've been, and things I enjoy but I'm afraid to I'm afraid to waste them, so I keep them tucked away.

The cover of my laptop broke a few years ago and my thoughtful partner ordered and installed the replacement himself, but in doing so two things happened:

• I lost the three beloved stickers that were on the old cover
• The new screen was slightly cracked due to installation errors, but was still very usable. 

He felt bad about the cracked screen and offered repeatedly to replace it although I insisted it was not necessary. Part of my replacement reticence was due to the potential loss of even more stickers, and even though I didn't plan to have the computer repaired, I STILL didn't put any stickers on the cover for almost two years.

Until today.

Today, I pulled out the slumbering stickers and sorted them by category (schools, places I've visited, brands, Scouts, etc.) and then selected a few that had similar enough color schemes to be aesthetically pleasing to my eye, and put them on the cover. Some of the others I threw away because I don't want them anymore. Some of them I need to toss but I'm not ready to yet. And that's okay. They're stickers. They're not forever. They are meant to be enjoyed, not tucked away. There is no perfect place, or perfect arrangement. There is only now. Stick the stickers and enjoy them.

Coming back to life

Five years have passed since I moved back to North Carolina. 

There is no way to chronicle everything that has occurred since my last post in April 2019.

So I will start where I am. 

Yoga classes end with savasana- literally translated from Sanskrit as "corpse pose." So much of who I thought I was died in the last five years. I initially wanted to say that it was an unhealthy, cancerous part of me that needed to be cut out, but that is not true. 

I was never unhealthy. I was in denial that there was a parasitic vine wrapped around me like Japanese honeysuckle on a tree. Sometimes it appears lovely and fragrant, but all the while it is prevents the absorbtion of nutrients which leads to suffocation and death of the host. I was so tightly wrapped that I forgot what it felt like to be unencumbered. I had carried the weight for so long that I didn't even feel it.

Removal of a parasitic vine and restoring the host to health is difficult. You cut the visible vines off, but it takes time for the tree to feel the sun and ramp up photosynthesis so it can thrive. All the while, the roots of the vine can linger under the surface, reemerging and sending tendrils up the base when you're not paying attention. They, too, can come back to life.

At the end of savasana, you transition to a fetal position- parsva garbhasana. Many of my favorite instructors use this time to remind yogis that the end of each yoga practice is a chance to begin again. It is a figurative coming back to life.

My last blog post had me entering 2019 with the idea of living my best life. I begin 2024 with the continued exploration of what it means to come back to life.

So, as it turns out,

I don't hate Louisiana.

It took moving away and being gone for 3 months to understand that it's not the state or even the location within the state that made me so unhappy for the last 3 years.

I arrived back at my old house in Friday night after a 16 hour journey which was tedious but went quickly thanks to the book I was listening to: 9 Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty. It was the perfectly light and indulgent story to distract me during the drive.

Let's be clear about a few important points:

• I still dislike this house. I dislike even more that it is on the market but is soooooo far from my standards of being market ready. I'm trying my best to let go and let my husband handle selling it because it is "his" house but OMG I may actually go crazy before the week is over. I did not drive all this way to spend my precious time off to clean up and pack up a house when I have my own house in NC that needs so much attention, but... here I am. Sigh.
• It still feels isolated. Shreveport/Bossier is a decent metro area, but beyond this you have to drive 3 hours toward Dallas to find anything new/different. The other towns within that radius are the same size or smaller and offer little in the way of entertainment options.

With those disclaimers out of the way, here are a few things that I actually miss about this place:

• Birds. I forgot how many types of birds visit my yard here (even though the bird feeder is MIA). It has been a delight to watch and listen to them as I enjoy my morning coffee.
• Wind. I have no idea what meteorological phenomenon is at work, but this corner of the world always has the nicest breezes, which sometimes turn into downright blustery days. I adore wind, perhaps because I grew up in the breezy bay area of California. Breezes like this are not common in the piedmont of North Carolina. In fact, compared to the atmosphere here, the air there is downright stagnant.
• My people. I did a pretty good job of keeping myself walled off for the first half of the year when I moved here. I didn't want to form a lot of relationships because I knew this was not my home and I would not be staying. But dammit if I didn't meet some of the best friends I've ever had. I frontloaded my visit by seeing a lot of them on Saturday and I must admit that I found myself wondering if I wouldn't have been better off staying here, among them.

No time for second-guessing- I made my choice and did what I thought was best by moving back to work on my house. 

Still, I am secretly glad to be leaving 2 college students behind in this area so I'll have a reason to keep coming back for a few years.

Learn to sit

Tonight I went to a yoga class for the first time in almost 2 months. I have been so busy with school, my house, and scouts that I haven't carved out time for self-care, and it's starting to show.

It was a deep stretch where we settled into poses and held them for 3-4 minutes, which can seem like 3-4 hours when your body is contorted into unnatural positions. To be honest I'm not a huge fan of this particular yoga studio, but it's close to my house and has $10 community classes on Sundays. It's been very crowded both times I've been, with 35+ people squeezed in like sardines and most of them were very noisy/chatty prior to the class beginning. Factor that into my physically out-of-practice self; it makes for a place that I was not able to fully relax and focus.

As we were settled into one of our poses, the instructor reminded us that we need to work through our distraction and fidgety natures and learn to sit with what is uncomfortable.

I reflected on several people I know who are sitting with what is uncomfortable this week. A friend whose parents are downsizing the family home to move into a retirement village. Another friend grappling with broken relationships with teenage children. Dear young friends of mine who gave birth to their first child who died an hour later. This is heavy stuff. My woes of a strenuous workload and time-sensitive house projects pale in comparison.

Yet, it is all discomfort to varying degrees. We cannot escape it. We can attempt to dull the pain chemically, we can seek comfort in religion, and we can reach out to friends and therapists. But ultimately, we have to sit with it and be still until the pain passes. Because this, too, will pass.

Living My Best Li(f)e

I was thinking about a year-end summary the other day, and wanted to make it about the phrase "Living My Best Life." I jotted down a note on my iPhone to remind myself about this idea, and somehow never made contact with the "f" on the keyboard.

Living My Best Lie

This couldn't be more appropriate.

During my 2018 journey through self-discovery, I uncovered the fact that I have been unconsciously living a lie. Like, for a long time.

A new-ish friend asked me what I was like in high school, and I thought back to my whimsical, insouciant, independent, determined teenage self. It's been a while since I've seen her for more than a few hours at a time.

Then,

I serendipitously got a job at summer camp this year and felt more alive than I have in years.

I tried teaching in a public school classroom again after nearly 20 years, and felt so constrained and ineffective despite the fact that I love (and am good at) teaching.

And as I processed all of this, I realized I have lost contact with the real me. This move to Louisiana (2.5 years now, y'all) has been so hard, but without it I don't think I would have come to understand these things about myself.

• I would have kept on living the life I had been for the past 20-odd years, doing the things I felt were expected of me. Things that were "appropriate." 
• I would have kept being (surface) friends with the same people who had comprised my circle as a young wife and mother.
• I would have participated in the same groups and activities out of obligation, not out of desire or enthusiasm.
• I would have continued to do small, fun things (and often feel guilty about it) because I was afraid to do bigger, bolder fun things.

I know this, because I felt myself wanting to change before I moved here, but I didn't know how to break free and be authentic to myself.

The past 5 months of intentional unemployment have been a liberating time to realign my internal compass. I traveled to Maui to visit my brother. I resumed working on my beloved blue house in Gibsonville, logging thousands of miles on my car, thousands of dollars to my bank account, and thousands of hours to be alone and think. I read a lot, crafted a lot, dreamed a lot. 

I can't say exactly what my best life is going to look like; it's something I'm discovering each day. 

Welcome, 2019.

Welcome, my best life.

if it's meant to be, part 3

The Trading Post. I was assigned to work in the Trading Post.

Perks: unfettered access to popcorn, slushies, cookies & soda. Moderate air conditioning in some places. Private bathroom. Occasional trips to town to pick up merchandise.

Disadvantages: Neurotically counting money and inventory on a daily basis. Not a program area.


I never would have chosen to work at the Trading Post (despite the excellent perks), but I had the best summer. My initial contract was for 3 weeks, but I ended up coming back for another week at the end of the summer because I was having so much fun (and apparently I had convinced the director that I was doing useful things).

Camp is my happy place. It is the place that I feel most like myself. If I could live at camp all year long, I would. And the people that work at camp are my kind of people. I freaking love camp.

The Trading Post director quickly became the best friend I never knew I was missing in my life. Midway through our first week of working together, he pointed out that I wasn't supposed to be there. If things had gone the way I thought they would, I would have been at Philmont and would have been at camp for only an hour or two to drop off and pick up my son.

What is meant to be, anyway? Was I actually supposed to go to Philmont? Or was I supposed to work at camp, all along?  Would I have had an amazing time at Philmont, or would I have been miserable? Would I have been assigned to work at the Trading Post if I had been hired back in December?

I have no doubt that I was meant to be at camp this summer. I don't know if I will make it to Philmont in the future, or if I will work at camp again. But my heart is overwhelmed with gratitude for the serendipity that landed me exactly where I needed to be for the summer of 2018.

Letting go of a dream

I'm stuck holding on to a dream, and I'm not sure if it's time to let that dream die or if I'm just in a long dormant phase. -Words of wisdom, from myself, circa late January 2017.

It's been a month and a half since I resigned, and for the most part, it's been good. I've done some subbing, took an amazing trip to visit my brother in Hawaii, taken up yoga, and had time to work on sewing projects.

The night before I left for Hawaii, I saw a job posting through a Facebook page I follow. It was a program assistant position in Elon's counseling department, something that I would enjoy doing and felt I was well qualified for. And I probably would have ignored it, had the tenants of my lovely blue house in Gibsonville not given notice that they would be moving out mid-September.

(Spoiler alert: I didn't ignore it)

I stayed up until 2 am revising my resume and cover letter to impulsively apply for a job.

I can feel you shaking your head in disapproval, dear reader. It's okay. I'm doing it, too.

You've seen me do this before, right?

I applied for a job to escape my unhappiness. I was literally trying to run away, albeit to a house and community that I loved.

Fast forward through an unexpected phone interview with a 6 hour time difference while I was in Hawaii and a Skype interview, once I returned home, which meant I was one of the top two candidates.

I didn't get the job.

I found this out as I was driving to North Carolina to check my tenants out, all the time wondering if I'd be checking myself back into that house a week later.

I kind of knew. I didn't hear back from them the day after the other candidate's interview, so I mentally prepared myself for the fact that it had been offered to someone else. It wasn't a surprise, but it was a disappointment.

This was the second time that I was so close to a job that I thought was within my grasp, and the exact same scenario played out.

Is it time to let go of the dream? Initially, that's how it felt: I am not meant to work at Elon again. That door is closed. Move on.

Here's the thing, though: working at Elon, although it is something I love and can do well, is not the dream.

Working at Elon is an easy way out, and I want an easy way out.

I want someone to give me a reason to leave.

I don't know if moving back to North Carolina would make me happy. Deep down, I'm pretty sure it would not. I have uncovered a habit of falling back on things I have pursued in the past as things that I should still continue to pursue, without questioning whether I want those things now.

Now. 

I am a different person now than I was when I graduated from college, when I got married, when I taught middle school, when I stayed home with young children and lived on one meager income, when I homeschooled, when I lived in North Carolina. I have grown and changed, and I need to realize that my old dreams and ambitions are security blankets that you have to eventually stop carrying around.

if it's meant to be, part 2

My family's summer 2018 calendar was a sight to behold.

On June 7, I loaded all 3 boys and their assorted gear for summer activities into my not-nearly-as-large-as-my-minivan Mazda Tribute and started our drive eastward. The original plan looked something like this:

June 7 drive to dad's house in SC
June 8 drive to brother's house in NC
June 10 drop #2 at summer camp in NC for staff week
June 11 drive #1 & #3 to WV for a different Boy Scout camping opportunity.
June 12 leave car at summer camp in NC & fly back to Shreveport to leave for Philmont on June 15

For the sake of everyone's sanity, I'm not going to throw in anything beyond that.

So when I drove to NC on June 7, I took with me a very small suitcase full of mostly nicer, wear-in-public kind of clothes. You know, because I was flying home 5 days later.

Except I didn't.


The cancellation of my Philmont trip left a huge hole not just in my heart, but also in my summer schedule. It would have me flying home to sit in an empty house all day for over three weeks with nothing to do. I contemplated several ideas: hike part of the Appalachian Trail, since I was already prepared for backpacking? Drive to New Mexico anyway, just to visit a new place? Come back home and throw myself into some creative business enterprise?

On the day that I officially learned that Philmont was a no-go, I also received an email newsletter from my BSA council in North Carolina which mentioned that they were still looking for a few staff members for summer camp (the one #2 was working at).

Let's go back to December 2017, shall we? Back to when I received an email from the director of said camp in NC, remembering that I had mentioned the summer before that I might be interested in working there, and would I like to put in my application?  I was honored to be asked, but had to turn him down because of my scheduled trip to Philmont.

With nothing on my calendar and a hesitant "okay" from my husband, I committed to working at camp for 3 weeks in a yet-to-be-determined position. I possess a plethora of skills and qualifications that would make me useful in many departments around camp, so I left it up to the director to place me where I would be most beneficial.

Where I ended up can only be described as serendipity.

(to be continued)

resigned, redux

Two years ago, I wrote a post that solidified my name choice for this blog.

I was full of heartache over loss- the loss of my home, my friends, my job... most of my life.

Two years ago, I wrote that I would move back from Louisiana in two years. #didn'thappen

A year and a half ago, I chose deliberate as my word of the year. Then, as I was working on my 2018 word of the year, I had this realization. Followed by this one.

At the beginning of June, all of my summer plans changed.

At the end of July, I resigned.

This, however, was a happy resignation. It was me following through with confidence on something that I knew I needed to do, but was too afraid of uncertainty to follow through with.

I resigned my teaching position. The one I took on a whim. The one that made me miserable for the better part of last year.

I don't know what I'm going to do now, and that's okay. I believe in myself. I am learning to trust myself again. It's a beautiful and scary process filled with a lot of tears, but I am so relieved to be back on track. I am paving my own happiness.

if it's meant to be, part 1

Last fall, I accepted an offer to serve as an adult adviser on a Philmont trek with a Venture Crew from Shreveport.



For those unfamiliar, Philmont is basically the mecca of Boy Scouting. It's their high adventure base in the mountains of New Mexico where you go to backpack/hike 60+ miles and participate in high adventure activities over the course of 10 days. It's expensive and requires many months of planning and training, but it's something I've always wanted to do. And, since I am within driving distance (12-ish hours) here in Louisiana, and because I'm not getting any younger, I jumped at the opportunity to go.

insert months of researching and buying gear for the trek, hundreds of dollars saved and paid, and many miles of practice hiking with a 30lb pack completed

Two weeks before our crew was slated to leave Shreveport on Friday, June 15, a wildfire was reported in the vicinity of Philmont. The Ute Park Fire proceeded to grow and burn through the center of the 140,000+ acre property. For days, I scoured the internet for updates, watched as staff was evacuated, and checked for reports on damage to buildings. I knew our trek was in jeopardy, but when staff were allowed to return to the campus, I was cautiously optimistic.

The official announcement came just 10 days before I was supposed to leave: all backcountry treks scheduled from June 8 through July 14 (and later, the entire season) were cancelled.

This was difficult information to process. I knew it was most likely going to happen, but when it did I wasn't mentally or emotionally prepared. For over a day I alternated between non-stop texting everyone who would listen to me grieve (selected Boy Scout friends who "got" what a huge disappointment this was) and walking around in a confused stupor, trying to figure out what to do with my summer which had been so meticulously planned for over half a year.

I didn't have long to figure it out, however, because my first jaunt of the summer was slated to begin with a 14 hour eastward drive on June 7.

(to be continued)

homeless

I'm rolling into the two year anniversary of moving to Louisiana, and for the most part I have resigned myself to the fact that I live there now. My husband is not looking for other employment opportunities, and 2/3 of my children prefer to continue their educations there. I have friends, and I have a job (if I wish to continue it).

I live there, but it's not my home.

I've probably traveled back to North Carolina about a dozen times since I moved away, and upon my 2nd or 3rd trip back, I realized something that is solidifying with each additional visit:

This is not my home, either.

I don't feel like I belong in either place.

That's a disconcerting feeling- discovering that you don't feel at home in either of the places where you've lived for the past 30+ years.

So if I don't belong here or there, where do I belong?

I am not without a home, but I feel homeless.

Marching forth

(because today is March 4th. See what I did there?)

January began with a blissful week of extended vacation, followed by a shortened week for MLK holiday, and 2 snow days the following week. It was very stressful because I was responsible for all the lesson planning, but I enjoyed the topic (space science) and managed to not disappoint my colleagues. I'll call that a win.

February flew by in an equally fleeting manner and now it is March.

I must admit, I am struggling with my word, confidence. I usually project an outward air of confidence (bordering on arrogance, sometimes), but inside I am a bowl of mush. A doubting, self-deprecating, questioning, helpless-feeling ball of mush who can't make decisions and is thoroughly confused.

• I did not make the bold decision to say I am not returning to my job next year when asked a few weeks ago, even though I hate about 78% of my job.
• I constantly question my choices.
• I do not trust myself.
• I do not know how to change.

I haven't been crafting much. I splurged and bought myself a set of metal stamping letters and associated tools for the primary purpose of creating something that says "confidence," but I need to follow through with that project. I'm afraid of messing up my stamping blanks as I learn.

I'm afraid of messing up as I learn.

But how can I learn without making mistakes? How can I try new things and see if I enjoy them if I am constantly holding myself back because I am afraid?

I (think) I know what I want, but I am afraid to go after it. It's big and scary and life-altering in a HUGE way. It would be easier to wait for things to unfold around me. To wait. To let life pass me by. 

Can I be happy, living the way I am right now? Maybe, if you believe happiness is a choice. 

Personally, I believe saying 'happiness is a choice' means you're probably lying to yourself.

I want the lies to stop. 

Word of the year

In my last post, I alluded to (but am not quite ready to blog about) the struggles I have had the past few months because I neglected my word of the year for 2017.

At the beginning of December, about the time I remembered that I was supposed to be being deliberate this year, I also realized that I was going to have a difficult time choosing my word for 2018.

It's been in the back of my mind for the past month. I've written down at least a dozen words that could be contenders, but none of them quite encompass everything that I am feeling.  Last night, I settled on a winner.

• Confidence  

• full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing.
• belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities; self-confidence; self-reliance; assurance.
• a secret that is confided or imparted trustfully.

I'm about to do some really hard things this year. But I CAN do them. I am able. And I will.

Just what I needed

My winter school break is 2.5 weeks long. Our entire family already went to San Antonio for a few days to visit Matt's family for Christmas, but the boys and my break continues through this entire first week of January. They're content to stay home and play video games. I am not.

I booked a condo in the Ozarks for a few days, and a friend will be joining me tomorrow. My six hour drive landed me here, alone, late this afternoon.

and I. freaking. love. it.

I love being alone.

This is the first time I have been somewhere neutral, alone, since I can't remember when. It may have been more than 20 years ago.

As a college student, I would frequently drive to my family's cabin in the woods for the weekend. The 4 hour drive cleared my head, and the solitude of the weekend restored my soul. I didn't have to go anywhere, do anything, or talk to anyone. No one knew I was there. No one could bother me. I could eat what and when I wanted. I could stay up all night reading if I wanted to.  I could stroll through the woods. If I had been at home, I would have been caught up in the continuation of my regular life. Being alone, somewhere else, is absolutely liberating.

Even staying at a hotel, alone, evokes a different vibe. A hotel room feels confining and ultimately very temporary. A hotel is a quick stop on the way to somewhere else.

But this, this, is just what I needed, and I didn't even know it.


Much of what I am struggling with right now is my definition of happiness, and what I need to be happy. I am simultaneously reading/listening to 3 books that are all themed around love, marriage, and aloneness. This retreat could not have come at a better time as I grapple with these concepts.

Half a year later

As you can read from those last two posts, I did something at the end of July that took me in a completely different direction than I had anticipated.

Apparently, I had also intended to blog about my experiences teaching middle school on a separate blog (hence the two posts I just found)

But in the words of Sweet Brown- "ain't nobody got time for that."

Too much has happened in the last five months to even begin to write about it all, but let's just summarize with this statement:

I forgot about my word of the year.

I took a full-time teaching job on a whim- the exact opposite of being deliberate. It has proven to be a decision that I regret on an almost daily basis.

I completely forgot about this blog until about 6 weeks ago, and even then I only recalled my word of the year. I did not go back and read anything I had written on this blog until yesterday. And, y'all- I cannot begin to tell you the amount of heartache I could have saved myself if I had, because as I am rereading what I wrote in the first half of 2017, nearly everything that has happened since then is in direct contrast to what I intended.

Let's take away the "has happened" and be honest: these things did not just happen. I put myself in a place where I would let them happen, and in some cases even deliberately pursued them.

A few weeks ago, I realized that deliberate had irrevocably been thrown out the window, and there was no way to undo that.  And if you can't undo something, what can you do but keep moving forward? 

Today, especially, I am looking forward, but to do that I also need to take a long, deliberate look back. I didn't realize how much introspection I had done while writing here, and how therapeutic it is.

As I'm rereading my past year I'm intrigued to find that the end of summer/beginning of school seems to be a falling-off point in blogging for me, based on this post.

Lots to think about.

Second time around (also a post from July)

I was hired 5 days before the start of the school year. Two of those days I spent in new teacher training for the entire school system. Two of them will be spent doing school-based training. And the one lonely day in the middle was fairly useless because I don't have a lot of the supplies I need and my fellow teachers were not at the school because who works on the last day of summer vacation?

I have no textbooks (the curriculum standards were changed over the summer, with no time to purchase textbooks that correspond to what I'm supposed to be teaching) and I have zero materials. To be honest, I'm a little fuzzy on what I'm even supposed to be teaching because the standards are written in very vague and lofty terms.

During the system-wide training, I was inundated with information. This is not the same profession that I started in twenty years ago. The emphasis now is on incorporating technology and improving test scores, and everything is data-driven. The formatted lesson plans I worked from last year, as a substitute teacher, were abhorrent to me. It looked like a giant, disgusting checklist and you had to make sure all of the boxes were filled with the right criteria. Everybody worked from the same type of lesson plans and there was little (if any) autonomy within your grade and subject area to do your own thing. No room for creativity. No room for fun. Just do what everybody else is doing, and don't go against the flow.

I knew all of this when I accepted the job, and knew that my administrators are very results oriented. Our school looks good on paper, and they want that to continue. I was honest with them about my concerns during my interview, so they can't say they didn't know what they were getting when they hired me.

I can work within their system, because this is my second time around.

I'm not worried.

I'm not worried about earning their approval during observations of my lessons. It's just a job, a job I chose because I want to teach young people, not because I want to be a robot teacher in their system. If they don't like what I'm doing, they will let me know and we will come to an understanding and I will leave. Hopefully it will be my choice and not theirs.

I'm not worried about ensuring that every one of my students masters every item on the syllabus because, you know what? They won't. And I can't make them.

One of the other new teachers I met this week said that her interview for this job was the hardest she'd ever experienced. I was befuddled by this statement; maybe because I was frequently part of the interviewing process in my last job, and maybe because I already knew the interviewers, but mostly because I knew they were pretty desperate to fill the position in less than a week.

My self-worth is not based on what people- even employers- think of me. This is my second time around, and I am confident in who I am and what I know my purpose to be. I don't have to have a Pinterest-worthy classroom, and I don't have to spend hours and money creating new and innovative lessons to impress students.

My purpose is to make these tweens feel loved, and accepted, and worthy. I'll be grateful if they learn some science along the way, but if they end this year believing in themselves, then that's all the validation I need.

A post from the end of July (or, why I haven't written since July)

Upon graduating from college with a degree in middle grades education, I taught in public middle schools for three years. I was young, newly married and had nothing else going on in my life. I mostly enjoyed my job, and probably would have continued teaching if not for the birth of my first child (followed by two others within the next 4 years).

I spent the better part of the next 13 years at home, and for the majority of that time frame I was either homeschooling my own children, tutoring homeschooled students of all ages, or both. A wonderful job opportunity led me to work in student affairs at a local university when my children got older, and I enjoyed that job for 3 years.

Then, we moved across the country.

We moved to a state none of us had ever been to before, where we knew no one and were literally a thousand miles away from our friends and family. I enrolled all of my children in public middle & high schools (one of them for the first time!) to encourage opportunities to make friends and get involved in our new town. But what about me? Where could I enroll myself?

I did think about literally enrolling in classes, either a new course of study at a community college or beginning to work on my master's degree in some education-related field. The knowledge that we would (hopefully) not be stationed in our new state for more than a few years stopped me from committing myself to such a lengthy and potentially very expensive undertaking that I may not be able to complete.

So I feel back into what I knew: teaching. I was hired as a substitute for the local school system, and I spent 2 months hopping from school to school, across all subjects and grades. I finally got an opportunity to work at the middle school my child attended, and after establishing myself as a trustworthy individual, found that I had enough job opportunities to work exclusively at that one school with the occasional day spent at the high school next door. I got to know the teachers and students, and it felt like home.

I found that subbing was an ideal fit for me because I could easily take a day off when I had other things to attend to, I didn't have to deal with parents, and I only had to deal with paperwork on the rarest of occasions. Still, there were weeks when I only had a day or two of work and more so than missing the financial compensation (because, let's be honest- substitute teachers are not in it for the money!), I missed being a part of the school community.

I knew there were some job openings at my school of choice, but for a variety of reasons I chose not to pursue them. My primary deterrent was being complicit in a data-driven system where standardized test scores are more important than actually teaching and mentoring young people.  I had a change of heart less than two weeks before our school year was set to begin, and mentioned to the principal that I was available and interested if a teaching position were to become available. Two days later, I received a call informing me that there was an unexpected vacancy in the 6th grade science department and would I be interested?

I said yes, and now I am days away from welcoming more than a hundred students to middle school. My classroom looks very naked compared to those around me since I long since parted with my humble stash of schoolroom supplies. I am relying on lesson plans and materials provided by my fellow 6th grade science teachers since I have no time to prepare my own.

And you know what? I am just fine.
Hakuna matata.

Campcraft

I've been out of state for 3 glorious weeks:

• 1 week at Boy Scout camp in Mississippi
• 1 week of visiting friends and family in North Carolina
• 1 week of Boy Scout camp in North Carolina

Always needing to have some small craft and not wanting to take a lot of supplies, I opted for working on an old-school friendship bracelet in Mississippi

and taught some staff members in North Carolina how to make lanyards with plastic lace, which I forgot to take pictures of

image snagged from https://wanelo.com/store/keys2please

Before leaving, I also finished my t-shirt rug!

it was no, after all

After a month of agonizing, thinking, planning, what if-ing, the door is closed.

The job that I wanted, and made it to the final interview for, was offered to someone else.

I couldn't have done anything differently or better. The interviewers/hirers know me, and know that I can do the job because I have done the job before. But they chose someone else.

I'm not going to lie. It hurt a little that someone was deemed better than me. I am very curious to find out who the new hire is (God bless the internet and the fact that I will easily be able to do this in about 2 months when websites are updated).

At the same time, I am enormously relieved that I don't have to put my kids in the position of having to make the choice about where they want to live. I have a lot of things already planned for this summer, so I'm glad that I don't have to add "pack up my life to move" to the list.

But I'm sad, too. There were so many things I was looking forward to about living in North Carolina again. Friends, food, and family will have to continue to wait for me, and I for them.

In my heart of hearts, I knew my work here was not done. I will continue to substitute teach, to lead a Scout troop, and to chaperone high school band events. I will invest in these people for another year.

And I will also have an exit strategy.

This WILL be our final year living in Louisiana. We WILL be putting our house on the market next spring. My kids and their friends and mine will know that we will be leaving at the end of next school year. Having closure in  advance, knowing that something is going to happen a year ahead of time, is a luxury that will be afforded to us.

My prayer is that we will be able to return to our home in North Carolina. My prayer is that a year's notice will be enough closure time for us. My prayer is that there are jobs waiting for my husband and I. My prayer is that we can sell this house quickly. My prayer is for patience in the waiting.

349 days to go. The countdown is back on.