Ditching the Boxes

It's been too, too, too long, folks. Almost five years to be exact. Why?

Life. That's why. Stuff happens: adulting, working, raising kids, Facebooking, Tweeting, Pinterest, etc.

However, now that I have the time to do it, I can update. Every day.

As always, this is going to be VERY therapeutic for me. Writing always has been my passion, my joy, my release, even though I've been treating it like a red-headed stepchild lately. 

Straight Zombie Mode

Facebook and Twitter are addicting and too much fun, I can't lie. It's hard to resist the endless supply of immediate titillation.  

However, real writers know: Writing in within boxes and character limits is confining in more ways than one. I catch myself trying to be clever, witty and succinct all within the teeny-weeny space and character limits supplied.  I struggle daily to say something that will get a reaction (happy, sad, angry, wow, haha is all we get to feel according to Facebook)  from one of your bazillion friends' fleeting and ever-dwindling attention span. We're all on there, flailing through the muck, as we scroll through soupy liquid of bells, whistles, giphys, listicles, memes, videos, goofy quizzes.... 

All of this stuff is supposedly what I want to see and hear, at least according to my click-through habits. It's creepy the way they know I was eyeing that monster-sized box of Cheez-Its for my daughters' lunch boxes or the gorgeous A-line, custom-tailored dress on eShakti....

Very 1984ish, indeed.

With ALL of this time I have on my hands (I'll get to that a little later here), I have been on Facebook every single day...checking on my friends and my "friends" lives (y'all know there's a difference), trying to interact electronically from my home office, laughing, cussing, guffawing out loud in my otherwise quiet home. Now that I think about it, in this whole scene I must really look happy, sad, angry, wow, haha all at once. 

Regardless of the optics, I feel innately compelled to express more. More than the blips, blinks, "LOLs," "ICYMIs" of communication...I need to stretch, and relieve that cramp to my never-ending stream of thought-to-written consciousness. 

I need to be free! 

I have more to say, and "Accurate," "Yup", and fire emoji isn't cutting it for me anymore. 

That freedom breaking out in other areas too. 

Career: A Shift 

I'm taking a break from teaching for now. It is time for me to finally admit that teaching, full-time, is not something that is meant for me anymore. I will always be a teacher. However, I've got to explore different ways to teach now, different settings. It can't be my main gig. Teaching demands SO MUCH TIME and ENERGY. I have colleagues and friends who do it, and I love them for it and it for them for that matter. I have though, arrived at the realization, that I'm just not cut from that cloth. 

At my last assignment, I was working anywhere 12 to 16 hours a day, with only 8 of those spent with students teaching. The remaining 4 to 8 hours were spent writing and editing lessons, organizing (and re-organizing) the classroom, hanging work up, taking work down, calling parents with great and no-so-great news, cleaning, meetings with supervisors and colleagues that couldn't take place in our lightning-speed school day, grading and a myriad of other duties and responsibilities.  

After several months of this, I was burning out, folks! I expressed this to my dean and principal, only to be told that I should be doing even more. How? When? With a husband, father of a certain older age, and two daughters in primary (Grades Kindergarten and 2), WTF are they talking about? 

"Make work your refuge from home." they said. 

No, thanks. HOME is my refuge. And it always will be. When it comes to "otherness" and my family, the latter will always come first. 


No One-Trick Pony

My whole approach to a career needs to look different. I can't just do one thing. It seems like a waste. I need the freedom to move around, not being bound my one all-encompassing elephant-in-the-tiny-ass-room job. 

What I do is not WHO I am. It can never be, and if you know me, you know that's not how I rock. 

I cannot be bound to only one thing for long. I need to be free, having a constant stream or flow of information, things, people, and ideas. I crave the ability to float from place to place, in and out, always moving to what I need to fully support who I am. Why limit my life's work to one particular way?

I am a mom of two of the greatest little girls I know.

I am a wife of N (remember him?) for 8 years now.

I am a daughter to a great man who is in the winter of his life right now.

I am and I always will be a teacher. But I am also a writer, a skill and passion I have been neglecting. 

Thankfully, like great friendships, I can pick up where I left off, and it feels in part the same way I remember it.

As I make room, I hope to post more often, and I hope you'll join me....

'Til Next Time,

J