100 Days

At the moment, I am obsessed with the idea of the last summer of my "youth." This year I finished the single greatest accomplishment of my life to date (ahem! I told you I would mention it every chance I get!) and now I am sitting in the pleasant, shady little spot that is still fresh enough to be comfortable: educated and not yet employed. It's too soon to be worried, after all I have had a number of interviews already, they just can't hire me yet because I am still teaching until the end of next month. I am not worried about anything right now except perhaps the thought of getting a job sooner than I want to. Right now, I am anticipating a summer of fun, abandonment, daydreams, books, writing (yes, that again), adventures, road trips, and anything else new, unusual, and in any way exciting that I can squeeze into my schedule. I am hoping to make the whole adventure an adventure in and of itself. It should be a period of discovery, hope, newness, and starting all over again as something different. Or maybe just starting over as myself again, because it's been a long time since I've been that, and I miss it. I miss me, the reader, writer, adventure-loving dreamer. And now I am free to be what I want to be again!

I have this fascination with road trips, though not usually in the form of road trips themselves, but rather in the form of road trip movies. This weekend I watched One Week for the first time. I thought it was an amazing and incredible movie... I sympathize with the main character entirely; I mean, it's hard to imagine what one would do at only 29, hearing they have cancer and will likely live for only a short time. I can understand his desire to have an adventure. It makes me want to have my long-awaited adventure now, before I have to make it fit into the little piece of my life that's left. I love stories like this though; it's important to think about life like this. Haven't we always been told, profoundly, to live like we're dying? If I found out my time was through, there are a lot of things that I'd want to do, and being with everyone I love for every remaining moment of my life would not be the plan. There would be time for that, but that wouldn't be everything. What about the adventures we dream of, the parts of our lives that we have always wanted and yet we never pursue. We only have a single life to live, just one opportunity to realize and fulfill those dreams. We should take the opportunities that we are offered and use them. We cannot let our dreams go to waste! Once our lives are over, no one is going to live our dreams for us; if they haven't been fulfilled, they will simply die when we die. 

I have a goal to pass the next 100 days (well starting in about 30 days, when my semester ends officially) having daily adventures of searching and discovery--I hope. I will document those days, and I will have them. I have a trip to Tennessee planned, and a trip to Montana planned, and a trip to somewhere all by myself in the planning. I am dreaming of that adventure now. The time will come...soon!

Bored

My real friends say I'm waiting for what started long ago
And life is what you make of it.
So come on now let's go
Cause still I'm bored lately
Do you feel the same?
Being young it drives me crazy...
And this world's insane.

Road Trips, and Other Adventures

I have finished my Master's degree.

I keep reminding myself of this lately because, for some reason, the reality of it hasn't quite kicked in yet. I know that I am finished, and this opens up a few doors to me in terms of possible future adventures. I realize that I haven't done nearly as much as I wish I've done. Some people have made fun of me because completing a Master's degree is doing something, something big, but then again, the people who say it haven't done it. My Master's program has been a matter of locking myself into the deepest privacy I can get myself into and writing alone. All of it has been writing alone. Yeah, what an adventure. I have to admit, of course, that the completion of my thesis project and my Master's degree has been a personal achievement. It was worth everything it cost me, but now it's time to live a little.

Tonight I watched my favorite movie Elizabethtown for perhaps the hundredth time, and I was

reminded again of all the things that used to inspire me when I was younger. I remember the phone conversation between Claire (my heroine) and Drew... "Everyone has to take a solitary road trip at some point in their life--just you and some

music." I have wanted to follow this advice for the past six years, and I have decided that this year might be the one where I have to follow through. I want to get my music and my car and myself and hit the road.

There are a million things I want to do, and life is too short to save them.

Traveling at the Speed of Life

It seems incredible to me that life goes as quickly as it does. When lost in the swirling abyss of a stress, it is difficult to imagine ever being out of it. And once out of it, it seems a little over-dramatic to call a merely stressful event an "abyss" of anything. But really, it has all been a whirlwind. It has been as dramatic as it sounds. Life has gone so fast, and the thought that it has all slowed down suddenly is both overwhelming and confusing.

Right now, I just want to sit back, relax, and enjoy whatever comes. I know it's going to come quickly, but I'm prepared!

And this image was taken by me on my 35mm Canon Rebel! It represents my feelings on the above subject :)

The End of an Age

Last night, for the first time in a long time, I felt really sad about the idea of not being a teacher anymore. I love working one-on-one with my students, conferencing with them about their particular struggles as writers, and learning about each one of them on an individual level. I have students who have specifically chosen to take my class semester after semester just because they enjoy my teaching style and my conferences. I was working with one particular student that has been with me for a year and it made me sad to think that he was about to finish the course and then probably not be working with me anymore. Then I thought, "Well, maybe if I start teaching higher level...." but then my mind finished that thought for me. "Not if I'm not going to be teaching anymore!" It's not even about teaching itself that I become sad, but about Prairie State. I have always wanted to return to that school after graduation, I have wanted that full time position for so long, but it didn't work out and it makes me sad. I can't afford to stay there without decent pay (and adjunct teaching is simply not enough money to live on), but I can't imagine leaving. I don't want to leave; I love my students and want to continue teaching my night classes with my fun, energetic night time students. I love working with adult returning students too. I don't know, the decision to stop teaching seems like a logical position to take, and yet it makes me sad. What to do...

Bad Habits

Writing has become kind of this habit with me. But when do people talk about their "habits" and mean the nice things that they do? The understanding of what a habit is always has a distinctly negative connotation to it. People with bad habits skulk in dark corners of rat-infested alleys to keep people from seeing what they are doing; the goals of people with "bad habits" are to keep their habits secret so that no one tries to take the habit away. This is how I see my writing.

I have a terrible dread of having my writing read by others. I used to think that I could express myself only through writing, but now I realize that while I express myself that way, clearly, I want others to see into me through writing as little as I want them to see into me through my spoken words. I am not particularly interested in using my writing as a means of sharing myself. I want my writing to speak of things beyond me, to showcase lives unrelated to mine, and to share truths that are not of myself.

I hide in corners to scribble furtively on blank pages, and then I stuff the pages into my pocket to destroy them later. No one sees what I write, because I have an unnatural fear that people will read my thoughts and think they know me by them. Or worse, that they will read my thoughts and realize that they never knew me, because then that will be my fault, and that would be even worse.

Bleeding Dreams

I have spent the past 4 years of my life teaching freshman composition, and doing almost entirely that and nothing else! It has been rewarding, interesting, frustrating, and exhausting, sometimes by turns and sometimes all at once. Now is a decision point for me. As I am making the final touches to the master's thesis I wrote with my own blood (that could easily be turned to a literal statement...often it feels that excruciating!) I am faced with the facts of where I am in life and where I want to be. Sure, I love teaching. Really, I do, even on those frustrating days when I feel like I am talking to a brick wall of emotionless faces. There is nothing like that breakthrough that occurs, usually few and far between, sure, but so awesome when it does come. However, I have to consider which dreams brought me to the place where I now stand. I started college at 18 saying that I knew I would always read and write, but I needed to do something to support myself. I changed my mind right away when I realized I needed to become a master of reading and writing in order to support myself as a writer, which was what I really wanted to do. Then at 21 I was recommended to supplemental instruction, and at 22 I got my own classroom. I am 26 now, almost done, sharing my love for reading and writing with tons of people every day. That's the dream, right? Well, almost. I read almost constantly. I teach how to write, what to write, how to read in order to write better, and I talk about reading and writing to 100 or more people every day. Also, I read their papers, read their lessons with them, and read a novel a week (except right now the novel I am reading is 2,000 pages long, so it's taking at least 2 weeks) but when do I follow my dreams? When do I write for me? And the thesis I wrote in blood isn't for me; it's writing, yes, it benefits me in the future, yes, yes and still yes. But dreams. They will probably nag at me forever, and if I don't complete them, the regret will take the place of the dreams themselves in torturing me in my sleep. I've been talking about this forever and doing nothing about it, but then what could I do while bleeding out over the pages of a giant document that could seal my fate for the future. I have to take the path slowly and wisely, but I wonder if now is the time to begin considering which fork in the road to take. I think I am certain of where my interest lies...where it has always lain...where it always will...okay, I am not trying to write "lie" in every tense possible...I get silly when I think too much.