Sail On, Silver Girl

When I was 18, I imagined I'd be a poet.  I had a plan:  my mom and I would run a bed and breakfast where I would spend the afternoons in a garret, writing away as the sun poured in.  There might have been a lot of Bronte or British literature in my high school experience that led to this.  Also, I guess I wasn't ever getting married or having children.  I wonder if my mom would have let me smoke weed in my room?  Just kidding, mom. 

When I was 21, I thought maybe I'd write plays.  I found my college experience in English to be duplicative of my high school experience and the relevance of analyzing literature, without doing anything to it or with it, left me lifeless (mostly because of what this guy argues the study of English should return to -- yuck!).  Plays were bold, they were full of life, their mutability attracted me, lured me in.  I didn't just want to be in them anymore, I wanted to envision them.  I took a sequence of classes at my university, with an amazing cohort of writers and felt transformed.  I skipped classes to write, I started going to plays again, reading more and more plays.  Obsession set in. But, it was a good thing.  It was a productive time for me; it reinspired me to think about the ways we portray people and things, and how we bring them to life.  Really bring them to life.

Right after my graduation from college, my father got sick and I moved home to help my mom take care of him.  My life changed.   Of course, life is dynamic, that it changes is a given.  That we don't know what will do it is harder to deal with.  Undeniably, my father's death changed my life.  It isn't that it changed my dreams, it isn't that it took them away from me, but my path was altered.  My apartment and job in DC, my friends there, I had to let go of them for awhile.  I acquired fear.  I retreated from a lot of things.  And...I ended up working in a law firm, debating law school like every confused English major/frustrated-mediocre-to-poor poet/playwright. 

But, while working at the law firm, I felt supported, encouraged and driven by other women who I saw as successful.  They were doing things in a traditional way to fit into a traditional model of success, but they were so amazing, so brilliant, and they believed in me.  I started to think of myself differently, as a leader, as someone who could create change, as someone who needed a mentor and inspiration, but someone who could also be those things to someone else.  I had a particularly transformative experience working on a death penalty case and felt I had found a calling, reaching out to people far before they were facing something like the death penalty.

In the end, I became a teacher.  I wanted to answer the moral imperative I'd always imagined would define my "work."  So, I entered teaching as I'd entered most things:  ambitious, driven, inspired, open-minded, and with shaky confidence but looking to learn.  And, I worked and worked and worked.  In fact, since my senior year in college when I took 18 credits and worked two jobs, I really haven't stopped working.  I'm pretty sure I didn't work less than 60 hours a week until last year...

So, this is where you start to wonder what this blog is about.  This isn't a blog about teaching.  If it were, people would probably read it, because that's interesting these days.  It's interesting to read about teachers who are making change and learning to buck the systems and trends that bind them and their students to failure or mediocrity.   It's interesting to berate them or reward them according to your politics, own experience or beliefs about the ability of others.  This isn't a place to sort that out.  Mostly, it's not about that because I'm not going to be a teacher anymore. 

This blog is a confession, like most blogs.  It's me confessing that I'm lost, again.  That I'm struggling with a job that I'm supposed to love (be good at, find balance in, be a leader amongst others) and I don't feel able to do any of that.  I love each and every one of my students.  I love getting to know them, getting to know their families, I love watching them enjoy their successes, I like planning a good lesson.  But, my job consistently fills me with anxiety and sadness, and the more I do it -- the more effort I put in while still feeling the same -- the more disconnected I feel from feelings of joy, confidence and passion.  And I unfairly resent people around me for it -- my colleagues, my students, my mentors.  I could tell you how I work at a great school, with supportive colleagues and an amazing administration.  I could tell you that my school is struggling, like many schools, with its share of problems.  And, I could tell you that we're working so hard to figure it out.  I could tell you the details of my everyday reality in this job, but I think you'd wonder why I'm leaving.  My school is great, really it is.  My job, my school really only gets us part of the way to understanding why I am leaving.

To be real, having a baby kinda messed me up.  Moms begin shaking their heads...

Yep, I'm a mom:  my daughter is 22 months old and, as you can probably guess, totally wonderful and brilliant.  Being a mom has messed me up in the very best and worst of ways.  And, I'm just struggling with what it means to be a woman, mother, partner, working person who feels "less-than" all the time.

So what do I do next?  Lots of people talk about what it means to be a SAHM vs. WAHM vs. WM.  I hear the comparisons all the time.  And now, as I face a salary that just barely matches my childcare costs, a job that compels me but does not fulfill me and an immediate need to regain a focus on joy in my life, I'm left wondering what it means to do something else?  What does it mean to do something that might be focused less on others and more on me?  Will I be plagued by guilt to make this kind of decision?  What does it mean to be morally "called" to do something vs. inspired to do something?  What's more motivating:  passion, joy or morality...or motherhood?

So, this blog is about that.  It's about the "something else" I want my life to become.  My mom used to cry every time she heard the song "Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water" because it made her mom cry.  Now, when I hear it, I cry.  I get it.  It makes me wonder, what will my daughter see about me?  What do I want her to know?  What am I modeling?  How can I be a person we will both be proud of?  How can I be a person that will first feel joy and not anxiety?  How can I be a person who demonstrates confidence in who she is, so that my daughter can do the same?

This blog is about learning to be the woman I want to be, so that I can understand more fully everything my daughter will face.  Perhaps then I might have some wisdom and confidence to say, "I did it.  I'm happy.  I have you, which is a lot of happiness, but not enough.  I needed something else, and needed this thing and it was..."

Maybe there isn't something else.  Maybe I just want to be a mom.  Or, maybe I want that for a little while.  Isn't this a journey, then?  One that many others have taken, to be sure.  Add to that, that I have the luxury to make a choice, right?  I mean, I could stay at home.  We would figure it out.  But, if you keep reading this blog, it wouldn't be because you're angry that I have the choice to stay at home.  Please don't keep reading if that choice makes you angry.  I lived for a long time on a crappy salary and I know how embittering it can be to read about someone who has different options.  So, if you're in that position, only keep reading if you're interested in a mom trying to figure out what it means to be a strong mom to her daughter.  What does the journey from an anxiety-filled, unhappy working mom to a "something else" kind of mom look like?

I'm hoping there's a bridge.

Dear god, I did it.  I succombed to a crappy metaphor. 

I promise it will get better.  Or messier.  And, no, I do not want to be Martha Stewart.