Sunday nights have always been tough. I've relaxed just enough to feel the weight of Monday soil the edges of the last moments of a weekend.We spent this weekend with our friends Jeanne and Lisa at their cabin on the Wenatchee River. The photograph above reflects the level of our relaxation. While it's been cold and wet on this side of the mountains, we were greeted by sunshine and warmth on the other side. It was warm enough that we ate lunch outside and on our hike this morning, shed our jackets and fleece to bare our white arms and legs to the sun.
"My legs aren't white. They're blue!" I announced.
"Like non-fat milk?" Lisa asked.
"Exactly!"
We laughed and rested, read and talked, and all of us slept like we hadn't slept in decades. The air was dry and fresh with the scent of pine needles and spring. We watched the river rush by with winter snow melt and watched the mergansers fly down the river and then back up again. We counted the number of chipmunks on the bird feeder and listened for the woodpeckers and owls.
It was exactly what I needed.
But now it's Sunday night and Monday looms.
I haven't done any homework, but it doesn't seem to bother me. I know everything that needs to get done will get done, but I'm still a bit anxious about the flow of the day.
But that's tomorrow and I want to push out the worries of what might happen and hold on just a bit longer to the gentle rhythms of this weekend.
It's hard. I'm not good at it. I struggle with thinking about the next thing and not savoring the now thing. It's been a lifelong struggle.
I also struggle with being easy on myself. I have 8 more weeks left of teaching. 8 more weeks of this career and then the true transition begins though I think of all of this -- the next 8 weeks, the last 8 weeks -- as a kind of slow motion transition. I want to push through quickly and move on, but there's so much to do and the end of any school is not particularly easy. The end of this particular school year could be perhaps the roughest.
Lately, I've found myself irritated with the notion of having to explain the transition. If I had my way, no one would really know what I was doing. They'd just look up one day and I'd be gone or somewhere else and no explanation would be necessary.
But it's not working out that way. Friends (and Ann as well) announce my transition with pride and flair -- "She's leaving teaching, you know" or "She's retiring from teaching to become a dog trainer!"
I don't see myself as really doing any of those things as specifically as they are stated. Yes, I won't be teaching in a way I've always taught, but in many ways I will still be teaching just to a different clientèle. Yes, I want to train dogs, but it's not like I'm going to let go of one career and instantly be the other career -- there's a great deal to learn and absolutely no pay involved yet. And no, I don't see myself as retiring. Retiring feels like there's no job I "have" to do, just jobs I might want to do or things I want to do like volunteer or travel or sit on my ass and watch TV.
So, when people announce my transition, I feel compelled to explain or justify or clear up the image I somehow feel they are getting when in actuality, it isn't the image I have at all. With a bit of irritation, I then must engage in a conversation about the transition and answer questions I really don't have the answers to. "Where will you be working?" "Do you have clients?" "Has this been a difficult decision?"
I'm polite. I answer all the questions though my answers change from person to person. Inside I'm screaming, "Can't I just do this without having to explain it all?"
Early in the year, I met with Leah, a personal coach who was hired by the school to work with faculty and staff. I love Leah. She's powerful, she's articulate, she's clear-headed. She said to me that over the next few months (the months I've been experiencing as of late) I would have to define my leaving again and again. The story of my leaving will evolve and morph the more I was asked to tell it. At the time she was talking about having to explain my departure to my colleagues and to my students and their families. I haven't told my students yet and aside from my colleagues knowing, no one else associated with the school actually knows yet.
Still, I've had to define my leaving numerous times and in addition, something Leah did not warn me about, I've had to define my arriving -- my choice of becoming a dog trainer.
But it's not just being a dog trainer. There's more to this story and it's that part of the story I've been holding very close to the bone. I want to have time to write. While I've always loved working with dogs, while I've often thought about training dogs over the years, the real motivation for this move is to make more creative space in my life for writing.
I haven't shared this part of the telling with too many people. Odd that I'm sharing it here, but it seems less public than all the individual conversations I have when everyone announces my transition. I'm not sure why I haven't shared it, but I know it's a combination of fear (if I say I want to write, then I will have to have something to show for it so don't set up the expectation if you feel everyone else is going to hold you to it), disbelief (can I really take time to focus on something as ambiguous as writing?), and the unknown (what does it mean to focus on my writing?).
I suppose I should be glad everyone announces this transition as a move away from teaching to a move toward dog training because if they announced it as a move toward becoming a writer, I might throw myself into one helluva panic attack. As it is, I wake up once a night to the sound of my own fragile breathing and talk myself down from a full-throttle worry for about 10 minutes before I fall back asleep.
I am to become a dog trainer. This is much easier to swallow than something as nebulous as being a writer. I am leaving teaching after 22 years to pursue a passion for dogs feels a lot more solid than I am leaving a middle class income with summer's off to sit my ass in a chair and practice the discipline and art of writing without pay.
Sunday is dwindling, melting away like butter and Monday morning sits fat on my hips.
This was the first picture I took at the cabin. It's a trillium. The first bloom. I counted them as we hiked today. Hundreds hidden under pine trees. Somehow it gives me hope that I am on the right path despite my worries and dislike of transitions.
2 comments:
You already ARE a writer. How many writers are able to "afford themselves" by only writing? Very few. A writer, by definition, isn't somebody who does nothing else to make money. A writer has a vocation, a metabolic vocation, which is writing. A writer loves words and stories and glimpses and nitches and below-the-surfaces. A writer loves sounds, the sounds of a person or a people. A writer is always writing, always composing, whether she is a teacher or a dog trainer. Other people are not always composing in the same way a writer does. Simply put, that is the main difference between you and most other people. When I say "composing" I do not mean "pretending", although that, too, is a good thing to know how to do if you are a writer. Perhaps it is a great thing. When I say "composing" I mean looking at it or hearing it or feeling it from different slants, from different points of view. I mean selecting. I mean adding and discarding. I mean all that and more. You do that already. I know what you mean when you say "I want to be a writr". I know the difference between now as a writer and your future as a writer. But truth is truth. And the truth is, you already are a writer.
Oh, you're on the right path, all right. There's no doubt in my mind. I admire your bravery (even though you don't seem to recognize it in yourself) and your imagination and the knack you have for getting it all down.
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