moving on.

This is my last post here. From now on, you can find me at field | work. I hope you join me there.

Saying good-bye to this space seems stranger than I expected it would. I know it is the symbolic move from being a high school English teacher to a graduate student (second time grad student), but I almost feel as if I am saying farewell to more of myself than that.

What has happened since I arrived in the blogosphere:

I student taught, then became a high school English teacher. We expanded our family to include Penelope and Zephyr. We bought a house, got engaged, got married. So did Kelly, who also got pregnant. I went to: Boston, the Carolinas, Alaska, Florida, New Orleans. Camping for the first with my husband. Started a garden. Tortured through two high school musicals. Applied to graduate school for an MFA and got in. Hemed and hawed over completing an M.Ed. Knit, tried new recipes. Learned what budget cuts can mean, gained a job, was appreciated. Brewed beer. Faced a breast lump. Lost a grandfather. Fell in love with photography again. Mandy had a daughter, Jen had a son. Jesse came back from his time in Iraq, Danno lost a foot there. Met Carolyn Forche and Sharon Olds. The Urtels' moved to the Twin Cities, Kristin got married, my husband presented his graduate thesis. I was scolded into charging my cell phone and leaving it on; you never know when the call for the hospital trip will come.

Ten years ago, I was graduating from high school with many people I still call good friends. Ten years ago, I wore green, I tottered up to the podium and gave the graduation speech in the arena on the west side of town. I could barely see over the stand and into the faces of my peers, which is probably good. Because I was petrified.

Ten years later, and here I am, leaving high school for a second time. This is what is truly a sad thing for me--not that I'm moving blogs, because my voice will remain the same, so little might change, just a slight aesthetic shift, but mainly that unseemly "theteacher" will fade, I will make a clean break.

A clean break.

Truth is, I need it, but that's something I can say at the end of every school year. There's a certain exhaustion that settles in during those last few weeks, a certain feeling that you will never see the other end of the grading pile, that every kid is in a panic about the final grade and expects you to turn over his or her leaf for (him or her), and that all you want is to book a massage appointment and slowly recede into the calm.

So I suppose we'll leave it at that. I do hope you will join me, though I can't always promise it will be calm. I can promise this though: I will always be me, will always keep seeking out that self that makes sense, that feels comfortable. I don't know what will happen around June 27th, how our lives will change; I don't know what will come after three years of graduate school or what will happen during; I don't know when our own family will start. But I can tell you this: it will all be revealed in field | work...


I wonder what will happen next.

xo.