May is Beautiful

Really.
It is just amazing this burst of emerald-lilac-azalea-forsythia-ism.
The boys are loving it...the freedom of sunshine and warmth!
Ahhhhh...
I wish our personal lives were a little less tumult and a lot more fun, but...
What do they say about time...
and all that...
* * *
I finished my final grading for my classes at Plattsburgh...and hung up the tenure-track dream.
It's been interesting because I have been a little in mourning about it.
LOL!
I had no idea.
I really wanted to leave. Truly.
And I am glad that I did.
I have to pursue my dreams...my Big Dreams and not the Little Distracting Ones.
Which is what being a professor was.
A way to Seem Big but really Play it Small.
I mean it's pretty safe on the Safety Scale.
But I loved teaching. It's part of my identity.
Brian says yeah but you hated Plattsburgh.
True.
I didn't like it.
But leaving that tenure track thing seems somehow like...a little death.
Kristen says it is the death of my dream that I worked so hard for: four years of school, PhD exams!, dissertation defense...all of that...
I will always be a teacher, and I think I have to remember that part.
That we can't lose ourselves or the pieces that are Who We Are.
* * *
Funny that all this came up as I finished my grading...
But I think that energy's coming up and out (as Marissa would say).
* * *
Otherwise, everything is peachy.
The boys are thriving despite illness after illness.
Aid is taking art lessons and swim lessons...
Kel is running all around outside in the grass with barefoot baby feet.
They are darlings.
* * *
And I am moving beyond the dream of the PhD--with all its trappings and roads leading downward into Tenure-Induced Laziness
Into Bigger Horizons.
Two really great agents are looking at my book now. I LOVE them both.
I feel a little like a girl waiting for the right boy to call.
Wish me luck.
And ring tones on my cell!