Water Under the Bridge

Nov 28 Talk about one opportunity that you are grateful in hindsight for having passed you by.

After two years of teaching and the birth of my first child, I had the opportunity to reduce my teaching to half-time. This seemed like an ideal combination of teaching and mothering. The spring before my second child was born, my half-time position was eliminated. I stayed home for a year and finished my master's before job searching again. I interviewed in Atlantic for a full-time position, but then pulled my application to accept a part-time opening in Audubon.  

Atlantic was the bigger school. The position would have utilized my speech background. It would have been intense, demanding, consuming. Looking back, I realize my decision to opt for the part-time position was central to my life's focus for the next 15 years. 

After a single year at Audubon (and expecting baby #3), I resigned to stay home with my little ones. Over the next dozen years, I kept a finger in education by teaching occasional classes at the community college and giving book talks at the local library. I managed (poorly) the book-keeping side of my husband's young trucking company. (I was the kind of secretary who wrote load-out numbers in the backs of books I was reading. Not a highly recommended method of record-keeping.) And I raised my kids.

Staying home meant I missed the professional trajectory I may have followed if I'd continued teaching full time. Instead I meandered a path of free-lance writing, learned a ton about writing for publication, and these two important lessons: 1) Seeing your name in print is not as thrilling as that precious moment when the words come together in a satisfying way; and 2) The best part about writing is its requirement to live attentively.

I believe that there are multiple ways to live full and satisfying lives. I don't feel so much that I made THE right choice as that I made A right choice.

A sample from my days writing for BH&G