Friday, June 10, 2016

49 Years, 49 Days 'til 50: A Kind of Grief

I was going to start this blog again yesterday so that I could do 50 days til 50. Yesterday, however, my old friend, Mr. Migraine showed up again. I shouldn't have been surprised. The end of the school year always knocks me out both physically and emotionally.

I told my seniors that for me, teaching is like having a very intense relationship for nine months, then having it end knowing that we will probably never see each other again. For me, there's a kind of grief that happens at the end of a school year. No matter how tough the year has been, I mourn the loss of those classes, those mini villages, that interaction.

That grief, with the migraine that set off pain all over my body kept me from my plan to write yesterday.  And this blog is late today. I am still going to count it as a blog for 6/9/2016 since that was when I started it.

I have way too many rules for this blog. It's just a few words to get me writing again, but I had to start it on the right day so that I could have a clever title for it. It's my need for order. So many things around me are chaotic that I have a need to have something make sense. So this blog is it.

I'll be 50 next month. It's a nice number, divisible by 2, 5, and 10. Two times 25. I don't really remember being 25. I think I'm about that age in these pictures.



The top picture was my going away party when I decided to quit working at KXAN and to go back school for an English degree and teaching certificate. My button reads, "No longer living at work, but working at living." One day that will be true again.

The bottom picture was one of the few times in my life I felt confident about how I look. I love that dress; however, counting this picture, I wore it maybe three times only.

I would never want to be 25 again, but I aspire to be the girl in those pictures: Driven, confident, "working at living." I miss her.