Summer now?

After my last post, I wondered to myself, why am I starting my summer project in the beginnig of April?  Well, it is Spring Break (what little we have left after the intense snows of winter nibbled away our days off from school) and it is the first day of temps my cold-natured self felt comfortable in sandals and capris.  To me, the downhill slide to Summer has begun.  Emotionally, I am coasting on a bike with my hands in the air and wind in my hair.

Yes, I said school.  I've just navigated an impulsive and abrupt career change in the last couple of months that escorted in this sense of life transition.  After four years of counseling with adults and families in a community-agency setting, I was beginning to feel restless.  The building where I was housed felt dark and heavy with the pain and resistance of my adult clients.  I was surrounded by people who really didn't get what I do.  Suffice it to say I was an oddball in an organization that, at the end of the day, was not an exact fit for my professional uniqueness.

One day, during a particularly restless moment, I clicked into a human resources website where an open position peaked my interest.  I felt suspense and excitement the moment I saw it, mixed with fear of what would come of it. 

Funny how in hindsight, a situation can look completely different than from the middle of it.  A few short weeks after taking the plunge into a new venture, I was pining remorsefully for my old office and odd comrades.  What have I done?

I am now two and a half months into my new vocation as an Elementary School Counselor.  I thought it was a great thing due to the convenience factor of being in the same school with my kids, not to mention health insurance and a salary increase.  And it is.

A wise friend said to me once, "Every job comes with a plate of crap."  Poignant and yet disgustingly accurate.  We live in a fallen world, and even the best of fits between employee and employer inevitably contains distasteful aspects.  (If you have one that does not, I don't want to hear about it right now because this theory is quite soothing to me.)  Since I don't want this particular writing project to be about work, I won't go into the details on the plate.  But some days I'd gladly grab a fork if my former job's plate of crap was offered back to me.

This blog is about celebrating perhaps the most beautiful thing about the vocation of public education: SUMMER OFF.  A time of self-care, re-envigorating via inspiration and recreation.  I'm sure that the myth of superabundance will prove disappointing as there is no way I can fit in all of my creative, adventurous, industrious aspirations into a two-ish month span.  But, I've tried to narrow down my priorities to the important stuff.  Notice that house and yard work did not make that exclusive list above.

This whole rift in my professional life has disabled my type-A, plan-ahead, no margin of error personality.  And I'm kind of liking the freedom and abandon.  I can sense a colony of dust bunnies planning their seige on my home.  I'm not happy about it, but I'm suffering from a bad case of what another wise man termed "a serious deficiency in the give a shit factor."