Skip to main content

Confession Time

I have a confession.

I am not a English teacher.

I had this epiphany last week during a training I attended to prepare for the courses I will be teaching next year. The workshop was filled with real English teachers. The ones you remember from high school, with their favorite books and deep insights into the writer's meaning of punctuation marks and interpretations of sentence structures. They all love a good story--as long as it's filled with the appropriate rising action, climax, and resolution.

That's not me. I know that many writers just like punctuation marks because they can separate ideas. I've also learned that sometimes the best stories on the planet would show a flat line on a rising action graph. The better ones often have no resolution. Just a vast empty space waiting to be filled with a dream.

Teaching English is one of those things that I can do well because...well...I can just do a lot of things sufficiently. It's one of my gifts.

But it doesn't fill me with a sense of being alive, and that is the question I'm exploring lately. What moments of my existence make me feel alive?

It's not teaching English.

It is, so far, swapping life stories with friends and strangers, wandering the streets of Barcelona, road trips, writing, resting in the arms of a lover, laughing with good friends, taking in the sights of the beach and the mountains, listening to music that grips my heart, dancing, and listening to the stillness of the dead of night.

That...and a few other experiences...equal life for me. I have no choice for now but to continue teaching English, but I hope to begin working toward finding a way to incorporate more of these moments into my livelihood.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
11:55 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Carnival

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon here in southwest Florida, although still a bit too warm for my November tastes. I'm learning to enjoy my weekends with as much unstructured and unscheduled time as possible. Last Saturday was a delightful unstructured day. A new friend of mine (the one from the Everglades excursion) and I went to a local carnival. Now, here's the thing...I LOVE carnivals. The food. The people. The rides. The lights. I can easily spend an entire day wandering through the crowds. He's no carnival slouch. The first thing we did was walk through the entire place, scoping out the rides. Then the fun began. We rode almost every ride there (except for the kiddie attractions and the broken Tornado). The Wild Claw. The Scrambler. The Orbiter. The Space Oddysey. The Swings. The Pharaoh's Fury. The Ferris Wheel. The Giant Slide. The Haunted House. The Avalanche. It was all good. How can you top a ride that uses centrifugal force to plaster your body against...
2 comments
Read more

Busy Days Ahead

It's been a busy week for me. I left my house at 4:30 Monday morning for my drive down south and pulled back in my driveway at 1:20 this morning. The days have been long, too, between working at the new school from 7:30 until 3:00 or 4:00 and then working at the new place until 9:00 or 10:00 each night. I now have callouses on my fingers and not one intact finger nail. I think I've also developed a new twitch somewhere on my face. One afternoon this week, I stood in the middle of our new living room and took in the sight of missing drywall, a growing hole in the floor and soaked up my husband's predictions that we still won't be ready to paint by the weekend. All I wanted to do was cry. All I felt was nothingness. Numbness. Anyone who has ever reached the point of numbness knows that it's scarier than feeling like you're falling apart. It's one step beyond feeling like you're falling apart. I couldn't help but wonder just what we had gotten ourselves...
5 comments
Read more

Stranger Obligations

I had to make a few difficult decisions this week. At least, they were difficult for me. I wish I could be the kind of person who completely makes decisions based on his/her own needs and wants and boldly moves through life with unabashed freedom from how our choices affect others. But I'm not built like that. I had placed an ad for my former stray. I felt like it was time to find her a more permanent home because so much in my life right now is uncertain. One person answered the ad, but she did not seem like a good fit, and I gave up further thought. This week I received another response. As long as this person is telling the truth, it's an ideal situation for the dog. Yet, I had a strange feeling and could not sort out whether or not it was my intuition kicking in or that fact that I actually like the dog and don't want to see her go. In the end, I decided that it was in my own (and my Winnipeg's) best interest for her to stay with us through the summer. (I seri...
5 comments
Read more