short assignment: a year of not teaching

"I just don't understand," my mother looks across the table at Starbucks, "what do you live off of? How can you afford to pay the bills?"

I shrug. I haven't worked for ten months. The first three months was paid summer vacation, and then my paychecks ended during August, and my health insurance policy ran out in October. In December I took a vacation to visit my dad and step-mom in California, in January I stayed with friends and went to free concerts on school nights, in February I sold a record number of handmade items in my Etsy store, and in March I went outside every day and rode my bike for transportation. Things I could never have done while teaching.

Teaching is not a 9-5 job, I knew that when I started. I thought my love of learning and seeing kids grow and experience literature and writing would be enough to fuel late-night paper grading, rising up before dawn to make it to early morning duties, staying at school until my car was the last in the parking lot just to make sure I would have lesson plans for the next day. But it just didn't feel like I was using enough of my time to further myself.

I miss the bonds with the children. I miss the camaraderie of working with the other teachers. There are plenty of positive and negative pieces of school life that just suddenly were no longer there. I like to focus on all the things I can do now that I have freed myself from this demanding work.

First and foremost I was able to start exercising and taking care of my body again. No longer must I wait for hours before I can leave my little desk and use the restroom; I can pee whenever I want to! I can sleep in if I don't feel well. My lunch no longer has to be wolfed down in 20 minutes or less so that I have time to relieve myself before the children's lunch period is over. This is probably too much information, but my first year of teaching I suffered from dehydration and urinary infection because of the simple inability to control what was going in and coming out of my body and when.

I have resumed meditation practice, and regularly exercise and go for walks. I read more, I feel less stress, I craft, I sew, I clean. When did I do these things before? How did I feed and bathe myself when 65 hours or more of my week were dedicated to lessons and meetings and stress?

If I can't quit a job that isn't making me happy, now, while I'm 26, unmarried, and full of dreams, when will I do it? Sure, a well-balanced and mature individual may have, with discipline, been able to do all of the things I've listed above as benefits to my having quit the school. But who is that person? It wasn't me. I was suffering and my work was suffering for it, and I needed time to be me, apart from a class of kids who needed me.