I’m back…from the whirlwind that was my life…

To say that the month straddling the end of May and the beginning of June was intense, would be a total and complete understatement.  It was jam-packed with travel, apartment searching, apartment finding, packing boxes, anxiety over living alone, excitement about total independence, weddings, presenting on a panel, moving, relying on friends, trusting other people, being relied on, graduation of my first group of Kindergartners, dinners and parties and out-of-town guests…the list goes on and on and on…I stop here mainly not to bore you and mostly not to talk myself into a flurry of anxious feelings.

I sat in an interview for a middle school science candidate.  I tuned in and out of her answers while to-do lists danced around in my head.  I just want to go home, I thought.  I just need to get out of here, if even just for a little bit.  That was May 29.  It was sandwiched between a flight back from San Francisco the day before and a 6am train to DC the day after.  My eyes were blurry and I barely knew what I was wearing that day.  The interviewee continued talking about ecology and classroom management and right there, in the midst of her trying to convince us that 3 months of student teaching has qualified her as the perfect candidate for our school, I made a big decision:  I was getting out of here on a one-way ticket.  I knew that if I booked a ticket out of NYC very soon after school let out, it would force me to finish everything in high intensity while at the same time allowing me to re-claim a well-deserved summer. 

And so I did. 

Today is June 27^th, 5 days after school was let out for the summer of 2012, and I have left on my journey…my “summer of one-way tickets”.  It’s a journey whose details are vague and limitedly sketched.  But one that already has inspired hope in my gut and spreads a smile across my face.