I'm not sure why I skipped yesterday's Morning Pages. I've been getting a bit lazy about doing such things. I suppose I've got a good excuse for not riding my bike -- though I miss it -- in that I've had a cold recently, but I've got to be careful about making excuses. Besides, that one doesn't hold much water, once you begin to consider I've been battling sinus infections and allergies for almost a year now, and it hasn't stopped me yet.
I've written about it before, but it bears repeating, now that I'm not doing those things that make me happy in that they belong exclusively to me. Riding my bike and writing each day are not things I do for a paycheck, or my principal, or for other people's children, or for the Greater Good. I do these things because they make me feel stronger, both physically and mentally.
When I stop doing either or both of "my" daily routines, I feel diminished, not to mention guilty. Now, on a beautiful, sunny, 70-degree morning, I feel much as the grass must have felt last week when rain finally came pouring down, after months of drought. I absorb this general sense of nourishment because, like Central Texas rain, I have no idea when they might go away, and how long it will be until it will be back around these here parts again.
One might argue I'm in a better way due to having the day off today (I'm traveling later), but I have to say that despite (or maybe because of) the stress of the job as Assistant Principal at Cedar Ridge High School in Round Rock, I am really enjoying my new position. It's nonstop work all day long, and I never know what the next knock on my door or ring of my phone will bring my way. And (a bit to my surprise, I'll admit) I absolutely love it.
Now that I'm gradually becoming more familiar with my school's (enormous) physical space and (many, many) faculty and staff members, the general anxiety I carried around with me all last week has fallen off like skin off a growing snake. I'm able to engage more fully with students and their parents, and to hold my post with confidence.
In a nutshell, my new professional routine (to tie back to my earlier theme) is all coming back to me. Like riding a bike, as the missus recently said. As I engage more freely with the teachers and students and families of Cedar Ridge, I'm reminded that I have been a school person for just short of 20 years. I know how to do this stuff. I'm good at it.
I don't mean to sound self-celebratory. If anything, I'm giving myself a pep-talk, not completely unlike what I did as a new teacher in February of 1992. You see, I've always been aware of this nagging little tug of a voice inside my head -- and I wonder how many of you who are reading this have heard this, too -- who snickers at my every move. Even now he's standing there, leaning against a wall, arms crossed, legs crossed at the ankles, shaking his head.
"You call yourself a writer?" he asks.
"Yes, I do," I answer with confidence. "And I call myself an educator, too."
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