Default Decision-Making

I’m not renewing my teaching license. The Colorado Department of Education thoughtfully sends a reminder a year in advance of your expiration date. Mine came last April. “Oh, right,” I said. “I’ll need to take a couple classes.” When you’re teaching, there are various ways to earn recertification, but when you’re not, college classes are the only option. You have to take them in time to get on a transcript to be sent to CDE. I should’ve taken a class last summer and another in the fall. I did neither. I call that default decision-making.

I’m deciding I don’t want to teach again—at least not in a certificated configuration. But since it’s default deciding, it makes me queasy, like waking up in a strange bed and for a moment not knowing where you are. Letting the license go is shield’s down and safety net gone.

A long-time friend once said I was a person who didn’t look back: when a job or husband was behind me, I was done. But she made that observation when my jobs and husbands were lasting a few years each. Like my present marriage, teaching has been different. I taught twenty years, more than twice as long as anything else I did. Retired for two, I still have teaching nightmares. Teachers know what I’m talking about. The room is packed and they won’t stop talking. I try to start class anyway, abruptly realize I’m teaching a subject I know nothing about and I’m naked. That dream. Teaching puts its hooks deep into you and releases reluctantly. It is terrifying work. I loved it.

Until this license expires, teaching is not truly behind me. You don’t need the license to sub and I could go on doing that, subbing for the school I retired from, Denver School of the Arts. Watching a trailer for the new Les Miz film with friends, I tell them the vocal and theatre kids are excited because the actors are actually singing, not lip-syncing to pre-recorded stuff. I heard this the last time I was at DSA. I learned so much from students. Sometimes I miss that. Sometimes. Continual input was also exhausting and what I love about my life now is its quiet. Constant stimulation is the drug of choice for the young, but mainly results in headaches for us elders.

Monday I ate breakfast while reading a New Yorker article and was at my computer by 8:30. There was a deadline to submit poems about women and work. I had such poems, all in need of revision, spent the morning selecting, revising, editing, printing six poems, taking brief breaks to do a load of laundry, get coffee. Looking at the most recent draft of a stanza, I still didn’t like it. Clicked on solitaire and played three games. (There are rules: I have to play until I win one.) This behavior I also learned from my students, though they chose different games. Going away for a bit helps. Clicked back to the poem and saw what it needed.

Lunch break. Visited with husband. Afterwards composed a cover letter, updated the bio note, proofed everything again. Hit submit. Then 3:30 arrived, a droopy hour when all who have been teachers yearn to curl into the fetal position and sleep. I meant to do another draft of the story I’m translating, but it was too late. I spent a while staring at the story, but this does not count as work.

Monday was a good day. Tuesday was crap, nothing got done. I don’t want to talk about it. Days like Tuesday make me think about teaching again or becoming a Walmart greeter. Could I use more income? You bet. The raised poor part of me freaks about that all the time. The part of me that nixed renewing the certificate is the artist. The artist knows writing is essential to me and I need it like breathing. The artist doesn’t give a damn about money.

Retirement is a low-paying job that allows me to do what I love and all my life wanted to do. So much of living keeps you from your art. Few can successfully juggle careers, social lives, families, children and be artists too. I couldn’t. When I was a teacher, I was very little else.

This default decision—not renewing the license—might be a New Year’s resolution. I stand on my own fiscal cliff at the end of 2012. Purchases, travels, who-knows-what-else, wrapped in my expired certificate, float into the abyss. I’m left with a panicky knot in my stomach and a wealth of time. Peering over the edge, I wave bye-bye, bye-bye.

 

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6 Responses to Default Decision-Making

  1. Jana says:

    My dreams are usually about being in a strange school (very large) and I desperately have to pee. All the toilets are plugged up and unusable. When I wake up my heart is racing and my bladder in distress! I guess I’ll know I’m finally done teaching when I wake up and the bed is wet. Thanks for the entry. I was completely connected to it!

  2. Bob Jaeger says:

    Ah, well…sometimes default decisions are the wisest. Here’s a Rumi bit that seemed appropriate: Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move. ~Rumi

  3. Agustin Cadena says:

    Default decisions are not decisions. Therefore, they are the wisest.

  4. Kitty says:

    Congratulations on your graduation! K

  5. Although I’m not a teacher, I identify with your new position, Pat. I especially agree with your statement that so much of living leaves little time for art. When I was working, I had little or no time to write with any purpose. Now it’s my job. My husband recently let his pharmacy license retire and it was a tough thing to face. We step through a door into another phase of life. It isn’t bad, just different. Happy 2013!

  6. Leslie Urioste-Mitchell says:

    BRAVO!

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