2nd Semester, Spring '18

Here we are already week 3 of our second semester at Dunwoody High. Tennis has started back up too, despite weeks of delay from the crazy weather we've had this year (another semester already with four days cancelled due to weather that we now have to make up -arghgghgh!). And as predicted with a 10 month old it is pretty rough. There's just not enough hours in the day and I can never seem to go to bed before 11, but tonight I'm going to do it.

Balancing band, chiropractor (x2 a week now, not sure if it's helping really but worth a shot), school, and everything else has been tough. At least I don't have to teach a world history class this semester and for the most part my kids seem pretty good this time around. The Hispanic population at the school has really blown up so it's been nice refining my methods and incorporating more of my Spanish into my lessons. In general I think I've become a much better teacher. Still, I really don't know if teaching is for me long-term. I like what I do but it just seems like a small world (I guess all careers probably feel that way) and not somewhere that I can continually grow in a way that would matter to me. So that being said I wonder if I should continue on with it and if anything will change? I do really like it and enjoy being around the kids. It also kind of sucks that Georgia teacher retirement system expects teachers to stay in the system for at least 10 years to get any pension, but that doesn't seem like a reason to stay on. If nothing else I'd like a shorter commute in the next year or so, assuming I keep going.

But what would I do otherwise? Create an education non-profit? Start a social enterprise? Go back to school? For business? For what? I'm 32 and I really have no idea, no more now than I have in the past other than that I have a sense of what I enjoy doing as far as the actual type of work I'm doing and I know that I need to be driven by some sort of meaning with what I'm doing. I'm fortunate that I don't have to worry too much about money with Maya's work, but at the same, need and even desperation would probably breed more innovation.

I'm starting to get to a point where I can think about my life's work, my life narrative, and what I may leave behind some time. Although I know it's early, but having a kid kind of changes the way you look at things. I'd say I have more hope for Helena but that would suggest that my life hasn't been anything but lucky and great, which it has. I am healthy, able-bodied, play in a rock band that occasionally plays outs, have everything I really need and gets to go on sweet vacations plus have the summer off, own my own car and home, have a pretty cool dog, lots of friends (although not so many around here which can be sad), a wife and daughter, and I love French and tennis which are huge parts of my life. I guess the grass is always greener and we don't recognize the "good times" until they are past. But at times I think about my impact on the world and whether if I didn't exist how different things would be, and with that depressing note I'll end this post; since the answer is I really don't know.  But hopefully I'll keep thinking about that and get to a better place where I am more comfortable with it.