Resignation Letter

"We must be willing to give up the life we've planned, so we can live the life that's waiting for us."-Joseph Campell
Today I wrote a resignation letter.  I will not be teaching next year.  For the first time in 13 years I will neither be teaching nor pursuing teaching.  While being an educator is a huge part of who I am and what I had planned for myself, I have other parts.  Like the writer part who so desperately wants to have the energy to type a coherent sentence at the end of the day.  Like the photographer part who wants the space to learn more about what she seems to have a good eye for. Like the wife part who wants to have some patience and nurturing left for her husband at the end of the day, and potential parts...mother, entrepeneur, volunteer.  I want time and space and air to do those things.  
Don't misunderstand.  I love teaching.  It is the life I have planned and the life I have lived for over a decade.  I would sit in school as a kid and say to myself, "When I'm a teacher I will...," not as an "if" but a "when."  I would play school like it was my job and write on my walls with chalk.  I would study every detail of my teachers.  I noticed how they penned a cursive L in that sharp red ink, and how their Rockport flats looked like peppermint patties.  I would note how they cradled the book between their thumb and pinkies while they read aloud and how their bracelets klinked together musically as they wrote on the board.  It was never an "if."  It was a "when."
And now I've been living out that plan.  I went to college for education.  I was a substitute teacher for a year out of college, then taught 4 years in Wisconsin and now 3 in Arizona.  I have breathed, ate, slept, and bled teaching for that time, and probably will again at some point in life.  But for now, I'm packing up my classroom and that life that I had planned for the life that's waiting for me.  
I'm turning my attention from others' families to my own.  I'm going to write until I'm blue in the face:  words, sentences, blog posts, letters, stories, books.  I'm going to cook, photograph, garden, learn, create and see where that takes me.  I'm going to take the amazing and rare opportunity that I've been given to pursue something different, something unknown but worth the investment.  And, I can't wait for what's waiting!

I wrote this post in response to hollywood housewife's invitation to join in a gathered thoughts link party at LoveFeast