Every month or so I have a brief conversation with myself. I sit down in silence and ponder the question, ‘Are you happy?’ Lately the answer is no. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I remain utterly unsettled. I can’t play the ‘where will you be in 5 years’ game and know where I’ll be living, who I will be with, or if I’ll even have the same job or a job at all. This is far too much uncertainty to be really happy with my life, so I’ve adopted a different type of thinking: Be in the moment. It works, temporarily, but the idea of ‘what next’ wanders through my consciousness every so often and the whole sad and difficult routine starts over again.
The moment is good. I spend a lot of my time with the love of my life. The rest of m time is spent playing with my kids, watching the shows I love most, writing, and coaching football. All of these phases of my day are moments of joy. Even now at the start of a new teaching semester everything feels amazing and promising and I want nothing more than to be in that classroom getting to know my learners.
Pull the frame back a bit and the picture looses focus. My relationship is totally undefined. My time with my kids is completely scheduled to the point where we have almost no free time. I’m watching shows to avoid the fact that my creativity engine is effectively stalled, and every day I spend at football practice I get the sensation that the head coach is going to bail and leave me this team and zero assistants. The teaching? I love my students, but I feel completely isolated on my campus. I feel like a ghost where a handful of people enjoy the haunt and the rest are lining up exorcists. In truth I think they’ve found the one loophole that could banish me from tenure.
Perhaps that is why I stay in the moment. Anything further down the path is too bleak at this point.