self-made box

It’s not very often that a) I find myself on my personal laptop before noon on a weekday(I’m usually left to the archaic computers at school) and b) that I bring my computer to public spaces. But here I am doing both of those unusual things...at a Panera no less....

Oddly enough I don’t know what to say about the last couple weeks that would make sense of the experience. So many highs and lows – and in the middle of it all, I find myself unsure of how to proceed…where to go next…how to sort out the jumble in my head. And because I can’t figure it out, I distract myself with Downton Abbey and other such nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, I am in love with my distractions (already established I know – I promise I won’t go on and on again about the obsession that is Matthew Crawley and the whole Downton bunch)….but they are just that – distractions. They do not aid me in making sense of my days or help me sleep at night.

Even in my explanation of my general inability to sort out life, I am incoherent. The short sum of all my thoughts is that I am unsatisfied with who I am. This is not some plea for affirmation – I do not think that I am inadequate, inferior, or any other of those complexes that seem to plague so many people. I am probably too self-assured for my own good. Rather I think that I have become complacent. I think that I have worked so hard to not care what other people think or to not care about meeting expectations other than my own, that I ended up lowering the bar.

Remember that fantastic quote that became cliché it was repeated so often of “Who are you not to be?” I think in some part I created a box for myself – I am a teacher, a this or a that. I am interested in these things. I believe in the following…. And then I closed the lid of the box and started living within its confines. And just because I don’t know what is outside that box doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t go find out.

Like I said, I don’t know what “finding out” means exactly, but I know I’ve got to figure it out. I can’t live like this forever.