Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, and Kevin Arnold

[If you're short on time, skip the following paragraph and insert "long, busy day with greasy hair."]
Yesterday morning I woke up at 7:00, which is unusually late for a person in the teaching profession. I put on my pre-selected teacher clothes, threw my hair in a ponytail, checked my email, and hurried out the door. By 9:15 I had been to the library, printed the rough draft of a paper, mailed my tax return, snagged breakfast from McDonald's (a rare treat), and was 15 minutes into my 40-minute commute. You'll notice that I didn't shower, because something was leaking in the bathroom and I didn't want to make it worse. I endured what seemed like an endless school day, borrowing body spray from a student and feeling sorry for my cooperating teacher, who had worse problems. I left school and went straight to tutoring, which I love more than anything else right now, then to Big Lots for snack food. Go home, write a little, cook supper, eat while watching a single episode of The Wonder Years on netflix, work on research paper with alternating peeks at twitter and facebook, shower at some point in my now-functional bathroom, then fall into bed at midnight.

I got up this morning and started the whole thing over again.

Somewhere between paying the light bill and sitting through a 2-hour lecture on the legal concerns of teachers, I had a horrifying thought: I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. The other student teachers get on my nerves, but those are my future colleagues, so I better get used to it. oy. Then I came home and cooked supper, and with Kevin Arnold for company, I finally sat down at 8:00 to eat my chicken pot pie one bubbling forkful at a time. While waiting for a bite to cool, I had a horrifying thought: I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.

It comes when I'm sitting in church alone or with a borrowed family. When someone tells a singles joke and everybody turns to look at me. When I'm trying to convince a freshman that he should care about using the Pythagorean Theorem to find the hypotenuse of a TV screen, when we both know he could just use a measuring tape. That's what I would do. It comes when I'm boxing up this apartment full of stuff that I just got settled the way I liked it. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.

When Kevin broke up with Becky, I didn't even have time to say "aww" before I recognized the music. It's the soundtrack of my present life, which is really pitiful when you think about it, because Kevin is only 12 years old in season 2. Still, I can't listen to "I Am A Rock" without thinking Simon and Garfunkel are really talking about me. "I have my books and my poetry to protect me." That gave me chills the first time I heard it, because I've read a ridiculous number of books in the past 2 years, including poetry.

Let me be clear, this is not self-pity. It's an honest look at your own life. I think we all have that moment at some point when we realize we have to read our own twitter feeds to remember what we did all day, and what seemed important enough to share. When we know that being far away is only bearable because it's temporary, at least for now. When we remember that this day has to happen for 30 more years before retirement. When we realize we shared the good moments with twitter because there was no one else around to tell. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.

I don't know what the answer is, and I'm not really asking for one. I'm only letting you know that if you ever have the awful moment of fear that I'm talking about, when you worry about the real possibility of not liking what's down the road, you're not there alone. Only let's make a deal that we won't stay there, ok? Tonight, I'm holding onto this:

"So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." -Jesus

You heard the man. Don't spend the rest of your life worrying about the rest of your life.