I did it.
I quit my job.
Friends, co-workers and my students have very gently and kindly referred to it as my “retirement.” I’ll be 45 this summer. Kind of young for retiring.
Retreating might be a better word.
Thanks to the brilliant students who walked through my classroom door for the past five years, I’ve learned a lot about how to teach, how to deconstruct and reconstruct a sentence, and how to deconstruct and reconstruct a story. Mostly, though, I learned a lot about myself.
One thing I know for sure, there’s a lot more to learn.
So here’s the plan: take care of what I have – my husband, my family, my farm, and myself. More specifically it means cooking better meals, spending more time with family, reversing the effects of five years of farm neglect, and writing. Writing religiously. Make it a job.
In the past two weeks we’ve gotten most of our hay put up, I’ve started a deep cleaning on the bedroom, and I’ve been making cheese. Today it will be another two-pound wheel of Monterey Jack.
I’ve also been writing. Religiously. Faithfully. Daily.
I have ideas for novels that have been floating around in my head for more than a decade. It’s high time they come to life. I have no idea if I’m doing it right, or even if I’m doing it well.
All I know is that I’m doing it.
Waiting for Thoreau 