Blogging. Is that even a word? I will need to ask my fifth graders.

So, I’m a wife. Been one for almost fifteen years. I’m pretty awesome at it.  Although that’s completely my opinion, I have to bet my husband would agree. I’m not supposed to talk about him in the blog so I shall henceforth be calling him Husband, capital H. I’m pretty sure when he said not to talk about him he meant not to complain about him, so I’ll throw in the honorable mention from time to time. Anyway, he’s awesome at being him, too. I’m lucky.

Husband and I have a seven year old crazy child. She’s completely awesome, except when she’s utterly horrid. Either child may show up on any given day. She is smart and funny, and often chooses to show those traits at utterly inopportune moments.  I imagine much of my writing in the next however long this lasts will be about her, though I am not intending to have a “mommy blog”, per se.  Still, being a mom tends to creep into everything else.

The thing that I most often say when people ask me what I am, however, is never wife or mom.  It is teacher. I guess it should be capital T, Teacher. I wanted to be a teacher of some sort almost my whole life. At first I thought music teacher.  I studied my rear end off on my primary instrument, took voice lessons, tried to learn piano and other instruments to get a leg up.  Of course, as soon as I got to college I realized how much I hated that plan.  I tried a few things and settled on the idea of professor. I wanted to be all tweedy and walk around campuses in the fall with a tea in my left hand, soft leather briefcase full of creative lectures in my right, and crunching orange leaves beneath my feet. I desperately wished to be that philosophy professor that all kids looked up to. A masters degree later I realized that would probably never happen. I fell into teaching elementary school through a series of lucky events which took me from being a paraprofessional to completing my education degree.  I’ve been teaching in the same school, my first school, for twelve years. And now I’m ready to get out. There are a lot of reasons for that, some very personal, and some worth sharing later on.

It is really weird to be almost forty and suddenly realize I want to start over on what I always dreamed. Even weirder still is to realize that I just don’t know what I want to do anymore.  I’ve always been a planner. A dreamer. Organized and intentional. Now I’m sort of floating in the world wondering what to do with myself. Husband and I are both in that space. We’ve decided to pack up our lives and move back across the country to be closer to aging family at the end of the school year.  He is selling his business and I am leaving my school. My second home, really. We are jumping into new careers with both feet. The only question now is, what will we do?

So, follow the blog if you’re curious. I’ll be sharing about the job search, the angst of buying a new home, moving across country in a car with a seven year old and a few pets, anxiety about new careers, the terror of possibly working in an office with (gasp) grown ups, and, because they are a huge part of who I am, Husband and Daughter. Hope you come along for the ride.