Miles From Anywhere

I've been on a writing roll today so I thought to my self, "Self, why not jump on that long neglected little blog of yours and hammer out a little of what's been happening?" Okay, here goes.

I've been quiet on here and in a bit of a slump (re: BIG slump) because I cast off everything that I was comfortable with and all complacency and took a big leap. I left my home, job(s), boyfriend, friends, school and packed up my kids, moved to Iowa and began a new chapter. This chapter is kind of an interlude more than anything. A buckle-down and get serious before I get to jump off to my next adventure. I moved in with my mother so that I could focus on school and my new plan of becoming a teacher.

This might seem like rash or impulsive behavior but I gave it a LOT of thought. I have been toiling in the design world for a very long time. It's an awful field. It's great when you have the perfect position, but they are few and far between, highly competitive and work you to the bone for not a very good compensation. I started to not love it. What I did love was volunteering at my kids' school. The more I was there and getting to know the students and staff, the happier and more fulfilled I was. I wondered if there was a job that could give me that and...)BAM( It hit me! I could teach. The rest is history.

I keep telling myself that even though we left everything we loved, it's all temporary. It's been one of the hardest transitions of my life. I thought about blogging about it all before, taking a fish out of water angle on it (city mouse to country mouse type thing) but I don't really have all these fun anecdotes. It's not really that kind of place. I've isolated myself because I don't know how to relate to people here.

The richest and most rewarding parts of all this happen here, in our house. My kids had a good school before, but now they have more dedicated staff and educators. The teachers up here aren't stretched as thin and it makes such a huge difference. My mother and I had a very strained relationship in my adult years for various reasons, but now we are closer than I thought we could be. We've become a parenting team (of sorts) for my kids and a pretty great one.

I'm trudging through the day to day and mounds of schoolwork trying to balance kids, schedules, freelance work, housework, yard work and some creative outlets. I'm not exactly counting down the days until we are ready to break free, but I keep a watchful eye on that calendar. The kids are doing great in school but are no more successful in social aspects here than I am. We are all in a kind of stasis together holding our collective breaths.

I hope to impress upon them through this experience that realizing your dreams takes sacrifice. That their family will always support them. I hope they are grateful for the richness of their lives and the novel experiences that they have been so lucky to have thus far. It should lessen the void left in us from when we departed our beloved city. Just a bit.