I'm still here

I meant to write this post months ago. But you gotta prioritize they tell me. And prioritize I have.

Something changed this summer. It was almost an audible and physical "snap!" that was deeply felt though, oddly, I cannot tell you when exactly it happened. Some time between the third week of June and the second week of August. I think.

I told y'all I needed a break. And I took one. I quelled the anxiety and the guilt and made myself do it.

I still submitted my first major solo piece to a journal. I still attended an international conference.

But I also did...nothing. My family and I camped. I wrestled with a tent beneath the angriest sky I've ever been outside to witness. It was thrilling. But reminded me why our ancestors worked so very, very hard to build houses of stone with toilets within feet of our beds.

I did nothing. Which is to say, I did things I could not convert into capital--social, academic, or economic.

​We bought a piano. I picked up my guitar. I read novels. Tried to sketch things.

One of my senior colleagues here, Angela, from the day I first interviewed for this job actually, through my first year has...we'll say..."encouraged"? Yeah. Yeah we'll go with "encouraged" me, in her inimitable way, to stop apologizing for things I don't have to be sorry for, to be confident about who I am and what I want.
She, I'm convinced, laid the groundwork for the "snap," the change in disposition.

Hannah Gatsby, in her powerful Netlfix special "Nannette" I also watched this summer, talked about refusing any more to apologize for taking up space. This injunction directed to those far more marginalized than I, still resonated. In much smaller ways, my life has been organized around feeling like I wasn't really supposed to be here, wherever "here" happened to be. This needed to stop as, I imagine, it was (and still is inasmuch as it persists) making me especially unpleasant to be around.

This was a little easier to do after year one. The impostor syndrome that follows everyone, it seems, followed me well into my first year on the tenure track. If I'm honest, it'll follow me for many years still.

But at some point something's gotta give. 

And give it has.

The months of June and July were exactly what I needed them to be. A time to reconnect with my family. A time to reconnect with myself.

I traveled to Birmingham, UK to attend a conference run by my relentlessly productive younger brother. Several years ahead of me in academia he's proven a professional mentor, with insights that have helped frame my own work and path so far.

After a whirlwind conference with brilliant people doing fascinating work in a variety of subfields in applied linguistics, we ducked over to Paris. Yeah. THAT Paris.

I totally get why people go to Paris now. It's awesome.

​But it was, yet again, a time to connect. With Stephen. With myself. With art. With food.

I'd gone, to be honest, with the intention of letting loose a bit. Eating and drinking too much. Staying out too late. Trying to capture the wild and crazy youth I never had.

But I arrived in the UK to find my brother--one who's had more courage than me to just live his life--a bit of an ascetic. He's vegan now. He meditates. He lets shit go.

So we went hard. But only in terms of walking. 60km or so, all told, in three days.

We ate. Found vegan and gluten free stuff in Paris. People are aghast. PARIS! BREAD! CHEESE! And YOU TWO--VEGAN AND GLUTEN FRE--

What're you gonna do? Bottle of wine on the stairs of Sacre Coeur. That's what.

It was awesome.

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But knocking on the door of 40, I'm not one to live alone, away from wife and kids. So getting home was a joy as well.

Teachers don't "get the summer off" in any sense. But I made sure not to do any work on stuff for the fall until at least August. I don't like to throw around the word "hero"--if it crosses your mind, feel free to use it.

But I made myself be reasonable. I worked. I've got two new preps even though you're not "supposed" to do new preps in the first two years. But I'm easily bored. And despite my newfound, devil-may-care confidence, I'm still a bit too prone to say yes to stuff.

​Angela will keep me on the straight and narrow, I'm sure.

I've come in to year two with my back straighter. My sense of where I'm possibly headed stronger.

Could it all fall apart? Certainly.

But inspired by my little brother, I do my best to get up at 5am now. I sit quietly while a man with a gentle British accent calmly invites me to sit upright, to pay close attention to my breathing, to let my thoughts come and go, to be aware of my body, my sensations, to return to my breath "always available to me" as best I can.

The first time he said that--"the breath is always available to you"--I started. Such a profound insight. If it's not, then whatever it is in front of you is no longer your problem.

But until then you can ground yourself for the moment in your own biology no matter what is happening. Because you carry your breath every moment of every day. It carries you. It won't carry you indefinitely. But it can bring you back. To this moment. To deal with what is happening right here. Right now.

There is still so much to do. The journal I was sure would reject my first submission came back requesting revisions for re-submission. So the door's still open. We'll take another crack.

My second piece, a co-authored article with my dissertation chair, Dr. Lucía Durá is headed out the door soon.

Teaching a new prep that is right in my wheelhouse yet stretches me has been a revelation. Perhaps the first time I have fully and unequivocally enjoyed teaching a class. Inspired by my colleague Kendall I changed the way I provide feedback. It's still a pain. It's still difficult. I still put it off. But it's now much more in line with who I am as a teacher and a thinker. So little weights have been dropped along the way.

Still quite a ways to climb. Still many miles to go. But for the time being I'm ready to keep moving.

To keep breathing.