THOUGHT I WAS GONE, DIDN'T YA?

Funny thing about leaving. You're gone before you're actually gone. People start thinking about you as yesterday, in the past, not current. There's something comforting in that--of being spoken of in the past tense, even when you're still alive. I'm noting, with interest, the responses to my impending departure: one is a deep sigh of relief, a gratitude for my silence. "She's finally shut up." Another response, the most puzzling of the bunch, is the anger: "How dare she?" There are those who think I've flipped. "Who, tell me, WHO gives up tenure and a great job in this economy?" I do. And despite my anxiety over the unknownness of it all, I feel better than I've felt in a long, long time--maybe for as long as I've been in the academy. I have no more obligations "to the race." I have no more obligations to "diversify the institution." I do not have to be spokesperson for faculty, staff and students of color. I get to be nobody, in the way, a has been. A teacher on the decline, nearing retirement, nuts. I find it incredibly satisfying to have forfeited my title as HNIC. Nobody cares what I say or if I say or.... A ton of burdens have fallen from my weary shoulders, and for once, I'm thinking about me, my life and the life of my partner. I've not had one moment of regret about this decision. I'm committed to giving my best to the students in my courses this semester, but I wonder if I have any best left in me. I apply for positions others can't imagine that I really want, but I want them. Executive assistant to a college president, entering the corporate world, working in a bookstore. All are possibilities that excite me. All represent a certain freedom from an all-consuming profession. I imagine the joy of reading bad novels. Having a day where I don't have to figure out what to do. What I want to do now is just have fun, enjoy my family and friends, enjoy my life to the fullest. I just want a job--just a job, even if it's one I don't like so well. Perhaps everything really does go full circle. Maybe I long for the childhood I never had--the time for play and frolic; the time for ME. I think, for the very first time in my life EVER, I'm making a choice for me, my life rather than for someone or something external to me. I'm going to continue chronicle this journey. Lots left for me to learn. At the moment, I'm flying high.