Resurrecting a Repository of Ruminations

It’s likely premature to declare this blog resurrected, although I have rechristened it, changed the appearance a bit, and find myself posting for the first time in over a year. This will again be a living, breathing blog only if I post consistently, which is something I haven’t done since early 2016. Why would anything change now? Well, I have my reasons for thinking this could truly be the beginning of a blogging renaissance for me. I’ve been on quite a “gotta-get-back-to-being-me” kick lately. Granted, much of what I’ve done over the past five years—leaving a Ph.D. program, changing religions, getting a job, re-immersing myself in music, and later leaving religion altogether—has been the result of my seeking to make life more perfect, more my own, more what I personally desire it to be. And life has gotten better over the last five years—in rather tremendous ways. But I feel I am on the cusp of yet another monumental transition, one that will reclaim elements of my past that I love and dearly miss, and yet that somehow became the proverbial baby who was thrown out with the bath water.

I’m eager to share my intentions, because I find them exciting. And yet I also fear certain people learning of my intentions before I want them to. It’s a ridiculous paranoia, I know, given that nobody reads this blog. There’s no doubt that I’m speaking into a void. And yet what if a random Google search by a co-worker were to land them upon my page? Or has in the past, and that person subscribed to my posts without ever telling me? As unlikely as that may be, it’s not a totally absurd notion. I’m pretty sure I Googled all of my co-workers at some point in time or another. It’s what we do as humans nowadays, isn’t it? I’ve never used my surname on this blog, but it’s otherwise been a pretty open book. Hell, anyone who’s talked to me for five minutes can deduce that “Ben + Diet Mountain Dew” would make a strong Google search if you were trying to track down my online presence. It wouldn’t surprise me if this blog were the #1 search result for that particular phrase.

Alas, I shall throw caution to the wind and speak as if there is someone listening, but only someone I feel safe talking to. Like any other story, the one I’m about to tell could be made longer or shorter, and the longer version could be made longer still. I will aim for brevity, but it’s never been my strong suit, particularly when I’m writing about my own life. There are so many thoughts and feelings, and I have a tendency to try to capture them all. But enough of the preliminaries. I will skip right to the juicy stuff, then backtrack and add details until I grow sufficiently bored. The bottom line is this: I am actively pursuing a career as an English teacher on the secondary school level, preferably high school. I haven’t applied for any teaching jobs yet, but I’ve taken steps toward acquiring my teaching license. In Utah, this includes signing up for a Praxis exam and doing a background check. So long as I pass the exam (which I take in early July) and the background check (which I already have), then it’s just a matter of filling out some forms and paying some fees before I’m officially licensed to teach. This is because I already have a bachelor’s degree. In something. It doesn’t even matter what my degrees are in, provided I pass the Praxis. Isn’t that awesome? Up until a few weeks ago, I had no idea it could be this easy. Fortunately for me, a teacher shortage compelled the State of Utah in 2016 to allow people like me to acquire teaching licenses in the manner I’ve described. If that weren’t exciting enough, I looked into the necessary exam for someone wanting to teach English at the secondary level, and I was shocked just how many of the practice exam questions were absolute no-brainers to me. Questions related to poetic structure and/or pedagogy aren’t my strong suit, given that I didn’t major or minor in English. But I can learn enough of that stuff between now and July to pass the Praxis exam without a problem. I’m thrilled! So thrilled, in fact, that I now find it almost unbearable to be at my current job. I just hope I can land a teaching gig for the fall. It’s rather late in the calendar year for me to be starting down this road, but I remain optimistic. Perhaps I’m more optimistic than I deserve to be, but I’m optimistic nevertheless.

For the record, it is both my desire to teach and my desire to leave my current job that motivate me. I enjoyed teaching college as a graduate student. I didn’t abandon my Ph.D. program because I didn’t like the idea of teaching. On the contrary, I realized I only liked the teaching. And that was because I was teaching undergraduate courses. The idea of seeking a tenure-track position at a research university, where I would teach grad students and be held to the “publish or perish” model of professional accountability, was anything but appealing to me. And that’s why I decided against completing my Ph.D. The idea of teaching, however, is one I’ve never completely given up on. And I’ve long been open to the idea of teaching high school. I just didn’t know it was such a live possibility for me. I thought it would require going back to school and getting an education degree, and that just feels like too much to take on at this point in my life. But knowing I can teach as easily as I can—well, it’s rekindled a fire I thought was all but permanently extinguished.

On the other side of the same coin is the fact that my current job is, at its best, unfulfilling. Up until recently, I’ve been rather content in my job because it has been low-stress and there are so many great perks—schedule flexibility, the ability to work from home, tons of PTO, etc. But there has long been a part of me that is fully aware I am wasting my potential by staying at my job. I have always wanted to do something meaningful, something existentially valuable. A job in marketing is never going to fit the bill. And so it feels like a genuine tragedy—and I actually mean that very literally—when I think of the time I’m wasting in a job like I currently have. Recently, my dissatisfaction has only increased as the aforementioned perks have been scaled back and new management has taken my job in a different direction. The pay has increased, and I’ve been promised another raise around the corner. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I couldn’t care less about what I do. It feels so wholly other to me, so ill-fitting for my personality and interests. I want my life to be a manifestation of me. Anything else is bat-shit crazy, isn’t it? It’s just a damn shame I’m in my forties and still have to iron out so many wrinkles.