Hello, Seattle

I'm moving.

!!!!

As a kid, I assumed that moving was the sort of thing that adults did. Big people who were married with a couple of kids and lots of stuff. I am neither a big person, nor married. I'm followed around constantly by kids but they are not my own. I do have a fair bit of "stuff" but not enough to fill an entire U-Haul. All the same, though - I'm taking the plunge.

I think that Provo is like a drug for some people. An addiction. A disease. A safety net. It's the place you come, and then the place you stay until you marry and that's when you're allowed to leave. It's a kind of progressional limbo, and I'm a little sick of it.

So I'm out.

I don't want to be the kind of person that leeches around Provo for no reason except I'm not married yet. I'm young. I'm single. But I'm also a completely qualified teacher with options anywhere I want them to be. And in this case, I want them to be in Seattle. So I'm heading to the great unknown.

The funny thing is, as soon as things like this happen, everyone seems to have ideas on whether or not I'm making the right choice. One well meaning extended relative, for example, suggested that I might have better luck finding a job somewhere like Washington DC or Compton.

Compton?!

So, in spite of a few people who have been a little less than encouraging, I've decided that I'll be moving no matter what. And the reason for that choice? Because I know it's where the Lord wants me to be next year. That's the reason. I don't have any great reasoning other than that wonderful little bit of personal confirmation that says a move is right for me. And after the string of help I've received so far, I'm pretty sure that things are going to go just fabulously.

"A Full-fledged Schoolma'am."

This week supplied me with two things I never thought would actually happen. The first is that my keys have, for the first time since I actually got a key, outnumbered the key chains I have. I have five keys now and only four key chains. What is frightening about those keys makes up the second thing I never thought would happen: I have keys to a school, the school alarm system, and my own classroom.

What the heck is this?! When did I grow up enough to have keys to a school?!

I feel very much like Wendy in Peter Pan at the end of Act One when Peter has just been wounded and the two of them are stuck on Marooner's Rock. Peter looks at Wendy and says "Do you think you can fly without me?" Wendy's instant reaction is "No! I'm just a beginner!"

Only the funny thing in this case is that, for the most part, and probably out of naivety, I do feel ready to teach on my own. It's that growing up thing I'm not ready to do yet. I like my Peter Pan fantasies, thank you very much.

I also feel very much like Anne right before she goes to college. She has a conversation with Gilbert about the various "well meaning" individuals she's come across in the days before they leave, each of whom have bits of advice for her, generally leaning toward "Oh, you're so cute and young and innocent. Have fun watching your dreams shatter!"

Well, Anne, welcome to the club. In the last few months I have had a plethora of well meaning people kindly tell me under no uncertain terms that my first year of teaching will involve nothing but shattered ideals, late nights, devil children, and patches of missing hair on my scalp. Each time this happens, there is generally a good deal of "knowing smiles" in which I can practically hear the individual(s) saying things in their heads like 'oh, she's so cute, I wish I were that young and innocent.'

Frankly I'm sick of it.

I GET it. I get that entering the "big girl world", particularly in my line of work, involves a certain amount of disillusionment and reality checking, but how is that any different from any other job? I don't want the pity of everyone in the world when I say with pride that I am a teacher. Nor do I think that "reality" is as bad as people keep claiming it to be. Why must "dreams" always be intangible and "reality" always be based on the lowest most miserable parts of life that we all dread? (And for that matter, since when do the last four years of my life not constitute as "real" because they didn't involve working full time?)

So take that, naysayers. I like my life, thank you very much. And what's more, I don't intend to hate teaching. I also don't intend to give up on dreaming. I'd be as good as dead if I forgot to dream every once in a while.

"If I weren't going to be a writer, I'd go to New York and pursue the stage..."

I looked at the date of my last post today and got a bit of a shock. January 21st? Goodness. In my defense my life has been busy and I haven't had much to write about, but still. Shouldn't I have a plethora of things to say all the time?

Which leads (somewhat roughly) into my topic for the day. A few weeks ago I sat down with one of my professors. He more or less tossed an imaginary gauntlet on the floor of his office and said something to the effect of: "Joni, you can be a professional writer if you want to be, but you'll have to work harder."

Well. If that didn't smack me back into place a bit.

When I was twelve I was determined to be a writer. I wrote little short stories all over the place, one of which was a twenty or so page epoch tale of a girl on the Oregon Trail complete with birth, death and (naturally) cholera. All the Oregon-Trail-Tale necessities. I remember very vividly telling my sixth grade teacher that one day I was going to be a real published author and that I would dedicate my first book to her. This enthusiasm for the idea of being a writer carried on into high school when I started writing a magical-realism book about a girl in Ireland. She lived in a house with a field of daffodils around it that drove the neighbors mad because they were just so conspicuous. My creative writing teacher told me over and over again that I ought to write professionally. I scorned the rest of the "kids" in my classes that wrote really horrible, sappy poetry. I managed to get published in a magazine. It was a good year.

Then, of course, I went to college. I took one creative writing class that I really didn't like because (a) I didn't have any inspiration to write and, (b) my professor's theory on how you write stories irritated me. I thought it was a load of poo.

I don't know that I've written anything in the creative department since then.

I'm starting to get a bit of that bug back, though. That urge to write something wonderful. In working with this professor on my writing, though, he was speaking specifically about being a professional essayist. Only I don't want to be a professional essayist.

This last statement has a bit of irony to it, really. What have I done the last three years that was anything but essaying? Journaling, I suppose, which is a form of essay. Personal narratives. Nothing creative. Why is that?

Well, I suppose that part of it is because I read a lot of crap. I've always wondered at how some authors manage to get published with the junk they write. It's such an impossible industry to break into and most of it is a load of really horrid writing that somehow manages to strike a literary (or imaginary) chord. Take Twilight for instance - the books are not well written (don't even try arguing with me on this), but they've been selling out all over the place. Nearly every teenage girl in the world has read them and/or made their boyfriends read them (why any high school boy would do that for a girlfriend, I don't know). Or maybe that example isn't fair. I'd use Harry Potter but everyone knows how that turns out too - another random, twist of fate chance that opens up an empire. But what of the great unknown books? There are some incredible storytellers out there that get completely overshadowed in the young adult fiction world by ripping yarns like . . . The Babysitter's Club. One of the reasons why I think I haven't written is because I don't want to write junk.

Then of course there's the fear that all I will have to say will have already been said by someone. Heaven forbid I steal from someone else. I need to be original!! But how can I be original when there have been billions of other stories told? Well, I can't. I don't know that there's any such thing as a truly original story when you pick off all the fluff. I just have to find a way to tell the same story in a new enough way that it tricks people. How do you do that?

Hindrance number three: I'm a historical purist. I don't want to write anything modern, but if I'm going to write something historical I want to make sure I do it well. And, while I'm at it - I don't much fancy setting anything in America either. I suppose the upside is that I would get to travel back to my beloved England for field research . . . maybe this isn't such a hindrance after all . . .

Another question, then - why did I have to grow up into a realistic sort of mindset that keeps pestering me by saying "chances are you'll fail, why even start"? What ever happened to that twelve year old inside me that said I would put my teacher's name on the dedication page of my first book and knew that eventually I would? Whatever happened to "the glory and the dream"?

So for now, I'm trying to come up with ideas. I still rather like the idea of that little story I was working on all that time ago. With a little refinement of course - maybe I can come up with some solid conflict and say something worth reading. Until then, though - it's definitely given me some things to think about. What is it about growing up that makes us so boring in how we dream? What's wrong with wanting something wonderful? Or is it just that our idea of "wonderful" shifts? Is that settling? Or is that just living "responsibly"?