What If- danger, regret, and explaining your history

[poppetawoppet]

I taught band camp last week.

I've been doing it ever since I student taught. It is amazing and exhausting and hard and fun and probably the worst thing for me to do in my current place in life.

I will do it again next year.

I started a new job last October. It's completely out of the field of education-I'm answering member calls for a Medicaid managed care plan-and I could write paragraphs on the new job and why it is not the best for me either, but not today.

Part of a new job means introducing yourself, explaining a little of your past job history blah blah blah.

I hate it.

Inevitably, I will say I am no longer looking for a teaching position.

Inevitably someone will tell me I shouldn't quit.

Mostly I just wish I could say I'm moving on and have people say, okay I understand, and let it go.

I suppose it's understandable: they don't know the whole story, all the details. They didn't go through two job interviews in three months, emails stating there were hundreds of people looking for one position, the evaluation that the job market would take more time to recover than I could wait for a permanent decision.

They didn't spend days and nights before and after making the decision to leave in circular thinking, wondering what could have been done differently, what could I do now that my degree was a piece of paper that didn't get me far?

But I don't know how to distill how hard and how easy it was to leave that career behind without remembering that I didn't realize how much it meant until I left it behind. I don't know how to give the least information possible to guide people along the path that's led me here.

I don't know how to say I will never ever not think of what if, and every year, I'll stand in front of a group of musicians and wonder what I could have done.

There is no easy way to explain it. As much as I may wish people would just let it go, the multitudes of reasons why I am where I am is what makes me me. So I'll tell the story again.

I'll teach band camp again.

It all matters.