End of an era
Posted in Family, Feminism, Life, School, Teaching, Technology, Theatre, Web, Work on 11/18/2008 02:51 pm by KatieWell, I think my time in the personal blog arena may be over for a while. I haven’t had a real update on this blog in a very long time, and I’m not really interested in keeping a blog going for the purposes of filling out annoying surveys when I’m bored.
I’ll be keeping the domain name, and I’ll probably start up a new blog in the very near future detailing my plans, preparations and activities in regards to my year of teaching in China. I’m currently looking for a good wordpress theme for that specifically.
I guess I feel like there’s no real need for me to keep old blog posts about this or that boyfriend or this or that crappy job that I hate. My honeymoon with “public diary writing” is long over. I’ll probably have a professional blog when I’m a teacher, and maybe a knitting blog when I feel a little more proficient. But there’s no reason to keep record of the blathering nonsense of my late teens and early twenties.
This is a common theme in my life; I just found some old diaries, and instead of making me feel nostalgic or “treasuring” a time when I was naive and innocent, it just made me feel like a moron who still has a long way to go. Erika said, “Well, at least you can see how far you’ve come,” but it didn’t feel like that. I didn’t even keep regular diary entries; I only wrote things when I was particularly insecure or angry. There’s no real value in that, I think. I think the real value is the woman I’ve grown into; I’m braver now (at least, I think I am…let’s see if I actually get on that plane to Hong Kong next August…). I’m more “together” and organized…I’m more dedicated to the things I want to do (look at my GPA, for goodness’ sake…who would have imagined that I’d get grades like this?). I’m getting a worldview and I’m starting to like it.
I didn’t burn my diaries or anything; I’m not that detached from my teenage self. But I’m not necessarily sure they’ll be worth keeping in storage when I get back from China and find a place to move and settle into. I’ve got my photo albums and keepsakes from high school and college; I don’t necessarily need random babbles to fill in the happy pictures with glum shadows. And I think that finally graduating in May will really put me in a different place. I feel it coming. And I have hope for who I’m going to be. I think I’m going to forgo the New Years’ resolutions this year for some post-graduation resolutions. Things like taking more pictures, going more places, learning more languages.
Ultimately, I’m feeling some insecurities starting to shed away, and I no longer feel the need to jot down my bad days or my social inadequacies. At this point, graduation is inevitable. With the grades I am certain to get this semester, I will be graduating in May with at least a Theatre Design/Production degree, come hell or high water. Student teaching, therefore, is just part of the grand experiment. I may get in front of a classroom and love it. I may hate it. But I’m going to do it and learn from it and go from there. And suddenly, the knowledge that I’m going to graduate and actually finally pass this milestone in my life means that I’m an okay person. I am someone who is more than capable of accomplishing things; I’m capable of excelling at things. I didn’t just go back to college and graduate. I’ve gone back to college and I’m kicking its ass.
That being said, it has become extremely unimportant to me to live a conventional life. All my life, up until about a year and a half ago, whatever career I chose, whatever major I chose, whatever classes I took, all were secondary to the endgame: marriage, kids, family. It was more tangible sometimes than others; mostly depending on whether or not I was in a relationship. I would think, “Well, I’ll move to California…and then I’ll find someone.” Or, “We’ll move to California and settle down.” Or, “Okay, I can’t teach in California, so I’ll go to Atlanta…I’m sure I’ll find someone there.” It didn’t even have to be a conscious thought; it was always just an assumption.
But suddenly, I find myself single for a year and a half, which is the longest I’ve been single since 2000. And I’m going to move back to the suburbs in January, then to China in August (with a possible trip to Greece for several weeks next summer), then I’ll be moving to Atlanta. I used to think that this was an acceptable plan with the flexibility to be cancelled “in case” I found someone. I used to tell myself, “Well, I’m not going to look for a boyfriend because of all this traveling,” as a way to convince myself that it was okay to be single because I have all these plans. Now the possibility of “finding someone” is no longer a necessity, because I’ve found me.
I’ve learned that the Katie I really want to be is not a wife and mother who other people depend on so she can feel validated and useful. Instead, the Katie I really want to be is someone who sees as much of the world as she possibly can, spreads the joy and humanity of theatre, and gets in touch with her global community and history. None of that stuff requires a significant other or children. But it does validate me and make me feel useful, without being dependent on another person.
Besides, I’ve got a niece to spoil to pieces, and if I become a teacher, I’ll have plenty of people who depend on me.
Interesting how I came here to write a post about shutting down the blog and then I write one of the longest blog posts I’ve ever come up with.
Look for contact information as I start to whittle down the ways I can be found on the internet to be the most useful and beneficial to me. I’ll keep updating this blog as I work through this process, and probably deleting very old, inane posts. I’ll probably at least blog a little through student teaching and graduation. We’ll see.
Please, feel free to comment. I do, in fact, miss hearing from everyone.
