Back to Me

As this semester clumsily ended, sort of the academic equivalent of coitus interruptus, it marked the conclusion of my twentieth year at Champlain. As with most of life, I suppose, it has been an incredible mixture of good and bad, a lot of joy and a hell of a lot of heartache. It's difficult to imagine how different my life would be if I had followed my first instinct and turned down Champlain's offer, staying at Georgia Perimeter (where I taught for nine years, although it seems like a blur now). I'd probably still be married, own my own house by now, and would be looking at the very real possibility of actually retiring, as compared to being alone and facing the reality that I'll never be able to retire and will die in harness. Still, in most other ways my life is immeasurably richer. When I lived in Atlanta I didn't even have a passport, and now I've spent going on three years of my life overseas. And it's not just the international experience, obviously, it's also the extraordinary number of close friends which I didn't let myself have while at GPC. I had good friends, some of which I'm still in contact with, but I don't think I did anything with them, at least officially, outside of work. Beyond trysting during work hours I don't think I ever left the house to spend time with any friends, while, in a world not dominated by the Great Isolation, it seems like I'm perpetually running around with friends now. And, no, I can't imagine that I would have embarked on the spiritual path I've followed if I had stayed in the sunny South. So, it's hard to say that it's been a bad move, even if my heart is pretty shredded at the moment. Here's a picture that one of my students snapped on the first Zanzibar trip, featuring me, replete with Rising Sun shirt, looking out of Chaka Chaka on the island of Pemba in Zanzibar.

I think Kathleen Edwards did it better.