Happiness

"When I think of finding a job, an apartment, a direction...yeah, that's scary. I think I'm ready...to become A Full-Fledged Responsible Adult. Besides, it's trendy to be twenty-something and clueless. I'll be so in.

"Plus I've got some big dreams. This isn't goodbye forever. Maybe someday we can all move to the same neighborhood. It could happen....Anything could happen."

-- Megaphone, 5/2002

Well, it happened. I have a job, an apartment, and I live near Amanda and Eliina. I think I might be truly happy. It's such a different feeling, I'm not even sure if it's real. Maybe it'll go away. Maybe it won't last past tomorrow. But for now... even when I'm cranky I'm secretly, deep-down, happy.

Oh, who wants to hear that crap. Certainly not you. Let's focus on the negative.

The major glitch that still remains: Finding a direction. I've been accepted to Teach for America, which means I can certainly do that next year. But... do I want to? I would be throwing away a lot of things that I love. For example:

1) Free time.
2) Free time.
3) Improv.
4) Writing for fun.
5) Reading for fun.
6) Leisurely Sundays.
7) Free time.
8) Sanity.

At the same time, I can picture myself as a teacher, all tough love and patience and sarcasm, spoon-feeding them Hamlet and making them write poetry. Well, okay, that's an idealized picture. The reality, at first, will be that I am so frazzled I want to yank off their Nikes and shove them down their throats.

But after that, I've heard it gets better.

I'm also scared that I would have to give up improv. A whole magical improv world brews here in Chi-town, and I love sipping some of that contagious energy when I'm in a scene with someone talented or seeing my friends perform in an awesome show. But improv is designed for late nights and flexible schedules. And it taps pretty much all of your energy when you're really doing it right. Teachers have little energy to tap.

Maybe we all have some reservoir of mental energy built up somewhere, and we can either add to it or drain it depending on how we live and what we do. Maybe the most ideal, satisfying things drain and build the reservoir at the same time.

I'm pretty sure teaching ain't one of 'em. But then -- I think it might become one of them later, once you know what you're doing.

I don't know how to make this decision.

1/18/2005 01:55:30 PM

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