Stop worrying where you're going...

I'm not writing for any special reason...no super epiphany has come to me...and clearly it's been a while. But something has to be done and really this is more for that for anything else right?

I'm engaged/married. Just in case anyone who doesn't know me is reading this and cares. The love of my life and the man I've lived with for three years wanted to put me on his health insurance and buy me a ring. So I'm legally married (for the health insurance) and publicly engaged (although anyone I know well knows that the wedding next year is the fun celebration part and will have nothing to do with the federal governments view of our union). It was a perfect proposal. And if you're dying to know all the details I'll probably publish it on a wedding website sometime in the next few months. But just know it involved Disneyland and the Peter Pan ride and it was the happiest moment of my life.

So now that I'm back to reality I'm kinda jumbled in my life's work. I'm teaching a musical theatre history class to seniors on Mondays, Pre-school with toddlers on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and mime and clowning to high schoolers on Fridays. I've mostly been panicked about the Monday and Friday classes in recent history and that's why I haven't been thinking much about writing, but the more I prepare for the classes and the more I'm trying to find the essence of what I'm teaching...the more I realize there is a greater purpose in all this if I can only pinpoint and then articulate it.

Let me try to make that clearer for my own sake. Musical Theatre with Seniors on Monday is really cool, don't get me wrong, I've been wanting to teach this class since high school. It's a strange dynamic to be lecturing to a group of people who are at least twice as old as I am. They appreciate me, think I'm cute and energetic and obviously are interested in the material and enjoy being there...but I can't help thinking I'm a fraud...even though I know I'm not.- On the other hand Fridays are a bit peculiar since I really have very little mime training and I've never taught this class before...and it's three hours long once a week so it's kinda epic. So far it's going well but again, and maybe it's just that I'm a new teacher, I feel like a fraud. But even while I think these things to myself- that I'm not good enough to be teaching these things, that I don't have the right, that I'm a failure at life- I'm starting to realize, and maybe even believe, that it's less about the transfer of material knowledge, and more about what I'm providing and how I'm making each one of my students feel about what they are doing and how they are learning.

Ok so that really wasn't articulated much better but "the ideas have to come out like children" as Rachel says in Inherit the Wind. I'm still not convinced the teaching is my vocation- which is why I continue to question and write. I would like to challenge myself that even in this time of stress (because I'm literally stressed out everyday about whatever class I have next to teach) to do something more creative- some dedicated writing exercise just for me, or just for somebody else even...but something that means something to me- I'm thinking somewhere between Suzanne Lori-Parks 365 days/plays and Seth Rudesky's deconstructions. Somewhere in there there is something for me to do...something that's bursting to come out of me and maybe the longer I sit here and spew the more likely I am to come up with it. Nope. Well I'm gonna keep thinking...maybe I'll come up with something today...maybe that will be my goal...let's see.

Pins.

p.s. I'm totally talking about Trude in class on Monday...that should feed some semblance of my soul.