Professional Clarity (sort of)

It was a moment of clear thinking. My mother-in-law had just questioned that my least favorite part of teaching is students.

“It’s not that I don’t like them,” I said, and here was the clarity part: “It’s just that teaching middle school is about working with kids, when I want to be working with English.”

I was on a kick last week–and it’s appearing to continue this week–of needing a job that challenges my creativity and demands hard work of me; I think I’m on the downhill side of reveling in the workings of a room full of fidgety children.

In some ways I consider myself an artist, a bit of a writer, a bit of a musician. But I love making spreadsheets, too, and Google forms, although analyzing data is not my cup of tea. Organizing is fun. Delegating jobs to other people is fun. The idea of starting my own business really appeals to me, if the business involves adequate money, only a little stress, and mainly activities that I enjoy.

The trouble is, most any career change is going to be more limiting. Working for a newspaper, a job I once very much enjoyed, would take more time and attention away from my own creative endeavors–and could never afford the family time that teaching does.

Would playing the lottery help? Probably not; I just read in Ecclesiastes that “Sweet is the sleep of laborers, whether they eat little or much; but the surfeit of the rich will not let them sleep.”


I took an informal poll of my table mates at the church potluck: three of the four of us are professionally paying the bills and would rather a different job; the fourth is a school-district plumber who only wishes his job kept him busier. Who am I to think I can rise above the humdrum and find paying fulfillment? 


And so for the foreseeable future I’ll still be a teacher, but one with his eyes on the lookout for something ideal.