Heeyyyyy! How’s Atlanta?
I’m almost embarrassed to continue typing.
Actually, I AM embarrassed to continue typing. Why I have been away so long, I cannot tell you. Between papers, and weddings, and random trips to South America (it was awesome), and family affairs, it has been a whirlwind of days and weeks. And once I put the “pen” down, I cannot, for the life of me, seem to be able to fluidly pick it up again.
And the embarrassment - I still can’t figure that one out. Who am I accountable to? And why does it matter so much? And where the hell is all this random guilt coming from?!
And of course, the need to justify or explain. It’s my life, I can do what I want to. If I’m too busy to write, I’m too busy to write. It is what it is, and all of us (I) need to get over it, fast. And so, to symbolize that I don’t need to write this justification, I’m striking this beginning.
What up, what up! Greetings from Atlanta! Yes, I have moved.
No, it doesn’t feel like home yet. But we’re getting there (maybe)
And that, my friends, is what I have to say in response to the above question.
It has been exactly six months - to the day actually - that I left my previous home and life and status as a student back in London to move to this brand new place called Atlanta, as a full-time teacher.
So far, it’s been different than what I had expected. In some ways more, in others…the uptake has been slow.
When I left London, I had an image in my head: me, stretched out on the couch of my awesome pad, sun shining through the windows as I leaf through the latest issue of some stylish magazine while sipping on some morning coffee. I’d have plans to run some errands during the day, do a little cooking to some jazz tunes in the evening, and then polish off my super-independent-living-up-the-single-life day with whatever novel du jour I was on.
The truth is, aside from the coffee (which I don’t drink), that image is amazingly (and thankfully - I’m so blessed, really) almost exactly spot on. I’ve got a beautiful apartment that I have the freedom to decorate as I please, I’ve got a sexy car to take me all the places I need to go and I have the time and the freedom to indulge in leisure activities as I please. It really doesn’t get better than this.
What I’m not telling you, though, is that the image in my head also came with a grossly underestimated time-frame. I thought I’d be slick and smooth in 3 days or less and instead it’s taken me until very recently to be able to step back and acknowledge that my apartment might still need a few finishing touches, I don’t have as much time as I’d like (but who does right?), and that it isn’t always HOTlanta, but that life can still be good.
It’s a process. And it takes time, lots and lots of time.
Funny thing is, I already knew this and had learned it in a very painful way back during my camp days. I guess amidst all the excitement and dreaming I’d forgotten?
And the even crazier thing is that it doesn’t just apply to my apartment/lifestyle. It applies splendidly to my job as well. Our workplace is gorgeous, but it too, has come together in a very slow and piecemeal way. I forget that on TV they fast-forward this part so that everything is built in like 30 seconds, even though it may be days and days of footage. Sigh to the instant-gratification society we live in.
Getting used to being a full-time teacher with 5 classes and 80 students has also been a process. They don’t love you on the first day, or the first week, or sometimes even the first term. Surprisingly, neither do I. Creating projects can be a *****, grading papers is annoying, and progress reports make me want to throw up. But, six months down the line I’m more organized than I have been in a long time, I’m rising to the top of my game (as much as a first-year can rise, that is), and I’m regaining the creativity that was momentarily stifled in all the panic and confusion that this profession can wreak. And, they come around :)
All I know right now as I re-read what I’m about to post is that I’m in a place where I can actually look back and write with the knowledge that I am already moving forward and that it’s getting better and better every day. THAT is a good feeling.
And the image in my head (minus the coffee) can finally, after many, many difficult moments, be an image that comes alive not just because I perform the motions, but because I’ve become the person.
Welcome back, Z.
