Now and then…all right, let’s face it, too often; I need to get out of my head…I look at where I am and who I am. Now and then, I even figure something out.
Contrary to grad school telling us that we were all going to be leaping tall IEPs in a single bound, I’ve turned out so far to be a mediocre teacher. Contrary to grad school, and then Pendergast, telling us that nothing but perfect was good enough, I’m OK with that. I’m first-year; I have a right to be mediocre. After all I’ve had to do to drag myself to this point, I deserve to be mediocre for a while.
The problem is, in pretty much everything else I can think of in my life, I’m falling short there too…on any given measure I can think of, I’m so far from who and what I was supposed to be right now, especially for what I used to be. I miss being a kid, for that; I like the independence now but I also liked being good at stuff, and as a general rule I’m not any more. “Good at stuff” as the foundation of my identity doesn’t work so well when it stops being true. It doesn’t help, I guess, that work is pretty much the only thing in my life. That’s what makes it hard to accept being mediocre; if I’m only doing one thing, I should at least be good at it.