I work full time. I am in my 36th year of teaching and, up until this year, was blissfully in love with my job. Don't get me wrong, I am still blissfully in love with my students, with the sound of children's singing and the pureness of their musical creation. But teaching in the age of Covid has been challenging, to say the least. Gardening and homesteading has become my respite, my source of confidence, personal growth, and joy, and the object of my dreaming. I can see a future beyond the profession I have spent a lifetime nurturing and promoting. That's God's way; leading you to the path you weren't even aware was available.
I joke that in September of 2019, as I started the 13th year in my present position, I asked God for a change. God has a strange sense of humor. By March of 2020, I was teaching remotely out of a living room video studio stocked with all the classroom materials I could stuff into my car in the 24 hours' notice we were given to evacuate the school building. I had my change, but I didn't collapse, surprisingly. I thrived. I accomplished and experienced things I would have never had the year continued normally. I immediately started a YouTube channel to store the volumes of sing-a-longs, tutorials, and lessons I was creating. I participated in my first virtual Choir (Eric Whitaker, Sing Gently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InULYfJHKI0_), something I had wanted to do for a long time. And I wrapped myself in homesteading. I added on to my garden, I built a chicken tractor for my meat chickens, and my seedlings were more carefully started and tended to. I lingered over seed catalogues and discovered new varieties. I expanded my coop.
We went back to in-person school in September, and my devotion to homesteading did not take a back seat. My teaching day has now been sandwiched between morning chores, harvesting, canning, planning, planting, tending to animals, and dreaming. I dream of more. Have I made more work for myself? Sure, but I'm ok with that.
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