I had a surprising insight today during a teachers’ workshop. We were doing some reflecting and sharing, when I thought to myself: I like to work. I’m in my comfort zone when I have a job to do.
It’s not that this is surprising to me. I’ve known this about myself for a long time, but as I sat in that session, finished with the task and loosening the reins around my thoughts, I tried to remember when I first saw myself like this. It certainly wasn’t in childhood, when I did my best to avoid my chores, did homework at the last minute, and grudgingly practiced the piano.
So I tried to follow that self-image back through my own history. When had I become a hard worker?
Slow Starter
In high school I worked just hard enough to get the grades. And I liked staying busy - lots of clubs, volunteer work, and some babysitting. But I wasn’t what you’d call driven or focused on a goal. I spent hours curled up reading and daydreaming, and began to think of myself as a future writer.
In my early 20s I saw myself more as an adventurer, an experimenter. I don’t remember enjoying the sense of well-being that comes through steady effort. I found that I could learn new things and experiment with a variety of environments (work, school, relationships) fairly easily, which contributed to my self-view that I was good at transitioning, and starting something new. But finishing?
It is perhaps too easy to credit parenthood with personal growth, but I think the inescapable task of mothering day after day taught me about perseverance. If the hair brushing routine wasn’t working on Monday, it might work Tuesday. If broccoli was rejected this month, it might be loved the next month. You made an adjustment and tried again. There was no giving up on growing children.
Benefits of Stress
As a mid-life adult I returned to school and worked harder than I ever had to complete a master’s program while teaching full-time and single parenting two children. At the same time I was negotiating the end of a toxic marriage while still living with my husband. (And for anyone who thinks those sentences are incompatible: that’s what it was.) If you’ve been through similar stresses you know this is true: when times are tough you learn you can do much more than you thought possible. I learned to parent, teach, and study on a few hours of sleep and to suppress my fury and let my gut do the emoting on the toilet. (Not a recommended coping method.)
When it was all over, I was rewarded with a new career but not an easy one. Teaching special education students was the next important change agent. Teaching students who learn differently can be (should be) the most challenging job in education. Most teachers naturally turn to the methods that worked for them when they were young. But a student who struggles with learning to read or count needs a teacher who can teach the same material in a dozen different ways.
I also learned from my students what it looks like to try hard every day in a world that doesn’t really care. A “there but for the grace of God” awakening can be a powerful example.
Eventually, after more than ten years in the classroom and three years in school administration, it was time to move on from the world of K-12.
So, drawing on my love of adventure and experimenting, and confident of my ability to work hard, I reinvented myself as an adult education teacher. It is work that fully engages me. I am at home in a local college where I love working with my students. And again, my students are those who have been the least served by their institutions and yet here they are, sacrificing every day to make a better life for themselves and their families.
But What About Writing?
Meanwhile, all this time, I’ve been writing this and that, dreaming of the day when it would be my primary life. And there were long stretches when writing — for other people — was my job. But I want to write poetry and novels. I want to read my lyrical and insightful words in libraries and bookstores. I want to be interviewed by the New York Times and on NPR. I want to teach summer workshops at writing retreats on Cape Cod and New Mexico. I dream of a cozy barn attached to my cottage in an artsy little town where I make a space for other writers and storytellers to gather and share. It’s a sweet dream. (Don’t be embarrassed to dream!)
I’ve made incremental steps towards reaching my goal: taking poetry workshops on Cape Cod and New York, reading my poetry in open mic coffeehouses in Boston, New York, and Seattle, joining writers’ cooperatives in the area where I live now, and publishing some poems in online and print journals.
Writing is Real Work
The trouble is, I have treated writing as something that pleases and amuses me, but not as work I must do to live. I have not given it the stomach churning effort that I devoted to my teaching career. It’s an optional activity. No one is expecting my book next Monday and I won’t get a letter in my HR file if I don’t send out three poems this week.
But my surprise insight today gives me hope. When I embrace myself as a hard worker, a person who actually gets a lot of her self-esteem from putting her shoulder into it, then I know I can bring that energy to my goal of publishing my first book of poetry. I just have to give up the writer’s version of the magical prince fantasy, that some heavenly confluence of events will make it happen. Instead, I need to sit down and face the computer as a woman with some work to do.