Cup Status: 3/4 Full
In a previous post, I wrote down a goal that I would like to become a writer who is able to support herself with her writing. Retirement from teaching is 9 years away, but I will be many years away from Medicare being accessible to me, so I do need to make financial plans for that future. But, the practical part aside, I enjoy writing. I write for fun, to get emotions out, to process my ideas, to create for my teaching career, and for creativity. It is this last one that has recently become a reminder to me of its importance. While reading Yes Please by Amy Pohler, I found so many ways to connect to the messages that she wove throughout her memoir. But there was one towards the end that really struck a chord with me. Pohler is comparing a career to a bad boyfriend and then she moves on to talking about the importance of creativity versus a career. I am not going to talk too much about my career in this post. I do believe that it is a noble one that is absolutely necessary and is something that I have given 21 years of my life to, so far, but for this post, I am going to focus mostly on what Pohler says about creativity, because some of what she says about a career can absolutely be applied to teaching as much as it can to the entertainment industry.
Pohler says, “…let me make a distinction between career and creativity. Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. That joy that comes when you do something that you love. That small voice that tells you, ‘I like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going.’ That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us to feel less alone in the world.” I am trying to tap more into my creativity. I am trying to use it to make a difference in my life and to increase my happiness quotient. I don’t have a lot of time right now for extended creative projects. My younger children can be a bit of a handful and it is summer, after all. But I have completed phase one of a fairy garden for my 6-year-old. I have planted and am tending a vegetable garden for my family. The daily harvest of zucchini, green beans, peppers, and lettuce has been so beautiful. The tomatoes and yellow squash are close to being ready for harvest, and the cucumber, broccoli, onions, strawberries, and pumpkins are growing and growing, getting ready for a harvest that is sure to come. The creativity I can use in nature makes me feel alive. I love when my hands are in the soil. I love to coax life from seeds and to benefit from the harvest. I love to plant flowers and see the explosion of color as the blooms burst free. This is what I am transforming my backyard into–the garden oasis I have always wanted. It is a creativity of its own.
My second form of creativity is writing. I took a very long break from writing on this blog because of life circumstances. When I am depressed and overwhelmed, I default to hiding in my internal cave. I push away those things that make me happy. I do not know why I do this, but it is almost as if I don’t believe that I deserve to be happy in the midst of the darkness. But I am going to do my best to not fall back into that cave, that trap of my own creation. I am going to write to “lubricate my life” as Pohler says and to “help us [me] feel less alone in this world.” When I write, even if no one reads my posts, it helps me to feel like my feelings are out in the world and maybe my realizations and crazy aha moments might help someone else as well. If not, that is ok too, but at least it is helping me, and it is giving me a creative outlet for my words.
I plan to extend my creativity to my career again soon enough, but with the renewed vigor of someone who has had the summer to rest. Teaching is indeed the career of creativity in the long-range planning and in the moment. It is a great mirror and a great collaboration of learning. It is output and reflection all at once. But when summer comes, my creativity gets to focus on me and my needs, and it is glorious.
Besides talking about creativity, Pohler does make some interesting points about careers that I can’t not mention. She says, “I will say it again. Ambivalence is key. You have to care about the work, but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look…You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, ‘I made it.’ You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful. Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on the one hand and like a total fraud on the other…Ambivalence can help tame the beast. Remember a career is a bad boyfriend. It likes it when you don’t depend on it. It will reward you every time you don’t act needy. It will chase you if you act like other things (passion, friendship, family, longevity) are more important to you.” I am not fully sure why this resonated with me so much, because I do not fully feel that teaching is a bad boyfriend, but I can say that there are days when I would like to be ambivalent and stop caring, to break up with it and find something new to fill my days. There are days when it feels like teaching takes and takes and takes and doesn’t care for my needs and when I try to find a better work-life balance, teaching reminds me that it is there with mountains of work to complete. Until I retire, my work will never be complete. I will not be able to climb career mountain and say that I have made it. I will be able to say that I did my best, despite sometimes feeling like an absolute fraud with imposter syndrome. I will always care about my work AND the outcome. I can’t not think about the results, so ambivalence, on the whole, cannot be key for me. I will do my best to not worry about what others think about me and to infuse as much of my creativity and passion into my career as I can because that is where the joy is. Teaching is most definitely a “complicated soup of feeling” but with the reminder from “That small voice that tells you, ‘I like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going.’” I don’t need others to tell me that I am a good teacher, but I do need to remind myself that when things get difficult, I must lean into my creativity and not default to the status quo for survival. This is my goal. Lean into the creative and be ambivalent about the things that don’t matter. The noise from the government, society, and even some people I care about. I must remember to be passionate. To be a light for myself and others as I move forward and do my best to stay out of my cave. It is the best way to fill my cup.
The Cup 
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