Half-eaten chicken.

I realize it's been a while since I spent the time to reflect a bit on my swirling tide-pool of a life. Alas, time, I have not. Blogospheria, lately, has consisted mostly of lurking low and reading the fine things my dear friends have to say. I too wonder if Leonard Cohen would eat homemade pumpkin pie and wax long in sophisticated prose of the ludicrousness of our current lack of political representation. I am enthralled by the talk of fashion-ready bike helmets and community building in the land of hormone-fueled monsters. I bow to thee, beloved wordsmiths. Indeed, in measure I am lacking.

I started a new job a month ago. A hard job. The hardest I have ever had, I think, because I really care about doing it right. Doing it well. Doing it... something. I think I am a good teacher. I know way more than I ever thought I would about the craft of teaching and mentoring. I have practiced and become fairly competent. But, smash it together with an over abundance of administrative tasks, litigation-happy parents, and the overall joys of special education... man is I tired. Grammar is beyond me, aren't they?

This isn't a play-by-play post, though. This is a contemplative post. A quiet resignation to the fact that I have chosen what is probably the hardest profession on Earth. I am the keeper of future thought, and I am scared.

Details are best left for beer-soaked chats with puebloan friends whom, I must address, we miss terribly. Perhaps the realities of what this year has been for us have not sunken in. Or, rather, perhaps they are beginning to. The motto seems to be this: It hurts to be lied to.

Maybe this post smacks of black fingernail polish and for that I am sorry. I am happy with my "new life." I just hope the price for it isn't a total loss of what was before.