I have great hope for a snow day tomorrow.
This hope is immediate and unfettered. Every time I get like this, I remember that if we did have school, I'd be an adult and get over myself and not miss out on a good day in front of me. But I think you can be really boring if you don't hope for this great fun surprise every once in a while too.
Hope hope hope.
I think I am at a point in life where I'm beginning to feel old. Or just 'not that young' anymore. This is subtle, and not something that alarms me very much. But I can feel the change.
A few years ago, it seemed like high school boys looked VERY young to me. I don't say that to THEM...they'd be very offended to hear it....but they are still like little kids. And now that includes college guys too. No wonder....guys in college now are 7 years younger than me. These are the people I used to babysit. That's weird.
Last night I went out to meet Ariane for dinner. And we both got home by 9:30. That was preferred. We had seen the weather. And I am not someone overly worried by weather in most cases. But I live in Minnesota, and I have been caught in it before.
And you learn, and you learn ,and you learn.
And you realize that suddenly you were kind of an idiot before, and you're sorry you had to worry your parents. Once last year, I came home from the same sort of thing...dinner in the city in the winter with friends...and a few miles from home, I had to stop every few hundred feet to get out of my car and scrape away the freezing ice that was collecting on my windshield. Truly alarming. I couldn't see anything. Getting real and mentally preparing for an accident sucks. I was never so glad to get home in my life.
Last week in school, I was passing out papers, and heard a girl in my class singing 'The Sign' under her breath. 'Pitch Pefect' (aca-awesome) has brought this back. And my students don't know it's Ace of Base. And from 1994. And from Sweden. I asked them who was singing Ace of Base, and they didn't even know what I was talking about. Then I said 'Pitch Pefect' and I told them that these were mash ups from the 80s and 90s. That was brand new, at least to some of them.
I remember in 2003 in high school that my teachers were talking to us about music from the late 80s, and I had no idea what they were saying. And now it's me in class with the Millennium babies, explaining music before their time. Those tables turned FAST.
I accept this, by the way. This new found feeling is only momentarily lonely. I don't need students to approve of my 90s childhood in order to have a good day with them. It's all about choosing the shortest way to explain whatever prompted a memory from an earlier time, without embarrassing myself too much. And then moving on. To them. To what is current. To what connects.
I feel older in how I look at people living their lives. And in knowing how things might go. There are less surprises, or at least there are different kinds of surprise. Time feels etched in my mind a little more dearly. You know who your people are and who they aren't. Your confidence is more resolute. And the how-to called 'balancing every day' isn't so hard to get to. I have learned how to simplify too, so that the best things can align with my heartbeat and fill my mind. And that's really nice too.
Here's something simple. Lately I haven't been writing. Really anywhere. But I have been hearing this inside....one of those things aligned with life every day. Write. Write. Write. I should listen to this and write more. Write lots of things, even if they're awful, because this keeps me buoyant and reminds me of my creative God. Sometimes I get really critical of my writing life. ('Who doesn't?' I am told.) And then I eventually see again that it isn't about all of those things that cloud my mind and sometimes exhaust me. It is about creating for the sake of creating and how this brings glory to God.
So I'm back to writing! And hopefully keeping pieces more aptly named 'Jessica, What Were You Thinking?' off of this blog.
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