Twenty years of teaching came to an end today. It was my last day at work. The school year is over. The hallways deserted. Students and teachers alike have fled for another year. In roughly eleven weeks my colleagues will reassemble in the cafeteria for the start of the 2007/08 year and I will not be among them. I can’t say that it bothers me all that much. Teaching hasn’t been fun for several years now and frankly I feel more than a little conflicted about my role in helping churn out the cogs of tomorrow. There is more to life than one’s occupation but anymore it seems that our lives take a back seat to work. 

So, the desk is cleared out, file cabinets emptied and boxes carted to the car. Twenty years now occupies three small totes and five file boxes in my garage and nearly half of that is going to a friend of mine who also teaches. I turned in my keys and parking tag. Sometime next week I will be deleted from the email system.

Destiny is a funny thing.  A widow on the board once remarked that the universe doesn’t give a rat’s ass about any of us and that believing that we deserve reimbursement or a reward for what we have been through is naive. The universe is not fair and we are nothing more than the cogs that make it up. In my opinion this only partly true. The universe is not fair but it is only a thing, a shell, not unlike the membrane that surrounds and protects the living organism within. I have never believed that I was owed anything really for the past several years. I have always believed that there was happiness and life waiting on the other side however.

Today was the last day of school but the beginning of the journey to what it is I am meant to do next.