Crash

It's funny how life will interfere with itself before you can go and screw it up any more.  One day, you're stopped in traffic, minding your own business, when crash, another vehicle comes screaming over a knoll and rear-ends you, slamming you into the car in front of you, leaving you with multiple disc injuries and a firsthand understanding of the bitter irony of the "no-fault" world.

Well maybe that's just me.

If you're wondering where the heck I've been, I'd like to tell you it has everything to do with that accident last fall.  As recently as just a few weeks ago I could have offered a pretty convincing testimony.  I was hurt.  I could no longer manage large, spirited dogs.  I couldn't handle a lot of walking or exercising.  I might as well have given up this business entirely.  Teaching sounded more and more like a sensible alternative, and my sudden knack for picking up as many courses as I could possibly squeeze into my weekly schedule seemed a plausible sign that I was finally zip-lining along the right path.

I was mistaken.  And life stepped in once again, but with a clearer message. (Apparently getting sandwiched between two students as I was heading home from campus wasn't clear enough to me at the time.)

Crash.  Again.  Actually it more like a thud, and the thud was me, slumping semi-consciously into the wall at the wellness center I'd been visiting for the sake of improving my health so I could become a better teacher.  (Told you it got more obvious.)

"You're hypoglycemic," they told me.  I was hovering dangerously above a Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis.  My poor kidneys were exhausted from pumping out as much cortisol as it took to prevent me from collapsing any sooner.  The culprit?  Stress....from teaching....seven classes on three campuses.  Luckily I caught on before the Universe had to become even more dramatically obvious to get through to me.

So, want to know where I've really been?  I've been carefully re-tethering myself to the core of career-driven insanity I'd leapt from when I resigned from my full-time job last summer.  I've been soaking in as much self-paralyzing fear as my body could absorb (around all that excess insulin and cortisol).  I've been living the Law of Attraction at its finest.  I have not been a victim of circumstance, as much as I'd like to claim it.  I have been a victim of my own doing.  My accident and health crisis were not the causes of my lengthy disappearance.  They were the messengers that helped me reappear.

And now that I've made these critical distinctions, I'm ready to crash into the dream that, not long ago, I believed in strongly enough to uproot my entire professional existence over.  Although I didn't need their help figuring this one out, I'm grateful to be surrounded by friends--both bipeds and quadrupeds--who never seem to lose faith in me.  Even when I do.