I slowly dragged the cursor over my Outlook menu. Gently hovered it over the calendar tab. Took a deep breath.
“Don’t do it, Sam,” a voice whispered in my ear. An inner child? A spectral vision? Me talking to me?
“I must,” I said, mustering some courage.
I clicked.
Meetings. Classes. Back to school picnics. It’s coming. The fall of 2023, people. It’s here.
***
I’m laughing at myself. Always, but especially now.
The fall of 2023 is nothing. 10 years ago I’d be bracing for another year as a high school teacher, a doctoral student, and a theatre director. That’s a combination of jobs that will leave you reeling. The hours in 2013 were brutal. 6:00am until 8:00pm. And cancel the weekend when I was staging a show.
My calendar is far more reasonable this fall. I’m no slouch. I’ve got lots of work to do and I’ll do my best to do it well. But this year doesn’t promise anything that I haven’t done before. Anything I can’t handle.
Everything is clouded by adulthood, of course. The responsibilities of adulthood. Parenting. Managing schedules. Paying bills. You get it. There’s always something for adult Sam Tanner to be worrying about, even as he learns that he needs to not be worrying about stuff. One thing to know this lesson in my head, still another to learn it in my body.
I just want my body to feel good, y’all. And if might be that years of a schedule that went from 6:00am until 8:00pm and included the laborious task of grappling with teenagers and adolescents is taking some sort of toll. High school teaching is hard. Being alive is hard. All of it is hard, people, don’t let anybody tell you different. But just because it is hard doesn’t mean it isn’t good.
***
Man, I’ve got it good. An associate professor of English Education at The University of Iowa. The top creative writing college in the country. A midwestern university near my home in the Twin Cities. A great house. A beautiful wife and two beautiful children. I am fortunate! Blessed! What, in the name of all that is holy, do I have to complain about?
“Never ask a Jew how they are doing,” my Jewish father always joked. “They will actually tell you.”
Kvetch, kvetch, and kvetch.
So how am I doing? Everything is great, people, I just feel a little off. The body keeps the score or whatever. Doctors have assured me I’m not dying, so I don’t think it is that. And it’s not like I’m a basket case. I just feel off. So what is my intention for the fall of 2023?
Build a simple routine. Take things a little easier. Let things that make me anxious fall off me. Acknowledge those things (hi, blood pressure!) and then let them go like so many butterflies. Land for a moment and then take flight. That’s my intention. Move slowly, this fall, solid in the foundations that have been built out of 43 years of building foundations in this world.
So to my inner child, my spectral vision, and to me-talking-to-me: There’s nothing to be afraid of. There is only this moment and this moment is good. And I’ll keep spilling out into more moments, safe that it is good to be alive and even better to be aware.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 