Be the best me

I don't know what this means.

Maybe I will abandon university teaching.

Maybe I will power through, or maybe I will quit, my summer job as director for the Uber-Conservative youth theater troupe.

-- okay, I am coming back to this some weeks later.

The prompt for this post was seeing memes and quotes that reminded me that we don't need to struggle, to compete to be other than what we are- because then, what would success really mean?

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 "It's never too late to be who you might have been." George Eliot

No one can be better at being me than I am at being me. So, I should be the best me I can be.

Only, who exactly am I these days? I have lost sight of / connection with who I am from time to time. This seems to be another one of those times.

So, to tie in the first draft comments:
I haven't abandoned university teaching. Yet. Although I fear it may be abandoning me.
And, I did quit my summer Uber-Conservative job.

* University teaching. I have been enjoying the two classes I am teaching this semester. And the students have been enjoying the classes. AND LEARNING. I've been learning too.

My students have been raving about how great my classes are. Faculty members have been coming in and telling me how much my students- their students- are loving my classes.

I finally couldn't take it anymore when a past chair of the department (and one time great mentor for me) came in to say- again- how great my classes are, how much the students say they enjoy the classes and what they are learning.

Well, I said, that doesn't seem to matter, does it?

In context it was clear I was referencing that the department doesn't seem to want to hire me as a professor.

He stopped and started from saying much of anything, but the stops and starts essentially were:
- having to do with "how the pieces fit"
- "future directions"

What I gathered is- confirmation that I *won't* be hired as full time faculty any time soon. And, part of it (this is partly my guess work now, and partly what I was told when applying for a previous job) is that I'm not world-famous published artist (and honestly, unless I won a Tony and a Pulitzer, I doubt that my home-grown qualifications will ever impress them).

And another part of it, guessing again but pretty sure though they can NEVER say it! - is my age.
(And I even THINK he said- as he was leaving- "maybe I'll get this one"- looking around my office. But maybe I was imagining that. But maybe not- as the senior faculty have all been kicked out of their previous posh offices to lowlier digs... but I digress).

Directing: I did, ultimately, for a variety of reasons, leave the directing job for the Uber-Conservative group. I still thrill with happiness and relief each time I remember that I have left that job! So very much the right decision. Still, that means I don't know when I will be directing again.

I love directing. And I am good at it. Why can't I get paid to do what I love and what I am good at?

Writing. I don't know what is holding me back. I have these great ideas and starts of ideas and then I just don't follow through.

I am hoping that a little kindness to myself and healing from the loss of the job-I-didn't-really-have-anyway will get me back on track.