Tag Archive: starting over

New City, New Culture, New Life

Darren and me at Bass Pro Shops, like Disneyland for hunting and fishing.

Bass Pro Shops, the perfect union of a hunting and fishing shop, Sam's Club, and Disneyland.

I’ve been thinking lately how crazy it is that my life and environment could change so much within the last year. Nine months ago, I was living with two roommates on a busy street in the San Francisco Mission District. Two months ago, I was living with my folks at my childhood home in Sonoma while I went back to school. Now, I’m living with Darren in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi, indefinitely.

Careerwise, I worked much more than full-time for years at Spark running youth programs, then became a student again in the fall during my intense three-month period of reschooling. This spring, I’m trying out freelance writing and seeing if I’m able to work completely on my own time. For now, I’m grateful that my phone stays mostly quiet, and my calendar isn’t booked up with meetings and coffee dates. My fast food and red meat consumption has gone up probably 500% (given that I used to eat hardly any), but so has my amount of exercise and sleep.

The other night, I felt like a real Jackson resident for perhaps the first time. Someone mentioned that the writer Ellen Gilchrist is from Mississippi, and without thinking about it, I felt proud to be a fellow southerner.

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Reschooling Reason #3: Start with a Clean Slate

SlateI’m spending the week in Jackson, Mississippi, visiting my boyfriend. Darren is a graphic designer and one of my sister’s best friends from Loyola University, New Orleans. If you’re wondering how we met, we hit it off in February at Mardi Gras. Nothing spells romance like applying eyeliner to a pirate in a pink bandana while he whines, “Agggh! It feels like you’re drawing on my eyeball!”

One of my priorities for this visit — besides consuming all the buttery delicacies that the south has to offer — is for Darren to help me revamp the Reschool Yourself site. Lucky for me, he can understand language like, “The objective of the WP-SuperCache is to make the site static and not run any PHP” — yet has never memorized pi to the 100th digit, or attended a Star Wars-themed wedding.

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Reschooling Reason #2: Be a Grown-Up with No Regrets

WitchesI have a confession to make: Like a fairy tale witch, I secretly long to steal the youth of innocent children. When I see kids running about, carefree and laughing, I don’t think, “How wonderful, to be young!” Instead, I’m wildly jealous. These kids don’t have any debt, or much emotional baggage; they’re able to enjoy whatever they’re doing at the moment without dwelling on what happened yesterday or what will happen five years from today. They speak and act freely without concern for what others will think. Their instincts are intact, and their futures are wide open.

We grown-ups, on the other hand, have often made choices that limited our options. We may have mismanaged our money, failed to reach our potential in our schooling or career, or had kids of our own before we’d had enough time to be kids ourselves. These choices may have made us less playful and imaginative, and more stymied and fearful.

I expect that I’d be less jealous of kids if I could have a completely fresh start, putting any limiting experiences behind me and reconnecting with the optimism and self-assurance that I had as a child. I would like to return to square one and begin again, living my life completely on my terms without regrets or complaints. If I succeed in doing this, maybe I’ll become content with the grown-up life I’ve chosen. At the least, I hope to avoid becoming Old Lady Dicker, the resentful hag who throws rocks at the children who pass by her rundown shack.

This post is part of the series “Why Reschool?”