Get Your Head in the Game, Girl

"When writing the story of your life, don't let anyone else hold the pen." --from iliketoquote.com

When my husband retired from the Air Force and we moved back to our hometown, I had such high expectations of what it was going to be like:  large family get-togethers with extended family--friends already here that I could spend time with--and a built-in career, where I could finally shine, here on my home turf (...because when I left here, I'd just graduated from high school and was the least likely person to actually go to college, much less get my Masters AND maintain a rockin' GPA). Boy, did my expectations fall pancake flat! We see our family almost as infrequently as we did when we lived away. Friends who are here have lives (Go figure!) they stay busy with (...totally understandable), and a super teaching career I spent almost a decade building was nearly laid waste by people and a system so politically poisoned, I felt coated in toxic waste every day of teaching for the one school where I taught in this district (somebody call HAZMAT, please)! One bright spot from that mess...I got to meet and help a lot of students who were a joy to be around and I sure needed that to cling tightly to in order to keep it together!

Two years I've spent unraveling and picking apart the problems encountered since we've been back, in hopes of finding some scrap of understanding as to what's gone "wrong" and attempt to put it to "rights". Have we changed that much? Has this place changed to the point where it no longer suits us at all? I don't think the problems have anything to do with that. I think the blame can be squarely laid at the feet of my expectations, and honestly, those pesky expectations can be problematic in a myriad of ways! But how do I move forward when parts of this mess feel so thick sometimes that I can't see in any direction? Maybe the solutions live in my ability to get my head back in the game, MY game, MY way! Yes, I know this area and a lot of people who live in and around here, however, because of my long absence, it's changed, they've changed, and so have I. Two-and-a-half decades of being away...it was BOUND to happen! Every time we moved to a different base with the Air Force, I'd have to start over, reinvent my life and find my stride. Sometimes that took awhile, but in other places it happened fairly quick and easy. This is my hometown, but really, it's just another new place where I'm beginning again...and that's O.K.! Being a military wife for twenty-four years trained me well on how to adapt. So far I've been hitting nothing but foul balls and strikes. Time for me to straighten out my swing and knock that ball out of the park!

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Image @ tvall.org