Resolved -- Excelsior!

Excelsior -- From Latin excelsior, comparative of excelsus (“high”) (archaic) (1) Loftier, yet higher; ever upward.  (2) title of poem by H.W. Longfellow, which reads 

The shades of night were falling fast,

As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
"Excelsior!"

Today we are eleven days into the new year. Eleven days. Today I had a job interview, and in order to prepare for that interview, I cleaned out my portfolio. I printed out a new copy of my resume, and threw out the ten copies that were still in my portfolio from the Education Job fair I attended in Minneapolis last April. And my, what a lot has changed since then! My old resumes bear witness to a distinct shift in goals – the objective on the old ones reads “To obtain a position as a mid-level language arts teacher.” The new one no longer has an objective on it, because I needed space to list my many myriad qualifications for being a museum tour guide.

It turns out I didn’t need the resume – the job I was interviewing for is at a museum where I’ve been training as a volunteer since August, so my meeting today was less of an interview and more of a pre-hire meeting where they offer you the job and you fill out paperwork. I just need to get clearance and name badges and a drug test done, and I will officially have a second job, for which I am very grateful.

If you had told me at this time last year that in twelve months I’d have two jobs, I probably would have kicked you. But a lot changes in twelve months. In the last year, I’ve taught five classes of middle school students, four classes of high school students, and written I don’t even want to remember how many lesson plans. I dealt with workplace bullying drama and the sudden death of a mentor. I graduated from college with honors. I moved home and read a lot of articles about how this seems to be the new normal of my generation. I taught camp for the second summer and learned I’m much better at dealing with crisis and crying children than I ever gave myself credit for before.

 I decided (probably before the screaming children) that I wasn’t going to become a teacher. I interviewed at a number of different places, and found out I was not unemployable. I received my first real job offer, and gave my first job refusal. I entered the work force. I began volunteering at two different museums and learned a great deal about the nature of the museum visitor and the direction of museums in general. I tried to handle all three of my living grandparents having serious health problems throughout the year. I celebrated the birth of two new cousins (once removed.)

I look at that list, and I can’t believe that all those things happened in twelve short months. I managed to pack, intentionally or unintentionally, a lot of meaningful, life-changing experiences into twelve months, and I’m not sure that another year of my life will ever be so filled again. Some of them were wonderful experiences, and some of them were very far from wonderful, but all of them, I hope, have made me a better, brighter, stronger person.

In the last four years, I’ve seen the amount of writing I do for this blog slowly taper off, and for all that I know not too many people are reading this, that dwindling number still saddens me. At the beginning of a new year, it is customary to make a resolution regarding these sorts of things, but try as I might, I can’t bring myself to promise that I’ll write on this blog more. My resolutions are different – broader, in some ways. I resolve to make better use of my time. I resolve to be kinder and more welcoming with everyone. I resolve to care for my body more. I resolve to be a good steward of my money. I resolve to move myself higher as a human being. 

Perhaps a better resolution than ‘write more’ would be ‘be a better steward of my talents.’ In addition to invoking the Roman meaning of talent as a unit of money, this phrase brings together everything I want to strive for in the coming year. Use my time better by finding causes, places and people that need my help or my skills as a teacher, as a speaker, as a mover of boxes or a purveyor of useless facts. Become healthier, happier and more content with my life and my place in the world by helping others and enjoying the natural world around me.

It’s a lofty list of goals, to be sure, but I think that I can do it. After all, I’m writing another blog post, aren’t I?