The summer before I was first hired as a teacher, I took on a job cleaning in a movie theater. Prospects then were not good for finding a classroom in time for school to start. During my interview, the manager of the theater asked how long I planned on being around, saying that people usually didn’t stick around in that job for too long and it was inconvenient to keep training new hires whenever someone left. I told him that since school was starting in a matter of weeks and I had no leads at all, the chances were very good I’d be around for awhile.
It was a great job for an introvert in a lot of ways. I usually worked sometime between midnight and 5:00 AM, depending on how long it took each night. I only had to clean the theaters, and I was literally the only person in the entire establishment that time of night (or morning). All I really had to do was use a modified leaf blower to send all the trash to the front of the auditorium, shovel it into a huge rolling trash barrel, and then mop the rows so they weren’t sticky the next morning. The trash was easy, even if everything smelled like stale popcorn and too much sugar, and working with the leaf blower was even kind of fun. I was more of a night owl then than I am now, so the hours were an easy adjustment.
It didn’t last, though. Two weeks before the school year was scheduled to start, I was hired for my first teaching job at the school where I still am. When I called my boss at the theater to let him know I was going to be moving on, he asked if there was any chance I’d think about staying on for some hours. I was a little stunned he even asked. I said no thanks, but I thought, "Dude. Really? This isn’t just a different paycheck, this is beginning my career. This is what I went to college for. This is my dream. So I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to put my whole world into this new beginning and continue mopping your floors. Not many people ever get the chance to trade in a job for a dream."
In the twenty-three years that followed, it’s fair to say there have been instances when being a teacher defined who I was as much as it was what I did for a living. Even today, as much as the profession has changed, especially in the past ten years (and, in my opinion, not for the better in every single way), there is still much about it I love. It wasn’t that long ago that I was perfectly content with the idea of just moving on year to year like everyone else I know, waiting for that one year when I would know for sure that it was time to leave the classroom behind me and wander gracefully into whatever retirement had in store. But things are a little different now. Because even though there are still a healthy number of years between right now and when that scenario would be a realistic consideration, there’s a tiny gnawing starting up that makes me wonder if I really want to wait that long.
Ever since I began working with my agent last spring, there’s been a certain amount of speculation about what that change would mean for my teaching career. Mostly it’s been a lot of hyperbolic jokes, both coming from other people and from me, all about overnight fame and extravagant riches, miles of autograph lines, movie deals, the works. One friend of mine even had my framed autograph hanging on the wall behind her desk for months (maybe she still does) and of course I misspelled her name when I signed it. It’s all a fun fantasy to play with.
The truth is different, however. Getting an agent or selling a manuscript is not a golden pass to a new tax bracket and a collection of Newbery Medals. In fact, things still feel as up in the air as they ever have. (Side note, to highlight exactly how new everything still feels -- I mentioned a couple of posts back that I was reading the book The Shark Curtain, written by Chris Scofield, another one of Carrie’s clients. Knowing some of the back story of the work Carrie put into selling such an artfully written book makes me wonder exactly how my little middle grade manuscript and I even made it on her list. I’m seriously not fishing for compliments in saying that; The Shark Curtain is just THAT well-written. I'm stunned I can claim any kind of tenuous connection to it at all.)
So what does the future even look like? I know for certain that I still have some solid years of teaching ahead of me. But maybe...two, three, or four books, or anywhere from five to ten years down the road, and all the best possible things manage to align in the best possible ways?
To live a life as a working writer is my dream now. And while it isn’t exactly accurate to compare teaching to trying to separate Coca-Cola-epoxied popcorn seeds from a concrete theater floor (teaching is MUCH harder), I’ll say that if the chance comes along in a way that makes doing so a reasonable and viable decision, I would certainly think about at least taking a sabbatical to focus on writing for a time. And if that worked out?
As happy as I am to have the job that I have, not many people ever get the chance to trade in a job for a dream.
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