One step in the future

Yesterday I worked my last full-time day as a teacher.  From September, I’ll be part-time.  I love teaching.  There’s so much I love about it: sharing my love of reading and writing; working with amazing colleagues and often even more amazing students; planning schemes of work designed to educate and illuminate and entertain; and building relationships with all my students.  But I know it’s time to start the transition to the next stage of my life.  So from September, I’ll be a part-time teacher.  I’ll also be a part-time writer.

Obviously, there’s no such thing as being a part-time writer really.  You’re either a writer, or you aren’t.  It’s like being a mother – I was annoyed recently by someone who declared that she’d been a full-time mum for the past three years – like somehow because I choose to go to work and my kids go to school and we’re apart, that I stop being a mother when I’m not with them – apparently I’m just a part-time mum.  But that’s not true.  I’m mum all the time whether we’re here or there.  And being a writer is the same deal.  I’m always a writer, whether it’s here or there.

The difference is that going forward, writing will be an actual part-time job for me.  It will be what I do in those hours when I’m not teaching – admittedly, that still sounds a lot like what I do now, but the difference is that there will be set work time devoted to writing.  In the working day.  I’m taking a paycut by going part-time at teaching and at some point my writing is going to have to make that up.

It’s incredibly scary but also incredibly exhilerating.  Don’t tell anyone, but I’m starting to feel like I’ve taken a giant step into my new future.  Moving from almost-writer, through some-time-writer and finally into Writer.

I can’t wait.