How did this happen?

The Decision

It was the morning of July 6, 2007. That's easy to remember since it was so close to being 7/7/7. Joellen was staying with me at my small but very sweet and nearly perfect house on Woodrow Street in Durham, NC. I had spent a lot of time that week thinking about the upcoming school year. I knew that I should go for National Board Certification. The extra 12% was surely enough incentive to jump through those hoops even though jumping through hoops is not something I do well. I'd read about the process online and tried to guess how much time it would actually take, then translated that into an hourly rate, assuming I'd get the extra 12% per year for five years. Yep, I just had to do it. I even looked at my teaching schedule and decided to do the bulk of the work in the Fall, when my schedule was lightest.

But just thinking about it was depressing. So from the end of the pendulum's swing that told me to do it because it made the most sense financially, I moved all the way across to ask What would you do with a year of your life if money didn't matter?

And the answer was there, fully formed: buy a VW camper and circle the U.S., dancing and hiking and reading and camping. It's a trip I'd fantasized about for years, but I always assumed I'd have to wait until I retired to afford it. Now I realized that it was the perfect time to go. My parents and local aunt were well enough that I didn't feel I had to be geographically close. My daughters were well situated. I was reasonably healthy and still young enough (by contemporary measures) to start a third career when the trip was done, if going back to NCSSM didn't work out. It would be another 10 years before I could officially retire- and by then, one of those criteria is likely to be untrue. Why wait?

The timeline

My plan was to sell the house in mid-April so that the closing would be in early June -- just the right timing to hit the road after graduation. And I thought I'd find the camper in March so that I could debug it during Spring dance weekends.

That's not the way it happened, of course.