Category: Musings

Musings, Unbound

Hello, 2017

Carrie Villarreal

The ball in New York dropped.  In Texas, the last few minutes of 2016 tick away.  I had considered seeking out some event to attend to ring in 2017, but I am spending a quiet night at home with the love of my life instead.  Honestly, I can’t think of a better way to welcome the passage of time.

In my perusal of blogs reminiscing about the past and looking forward to the future, one theme holds prominent – hope.  It’s such a simple word that carries the weight of immeasurable possibility.  I think we as a society, a brotherhood of human beings, could do with a little more hope in our lives.  The simple act of having enough faith to hope can change many worlds.

So, here is to you my my fellow writer, reader, friend, lover, brother, sister, father, mother: I hope your New Year is as full of every kind of love, joy, kindness, achievement, and possibility you dream.

Happy New Year!

In response to Daily Prompt: Hopeful
Featured Image: Pixabay – “Winter Bloom” by LarsBorris (CC0 Public Domain)
Musings, Unbound

Hope and Purpose

Carrie Villarreal

As the year wanes towards the New Year, we seek resolutions to work towards in the coming days.  I don’t know about you, but I have yet to carry through a single resolution since I remember making my first one back when I was fourteen or fifteen.  Still, these resolutions give us a sense of purpose and determination, however fleeting, as we return to activities long since dropped since March or April of the year before.  In this sense, we find some renewal.  Some hope.

As an educator, I am afforded two weeks at Christmas as a “vacation”.  I use quotations because anyone who has worked or is working in education knows that we only dream of vacations when we’re really attending professional development, pinning lesson ideas, wondering how our students are doing, or just generally curled up in a ball binge watching our favorite shows while we anxiously obsess over all the things we know we should be doing to prepare for students to return but find little will to actually do it.  Maybe that last part is just me, though.

The truth of the matter is celebrating Christmas is hard.  With all the good cheer floating like snowflakes through the air, the loss of my dearest loved ones fills me with a chill.  It’s hard to let the season fill me when the absence feels so deep.  Sometimes crying can break the ice, so that other emotions can fill up the well in our souls.  My tears just won’t fall.  With this in mind and knowing I can’t let my heart freeze, I’m going to looking forward.  I’m will break the ice with hope and purpose.

Carrie’s Top 5 Determinations for Hope and Purpose in 2017:

  • Blog at least twice a week: You can dust off and brush up something you’ve written before, but be sure you are actively writing.
  • Keep track of at least one happy moment during the week with a “Ray of Sunshine Jar”.  Open it up and read a few if you need a little sunshine in your life!
  • Be healthy enough to wear the sailboat dress that Mom always wanted to wear
  • Tell someone you love them – every day.  You never know when it will be their last time to hear it or your last time to say it.
  • Read, read, read!  Seriously.  You’re an English teacher.  It’s kind of in the job description, anyways.
In response to Daily Prompt: Renewal
Featured Image: Pixabay – “Sparkler” by Unsplash (CC0 Public Domain) 
Musings, Unbound

Hollow Year

Carrie Villarreal

What is existence?  How do we construct its purpose?  When we do manage to wrestle some menial sense of direction, how do we know it’s not something contrived, something shoehorned in in the last moment?  These are questions I have been wrestling with, and they’ve only become more prevalent and urgent in the past couple of weeks.  

When I was younger, I had many ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up.  A marine biologist discovering the secrets of the Marianas Trench.  A paleontologist filling in holes in the historical timeline.  A secret agent protecting the world from untold doom.  An astronaut and first woman to have her baby on the moon.  What grand dreams!

I also wanted to be a teacher.  I wanted to be one since I was in kindergarten.  It was the safe dream, but it was my dream nonetheless.  I made it happen and loved every minute of it.  Until, I didn’t anymore.  Don’t get me wrong.  There are still days when I believe that I’ll only be alive if I work with young minds.  Then there are the days, even after eight years, where I sit in my car during lunch and cry.  It used to be these days were few and far between.  Now, the marks on the calendar tell me this is more than just a passing phase.  This is where I am, that bittersweet moment where you know the dream is ending.

So, I ask again what is existence?  How do we construct its purpose?  Do we define it by what we do?  Do we define it by who we become?  Do we define it by those we keep in our life?  Do we define it by family?  Do we define it by those things we have left undone but intended to do all along?  Really, I think all of these just ring hollow through the years.  Really, I think the answer is there is no answer.

Perhaps, it’s because the summer of my life is tending towards fall, and I have no real harvest to speak of to bring in that I am asking all these questions.  Perhaps it’s the impending winter days which seem much shorter and the nights much colder that I am seeking to rekindle some truth to keep me warm.  Perhaps, I should take the wisdom of a student who passionately interrupted our discussion on the fallibility of mankind in “By the Waters of Babylon” earlier in the week with “Miss, it’s too early for an existential crisis!”

In response to Daily Prompt: Construct
Featured Image: Pixabay – “Hollow” by Daswortgewand (CC0 Public Domain)
Musings, Unbound

The Pause

Carrie Villarreal

Pictures this: You are lying in bed, and the gramophone in your brain is winding down its last tune.  It’s soft serenade is lulling you into sweet repose, and the Sandman, that darling little cherub, is preparing a graceful sprinkling of dust to send you over into dreamland.  Then someone’s big hips bump the table.  The needle scratches across the groove, the Sandman rolls his eyes, snaps his fingers, and disappears, and you’re left with an infinite rehashing of every.single.blasted.thing.you.still.need.to.do.

As an educator, this is almost every night.  Even the glorious, though poorly named, “Holiday” and “Summer Break” offers little in the way of respite.  Last night on the eve of returning from Thanksgiving and making the final turn towards Christmas break, visions of writing assignments and short stories and classroom discussions danced in my head.  Even today, I could not stop my mind from leaping forward.  How sad the silent urgency to always be planning instead of stopping to enjoy the moment with your students.

When I first started composing this post, I was on lunch.  That delicious 30 minutes of time during the middle of the day when I have the opportunity to turn my thoughts inward.  I had intended to write about an educator’s need and, dare I say desire, to burn the midnight oil.  Now, it is well on in the evening, and that midnight oil has already been burning my vigor for a couple of hours.  Even in typing these words, I’ve just realized I do not want to write about work.  At least, not tonight.

A few years ago, I blogged only about education: my students, my experiences (both good and bad), the newest educational technologies, and a myriad of other educationally related topics.  Then I stopped.  Cold turkey.  I even cut off my incessant microblogging using Twitter.  It’s been relatively quiet in my head for the past couple of years.

I’m not saying I’ll never write about work.  I think it crucial for personal progress that we become introspective and reflect, regardless of our stated professions.  However, I think there is a fine line between reflecting and obsessing.  Obsessions consume you like always discussing your job consumes conversations.  

If you live in between the grooves of the record, you might always be stuck there.  This is the proverbial “life is what happens when you’re making plans” soundtrack skipping.  There will always be another record to play.  For right now, it’s time to live in the pause.

In response to Daily Prompt: Vigor
Featured Image: Pixabay – “Gramophone” by Bogitw (CC0 Public Domain)
Musings, Unbound

Taking Flight

Carrie Villarreal

A little over a year ago after my mother passed away, I sat down and created a space to share my thoughts and writings. This space, actually. In my ambition, I thought: “Surely, I am at the stage in my grieving process where I can begin to write and heal my heart.” Turns out, grief is a tricky thing, and it is not as linear as I once believed.

On July 8, 2015, my mother passed away. Even today when I say this out loud to people, the air goes out of my lungs and there is the sting of tears as I remember the switches being turned off, the audible silence of breaths being held, the unending screech of a flat-line, and the soft, damp patter of the CPAP machine artificially inflating her lungs even though she had already flown away. Then this millisecond memory passes, my breath returns, the tears don’t fall, and with a bittersweet smile, I can say, “My mom passed away. She prayed for God to take away her pain, and He did.”

It’s hard to deny that she’s no longer of this earth, no bargaining to be made, so I’ve spent the better part of the past year and a half between anger, depression, and acceptance. Admittedly, acceptance has been tough. It’s hard accepting that the world just moves on when you know it’s lost something so precious. Yet the sun continues to rise, oceans continue to kiss their many shores, oxygen continues to fill your lungs, you wake up, you go about your day, you go to sleep, and you find that, after awhile, you are moving on, too.

That’s really what this is all about. Moving on. Taking flight. Letting go of the pain and filling myself with purpose. Finding truth and solace in the infinite arrangement of 26 letters. I am still grieving and wrestling with anger and depression, but I accept that this is natural. I accept that, though this will never go away, it will lessen over time. I accept this grief, slightly cracked and antiqued on the edges but beautiful nonetheless, is a part of myself.

A little over a year ago after my mother passed away, I sat down and created a space to share my thoughts and writings. Today, I give true thanks to her memory and take flight.

Featured Image: Pixabay –  “Dandelion” by Comfreak (CC0 Public Domain)