Of the things which are in my control, at least to some degree, is where I live. My parents and I passed a cemetery on our way to lunch one day, and they were remarking about it being the place where they are most likely to be buried. The thought penetrated the depths of my soul. I don't want to be buried in Jackson. As I considered that idea, I had to wonder why I would continue to live there if I didn't want to be found dead there.
It's not that Jackson is a terrible place. I love Michigan and all of its seasons and sights, but I love Alaska more. I realized that I was coming to a point where moving back to Alaska was becoming an impossibility. When I left with my young family in 1996, I had always planned on returning. After nearly twenty years, I hadn't even visited it again. It was something always put off.
I love teaching. The past few years have been my best as a teacher (although test scores might not agree with that statement). They have also been terrible for the teaching profession. Teachers have been under attack throughout the U.S., but Michigan has really taken off the gloves. I'm not going to go into detail here, but every time that I thought it couldn't get worse, it did just that.
I needed to move. If I was going to move, I was going to move out of Michigan. If I was going to move, I was going to return to Alaska.
We were in Wyoming when I got word that it got even worse at my place of work. I started looking at jobs in Alaska with the idea of getting my name out there. My thought was that I would swallow another year of bitterness (again, not between me and my students--these problems are largely the work of an inept state government that is determined to destroy public education), work on getting certified in Alaska, and make a serious push at the end of the coming school year.
Instead, I got a call the week we returned. It was from the place that Janelle had liked the best of the different job openings: Soldotna. They were eager for me to join their team and helpful in getting me a place to stay once I arrived. We had a lot of difficult conversations as a family and ultimately decided that this was what was best for us.
This means I had to leave behind some of the greatest people in the world and not have the proper time to say my goodbyes. I've honestly not had much time to do anything other than work through each day's challenges since I said "yes" to the official offering. Everything since then has been a series of waves that I have had to ride to just stay afloat. But the experience has been exhilarating, and nearly everything that has happened since I said yes has reaffirmed that I made the best decision.