Working with people around the age of eighteen years old as much as I do reminds me a lot of what I was like when I was that age. I’d say "that age" lasted a lot longer than just a year or two for me, because it feels like a lot of my personal development got put on hold after I left Antioch and didn’t resume until I started going back to college six years later. For that matter, I’ve always said that I never really did much personal development for the nine years I spent in private school because of the way I was treated there. In a lot of ways, my undergraduate years in college felt like what I thought high school would be like for me, and graduate school felt like undergrad. I don’t act my age in a lot of ways, and while in many respects I wear that as a badge of honour — I think it gives me an edge when I’m teaching because I approach school with a mindset close to my students’ — I also can’t say that I would particularly know how to act like a thirty-three year old if I had to. I can do a good caricature of the stodgy thirtysomethings I’ve had to deal with in my past, but acting like the real thing doesn’t come easily to me.

What’s bringing this to mind right now is the fact that I’m recognizing that I’m still going through a lot of the same existential crises that I see so many of my students go through. Certainly the early years of the .org were filled with a lot of that young angst and hellraising, and those of you who remember my pre-.org writing know that I actually used to be much, much worse in that regard. After I got my MA, though, and I had to concern myself with finding employment, I really tightened things up around here. I made the overall site look more elegant, I stopped swearing and giving in to hyperbole as much as I used to, and I just generally became a lot more cautious about the things I said online. Under the surface, though, I think I’m still going through a lot of the same turmoils that I went through before I graduated, and especially with all the big upheavals in my life these past two years, there’s a part of me that wants to write about these upheavals in ways that, while they’d provide a moment of temporary relief, would do me much more harm in the long run because they aren’t that healthy.

As I think about the .org turning nine in a few weeks here, I wonder at how much progress I’ve really made. I have always been incredibly lucky to be in a position where I haven’t had to deal with a lot of the concerns that most people my age have to deal with, and I’m still in that position. I could still take a number of very sharp turns with my life here, and have the safety and security to know that even if I completely screw things up, I’ll still have a safety net to catch me and help me get back on my feet. If Dad’s death last year taught me anything, though, it is never to take anything for granted, and in spite of all the heavy stuff I’ve had to deal with lately, I can’t help but feel that I need to take advantage of these opportunities I have before they slip away. I may be unsteady on my feet right now, but there comes a point where I have to stop focusing on regaining perfect balance, and get back to moving forward. It’s scary, though, and at times like these I wish I didn’t have to be so cautious about what I say here. Maybe I am "growing up" here after all.