Happiness hit her like a train on the track

I decided the other day, that despite all those times when I thought, "I'm so incredibly happy, I could die right now and it would be ok..." I'm really, really glad I didn't. I would have missed so much. I don't really have much else to say on that subject other than I feel lucky to be where I am in life, and to have somehow learned how to let my life be, and to be happy in it. From this side of that lesson, it wasn't a particularly difficult or complicated lesson to learn. I wish that everyone who is still on the other side could see that. I wish that anyone who is struggling with that could just know how easy it is once you let it happen.

I spent a few hours at my storage unit today, and threw out about 7,832 pieces of paper that had to do with grad school and my first two years of teaching. I tossed out articles I had printed, binders with section separators still labeled, paperclips on stacks of copies I'd made and never used. It was at the same time painful and wonderful. Painful because I thought back to the hours I spent in my classroom making things to hang on walls, cutting out lamination, all the things first year teachers do that they don't have to do again after that. Except I did because I taught a different grade my second year. All those main idea activities, samples of art projects, expository/narrative writing prompts, handwriting practice sheets, multiplication games, place value posters... ugh. At this point though it isn't going to change anything to dwell on it, so I may as well relish in the fact that I don't have to worry about all that paper ever again :D