Sitting on stupid benches in Greenpoint
About two weeks ago, I decided to quit my job.
For the past year, I've been working as a teacher at a school in the Bronx. However, last Friday, I told my principal that I no longer wanted to teach, and needed some time to figure myself out and what I wanted to do with my life. I'm not really sure what sparked this decision. I remember going to meet my friend, Ollie, at El Beit in Williamsburg, and just plopping myself down next to him and saying, "I think I don't want to teach anymore." And once I said that, this decision sort of took a life of itself and evolved into all these crazy life changes that I would have never anticipated about a month ago. I moved out of my apartment since it was suddenly too expensive, I withdrew from my masters' program, and I found a job working as a barista in a coffeeshop in downtown New York.
I'm not really sure why I decided to quit my job. There's a lot of reasons floating around in my head. Ultimately, however, I think it comes down to three things:
1. I was unhappy
2. I have no idea if teaching is actually what I want to do with my life
3. I'm 23 and I want to have fun. Teaching is no fun.
I think the third reason is probably the most important reason for all these crazy changes I've made in the past couple of weeks. Sure, the fact that I was unhappy and my general confusion about the teaching profession are important, but what the hell? I'm 23 and for some reason, I expected that I should have my shit completely figured out. That I should already be on some career track that was definite and would take me from now until retirement. That success meant knowing where I would live, who my friends were, and what I would do for the rest of my life. But why? Why can't I just fuck around? Who says I need to know where my life is going? Who says I'm ready for my career to define me? These were all questions I continued to ask myself when weighing the decision about quitting, and it occurred to me that my life doesn't need to be so...defined, I guess you could say. I don't need to know that everything I'm doing is taking me to some ultimate goal that I set for myself years ago. I'm totally ok with just doing the things that make me happy and not worrying about the future. The future is for older Ashley. Ashley Now is allowed to have fun and, as I told my principal when I was quitting, a homeless vagabond.
So this is what this blog is meant to chronicle. I call it a belated gap year since I think most people take the time to be in their weird transient phase either right after high school or right out of college. However, I took a little more time to realize that I needed a period of time to fuck around and not be so stable. I also call it a gap year, but I can't say for sure how long it'll last. It could be six months, it could be six years. And this is not to say that I'm suddenly going to know what it is I'm meant to do with my life at the end. I just hope to be closer to figuring out what it is that makes me happy and what I can do to make the world a better place.
