Dissipation

I was sitting at my desk, teaching, and feeling anxious for the week that stands in front of me. I spend most weeks wondering what it is that I am doing in my classroom and if I am making any sense to the students who come to me to learn. I frequently feel as if everything that I do is wrong and that I am hopeless. I have been wondering what it is that I can do to help myself not feel this way and to save myself from this mindset that is hungrily eating away at my wellbeing. I do not want to lose myself into the vortex of this feeling. I do not want to lose the parts of me that I like the best.

Spring has arrived in New York and it is beautiful.The sun has a strength to its glow that it was missing in the winter. The daffodils and the forsythia have burst forth on the scene, already legends. I am sitting at my desk and there is a pause in class while my students quietly read to themselves. Once the noise has died down from a passing siren on the street and my own chattering in class, I hear the notes of the jazz that my downstairs neighbor plays as she works. I take a breath, pulling deep from my diaphragm, and let the faint notes touch me with their comforting warmth. I will be okay.