Volume Two, Chapter One

Volume Two, Chapter One: Wherein our heroine stares out into the wild blue yonder, pondering what she will make first.

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You could all be very polite here and pretend not to notice my 4 year absence... Not going there? Well then, I'll bring you up to speed. Grab a cup of coffee and read on.

When we last left this blog I had just finished a sabbatical. I had returned to my job teaching Web Design at Sheridan College and was struggling with the lack of time I had for my own creative pursuits. I thought once I caught my breath things would improve.

I was wrong. So wrong.

In a nut shell, the last 4 years were the heaviest and also some of the best of my career. I was blessed with terrific groups of young people to teach, wonderful part time faculty to work with, incredibly supportive administration and great independence within the institution. But the work load that came with all that good stuff was massive. Summer holidays were always a welcome break, but shortened drastically by the need to continuously evolve curriculum to keep up with the rapid changes in the industries that hired our grads.

So last year my husband Mark Simon and I decided that we would retire from the college together. We'd had great teaching careers that we had loved, but after almost 30 years we were ready to move along. And it was time for some other people to have the chance to have great teaching careers too.

Leaving the college was bittersweet of course. But it was mostly sweet! We were both thrilled with the new hires coming in to take our programs forward and were blushingly feted at almost too many dinners and parties. It was lovely and happy and felt so right.

Sound too good to be true? Oh no. It's even better than we imagined. 

Now that I've been out for a few months I can truthfully say that retirement is a joyous thing. I feel like me.

Not being tied to a schedule is a revelation. Last month we ran away to Florida for a bit and discovered that the Gulf of Mexico is especially sweet when it is doggedly February back in Ontario. But it has taken quite a long time to really decompress. It's only as Spring (hopefully) approaches that I am getting itchy to get back into making things.

So this is the first chapter of a whole new volume of Little Pieces of Me. Let's see where this goes!

Gil






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