Day 130 of 365: Ya Never Know, Kid

So I wrote a little essay on this blog a while back about women who choose not to have kids. It's been something on my mind as of late, since a good chunk of the friends I've known since forever are not planning on having kids. And they've received the "you'll change your mind," spiel a thousand times, even as they slow approach 30 (oh God, I'm slowly approaching 30...). I wrote it just as a way to counteract all those people who blindly say, "hey, go have kids."


And then I kind of forgot about it. I thought about submitting it to Thought Catalog, but I decided against it, because it felt a little pedestrian and I felt like I had to "one up" my teaching essay. But a week went by and I had no ideas for a new essay, so I decided to spruce it up a bit and submit it.


Within hours, I had over 100 shares. The next morning? It was up to 750. It's only been out for three days now, and it has already been shared 10,000 times.


I find this very fitting, because I'm currently working on sprucing up my first manuscript. A manuscript that I had completely given up on. I'm submitting a pitch to somewhere in January (again, petrified to talk about it until it actually happens, so we'll be chatting about this after January 14th), and it almost makes me sick to my stomach to be working on this book that I have spent so much time, blood, sweat, and tears on. The likelihood of things going no where is so huge, but the payout if things going somewhere is so big.


But you never know. Or, if you're a Bostonian: ya never know, kid. I never thought my (second) teaching essay would take off the way it did. Especially after it received a moderate-to-tepid response when it was first published. And I never expected it to go so viral as to reach even my own former teachers, friends of friends who were teachers, long before they realized who wrote it.


My life has been a whole lot of topsy-turvy ever since I left the early education world. And, if last night was any indication, I'm a long ways from fully coming to terms with my time as a teacher and my decision to leave (but more on that later). I've definitely questioned my choice to be so whimsical as to write and model and do tai chi in place of a sensible full-time job. But, again: you never know. One day you're scanning Monster.com in a defeatist manner; the next, you're replying to hundreds of emails from people commenting on your work.