I let my teaching license lapse

and other late-career crisis moments

Teachers in Montana have to renew their licenses every five years, using university credits or what are called renewal units¹. The renewal process is not exactly cumbersome, but the state education office recently switched systems and increased prices and I couldn’t log in and I was coming up on year 25 and decided Fuck It™.

Well, it’s a late-career decision. But I have zero intention of ever returning to a public school classroom.² As of yesterday, exactly four years remain before I’m fully vested in the Teachers Retirement System — I’ll have attained 29 years by then but the first four years didn’t count because I worked in a BIE school and did not contribute to TRS. My understanding, though I haven’t had my TRS retirement counseling appointment yet, is that should I desire to begin drawing retirement at that point, I can.

I bought these lilies in a pot at the grocery store last year and planted them in my flower bed even though the pot was clearly marked “for indoor use only.” There were only three stalks then, and look how robustly they came back! It would be nice if I could make a tight metaphor from this picture into my theme but I really just need them here to calm myself down.

Long ago when I heard teachers discussing retirement I just could not imagine that phase of my life. Much like when I was 10 and thought 20 sounded old. Or at 25 when I couldn’t envision existing in a universe with my own children. Now here I am, having launched two adult kids into the world and nearly completed a whole professional career, and now teetering on the precipice of senior-hood. It feels like many things: liberation, satisfaction, terror.

Recently I started thinking about planning for the future — much too late I’m sure — and what I’ll need to make it work. As a single person, the prospect feels daunting. Will I need another car? Will housing costs double again? Should I use a spreadsheet to plan for it?³ I don’t want to work the clock until I’m 70. Yet the various investment options, the self-employment savings accounts, the rules of the social security all make my eyes glaze over. I did not foresee this excessively mathematical process and I certainly did not anticipate the emotions accompanying it.

My high school graduation portrait. Just a couple of months ago, I am sure.

What I’m really saying is, how did 50+ sneak up on me like this? Yesterday I was still classroom teaching. My babies were born just last week. My 21st birthday happened a couple of months ago and just last year I was still a 7-year-old skating the sidewalks of Richmond VA with no knee pads. And now all I can think is, this Milford Neck⁴ is only going to get worse and I don’t want to read the Trinity Study.

I’m having kind of a crisis.

1. CEUs in other places

2. And with this post out there in the world, my chances of being hired for one just diminished substantially.

3. duh

4. the family name for the saggy gullet those of my lineage tend to develop with age.