I participated for the first time in the March Slice of Life Challenge back in 2015. I was in my first year in a high school position and taking a grad class on writing across the curriculum with a wonderful and inspiring teacher who encouraged us to take up the challenge.

In 2015, I was back in K-12 after a six-year detour into public library work. I had started my career as an elementary school librarian in 2003. My first school had been through seven librarians in ten years. I had thought I could change the culture, and I had been so wrong. My second elementary school had handed me new and different heartbreaks, and I had been quicker to accept that I needed to move on.

At the public library, I had spent five years as a teen services librarian and one as a department head. In 2014, I’d taken a little bit of a pay cut to return to K-12, and I was worried I had made the wrong call.

I hadn’t. It wasn’t all wine and roses, but fast-forward to March 2019 and I was feeling good about the work I was doing and my role at the school.

Now, in 2021, I live in a different state. I work part-time at a community college. I have some time on my hands. I remembered the Slice of Life Challenge, and I thought it would be good for me to write and to connect with other teachers.

It has been good to write and connect. The challenge has also made me think more about how I miss being a high school teacher-librarian.

I spent most of today writing about the choices and events that took me from where I was in the March of 2019 to where I am today.

I wrote in thick detail about March through June of that year, and I wanted to write a sentence or two about August 2019-March 2020. I couldn’t. I couldn’t summarize those months in a way that felt honest, but I also didn’t want to spend to much time thinking through the particulars.

I’m taking a break. I’m going put the sticky draft aside. It will be there if and when I want to pick it up again.