Over the Rainbow

I mentioned a while back about reading Finding Your Way in a New Wild World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want by Martha Beck. I bought it because I already love this author, and had just finished Steering by Starlight, which I also loved. I thought it would be a tool to help me live more deeply and mindfully, and to use my skills, such as they are, and such as they could be, to contribute to the world.

Turns out, the whole second half of the book is about how to create the job of your dreams – literally your nighttime dreams – and bring it about into reality. And before I even read that, I had already done it. Not suddenly, but certainly magically, and in precisely the way that she describes in her method.

Happenstances like this are rocking my world these days.

So, here it is…I have just been appointed Theater Teacher and choral director for this very special high school where I have worked for seven years. I am leaving 6th grade, and beginning a bold new venture in a place both new and familiar.

This is the Dream Job of my sleep-dreams and awake-dreams. In recent years, I have fully written out the description of the Perfect Job, and it has now happened. A salary that can support my family, benefits, retirement, an office, and a classroom that is…a theater. My classroom is the stage of a brand new, state of the art, multi-million dollar theater. I am part of a team of devoted, hard working, creative and industrious people who are 100% For Kids all the time. I feel like Dorothy Over the Rainbow, I really do. And my team exactly fits the profile of the Land of Oz. My boss, Jeff, is like the lion, because he’s very protective and knows when to roar, and vaguely looks lion-like. My music director, Dan, is every inch the Tin-Man, sensitive and operating fully from his heart. My tech director, Brooks, is the Scarecrow, my right-hand, kind of a mess sometimes in certain ways, but creative and devoted and dear. Pam, my choreographer, is literally a 50/50 combination of Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch, in a way that she would both understand and agree with. She knows when to blow bubbles, and she knows when to throw fire balls. I admire that tremendously. And here I am, all wide-eyed and hands clasped and finding that home is right here in a place I have been for a long time, but somehow also now Technicolor and Wild and New.

This has been manifested with patience and hard work and a kick-ass vision board, and a mindful application of Law of Attraction principles of focusing on the end game, the big picture, and letting the “hows” take care of themselves. I didn’t decide to really go for it in a focused way until I knew for sure that the person who holds the job currently was leaving of his own volition, so it feels pure in that way. (Not pure in every way, though, since my relationship with him was so frought with negativity and conflict. But that is a topic for…elsewhere. I have accepted responsibility for my part in that, and forgiven him his. That’s really all I could do.)

So, this blog will have a new focus now. It will become, now, the story of a woman recreating herself in mid-life, launching a new career at 40, leaving behind that which is safe and familiar and well-oiled, and starting down the Yellow Brick Road. I will strive, as always, to foster connections and help kids to find things they don’t yet know about themselves. Changing the world one high-school kid at a time…where showtunes are not only expected, but a required part of the job.

Dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.