When I worked at the secondary school, the same thing always happened to me in spring: work consumed me in a brutal way, I felt I wasn't getting there, that this wasn't what I wanted to do, that my life was slipping away in emergencies I didn't love, in bureaucracies and paperwork that filled the days with tasks that had nothing to do with what mattered.
And I always said, “wait, don't make any decisions in times of crisis.” I finished the course exhausted, with devastating fatigue, but then came the summer, and the sea, and friends and conversations without a clock, and a bit like when you forget the pains of childbirth when you have a baby, I managed to downplay that spectacular stress.
When I started the course again, I made good resolutions to take things more calmly, to organize myself better, and to enjoy my vocation. I did my job well, the students mattered a lot to me, and I knew the difference a good teacher can make. My subject, Music, has spectacular potential: it orders our brain and emotions, it opens up a whole world of expressiveness and human relationships. My task was like giving religious instruction: musical education, singing in the school choir, learning about great works, opened up a whole world to the students I accompanied that would make them better. I could give those little people tools that would make them critical, creative, curious, and participatory. For many of my students, I was the only gateway to art in its grandest sense: it was a huge responsibility that I had to exercise with professionalism and respect.
But despite good intentions, the course would once again consume me, and I would reach the following spring crying from sheer exhaustion and feeling like I wasn't getting there.
Until, around my early forties, something else happened to me: I had always written and I wanted to publish. And although I was prepared for it to be extremely difficult, the first novel was a resounding success, and after it came others, and each one gained more readers, more recognition, and more open doors. I was a weekend writer, stealing hours from rest and summers. I juggled it, with more or less skill.
I suppose having an extramarital affair must be similar: you have your official life and another that occupies far fewer hours but is very powerful.
I could have continued like this until retirement. I calculated by looking at the calendar: One day I thought: “Seventeen years left until I retire”. I remembered what I was doing seventeen years before and I said “it has gone by quickly, these coming ones will also pass quickly and there will be a day when spring will once again be the whistling of swallows, immodest poppies bursting through the verges, cherries and the first rays of sun on my skin. There will be a day when I can dedicate myself to doing what I love most”.
Everything was leading me in this direction: passing the courses counting down, sighing for time, taking on the double life I imposed on myself with more or less success. Feeling like I was in a perpetual state of waiting.
Every life change has a process. In my case, it was a combination of things: a pandemic that made us rethink priorities, someone who died unexpectedly just after retiring, the illness of a close person, and above all, an epiphany: I couldn't define myself as unhappy, but I was definitely not happy. I was in a dangerous grey area. Because everyone flees from unhappiness, but from 'not happiness' it's not so easy to escape. And it's only possible with determination, with faith, trying to discern between madness and audacity.
I was like a little bird hesitating to leave the cage for fear it would close behind me.
Until the fear of continuing the same weighed more than the fear of making the move. I took the plunge, as we say in Mallorca: at over fifty years old, leaving a permanent job, paying for self-employment and dedicating myself to writing in Catalan. I don't have the income I used to have. I probably won't be able to retire. I always have to negotiate what I earn, I never know when I'll be paid, or if what I do will be liked and will be enough to put food on the table, mine is a job very subject to the approval of others. I am very clear that not everyone has my luck: I live with someone who trusts me and pushes me to pursue my dreams.
Now I sleep without pills, I'm excited to wake up in the morning, spring is back.
To you, who are reading me, to you who are finishing your studies and have a little voice telling you that perhaps this is not what you want. To you, who don't know if your crisis comes from tiredness, who doubt whether you need a vacation or a life change. If, like me, when June arrives you wonder if this is a passing phase or a sign, listen to me: I won't tell you to jump, but I will tell you to bravely review your options.
Sometimes the head and heart don't agree, but the gut never lies.
