The year is wrapping up. I am shutting down my classrooms, packing up boxes of books, and recycling materials. I’m going through old assignments, building new curriculum, and reading and re-reading old textbooks.

And the old anxieties are erupting. Am I doing enough? Will I do enough? Are the choices that I’m making the right ones?

I compare and contrast myself against invisible teachers, perfect teachers, the theoretical gurus sitting atop their mountains with their literary pipes and well-behaved goats and I see my grubbiness. My insufficiencies.

Or maybe, I’m just seeing the ladybugs scurrying over my shoes. Little red winged good luck symbols. Maybe I’m seeing boots that are scuffed because I’ve worked really, really hard to get to where I am on this path.

I was going to retire in 24 months. I’m now looking at eight more years. And as I prepare for next year, I realize that I need to find my comfort zone and build that nest around me. Use what I know. What is familiar and work through the year. Learn the intricicies of this building’s uniqueness because it’s not the same as where I used to teach.

I wrote about fears last night. I wrote about the fear of rejection. The fear of not being good enough. And I see how that has been a tiny, scrawny demon whipping me into a tormented speed. And all I had to do was stop. Let the cart bang me in the back of my knees and squish the little creton.

That doesn’t mean that it won’t reinflate and climb back on the rickety wagon that bears the culmination of rusted cans and broken, ground down mason jars stuffed with sand and coal dust. All the bits and pieces of my self-questioning and self-gutting.

But I’m learning to recognize my own worth and not stretch out my hand to others and ask them to hold my cold fingers and recylce the warmth into them.

I’m anxious about next year and keep putting myself into hiatus as I try to figure things out. I’m trying too hard to do too much and that means time slips sideways and I forget the joy of walking my dogs or early morning sunlight or the crisp, tart bite of a lime popsicle. I forget the giddy, childlike happiness of a new box of Legos.

Instead, I focus on the bad dream I had last night. Of me sitting in a physics class, working as a cooperating teacher and the students are presenting or having a group discussion and somehow I am called on to discuss astro physics or something really important and intelligent and beyond my literary knowledge. So I guessed at an answer and tucked my confusion into improv poetry and the physics teachers took me aside and told me to go home because I clearly had no idea what I was talking about and my poetry was just really “bad.”

I can still feel the crushing shame from the dream. How my chest chilled and my heart slowed and I was just ashamed. I wasn’t smart enough. Capable enough. Creative enough. And I begged for a reprieve because I was enjoying the class and the content. And I could stay. So long as I remained silent.

And I hated myself. My crappy improv poetry and my ignorance. I hated my shame. And I hated that she had seen my inability and ineptitude.

And then the dream shifted. And I was in the backseat of an old 1970’s Lincoln with several aquaintances. And we were being driven up a steep hill, the road an unpaved, slick muddy slope. And we weren’t wearing seat belts and the road was washed out and I could feel the card sliding, tipping. Threatening to literally flip backwards. And I was praying aloud, calling on God’s strength and mercy, my hands pressed against the thin, brown felt of the car’s roof.

I woke up, agitated and stressed about my inability. About the fact that I was jammed in the backseat of a car and not wearing my seat belt. I was anxious about my terrible poetry and the request to leave a class when I was just an inept distraction.

The anxiety lingered, blended into my morning routine until I arrived at a moment of quiet and couldn’t focus on anything because I felt inept and couldn’t see myself moving forward.

Until I realized that I had to find my comfort zone. Build my nest with my experiences and knowledge. Refine the nest with new content and settle within the bowl. It’s lined with fluff. Long thin grasses gleaned from the meadows I’ve walked through. Bird feathers lifted from the sides of paths. Thick clumps of moss I peeled from rocks that I almost stumbled over.

I’m doing something new and old at the same time. And as I question my abilities and my talents and my skills, the little, wiry demon starts to reinflate. And so I press my foot down a little more firmly.

I know what I’m doing. And the gaps in my knowledge are not huge. Just thin wisps where the wind can scuttle up against my body. I will feel the chill. And then I’ll burrow down, rearrange the twigs. Fill the gap. And learn for the following years.