Raw Feeling

Well, it's the end of spring and the "meteorologist's summer" (measured June-August), but it doesn't quite feel like it here in Chicago. I was outside three days straight for a little over 2.5 hours each time (both early morning and early evening) and each day the temperature was hovering between 49 and 53. Utterly awful. Yet today as I drove home from a meet, there were literally thousands of people along the shoreline on a beautiful 75 degree sunny day. I hate the fact that when I have to be outside it is just brutal, and so idyllic on the days I am inside. Oh well, I guess I can blame Murphy for that one.

While at the meet, I had an opportunity to brag on myself when a volunteer asked me if I was still in high school. I found myself describing my life in terms of my academic success instead of merely stating my age. I told her, "No, I actually am part-way through my masters", to which her surprised response was, "In what?" This job I have now is a significant change in my entire lifestyle. I find myself more and more realizing just how different it is to be an Age Group swim coach than a Teaching Assistant and student of English. I find that each of the two disparate sides of my existence often come into conflict--the academic me, loving literature for what it is and being able to debate it on a semi-intellectual level with those on the same wavelength as I am, and the newly-formed mostly-practical coaching side.

Obviously I am well-suited to either pursuit--I grew up with kids, know how to see things outside their respective parameters, and have a constant energy that I can learn to use in motivating young children; and I read an immense amount from before I can remember, always interested in the opposite sides of arguments, beginning and ending debates, and reading some more.

I guess my dilemna is common and at this point I guess I could say I am lucky to have my life before me, but still I fear I must raise the question as to how compatible these two lifestyles are. I fully intend to return to school ASAP, yet I wish to continue full-time coaching. Should I fully dedicate myself to one or the other in neglect of the other? Or should I continue my current plan of doing both in the best way I can?

This is definitely my most personal post yet, and I will certainly follow it up with some irregular poetry (or is it the timing that is irregular? or the exposure?).