I Mustache Myself a Question. Am I Really 45 Years Old? Yikes

Phew. What a week. What a month. What a year. What a life.

I didn't get to bed until late trying to polish a project that needed more attention after a day of teaching, meetings, editing, emails, more meetings, and forgetting to eat.

I'm not complaining. I'm just looking for a little breathing room that I haven't had since 2017 began: grants, reports, publications, dossiers, teaching, presentations, workshops, professional development, and all those meetings.

Oi vay. There has not been space enough to process what it is I'm doing. Perhaps that is why I told graduate students on Valentine's day, "I mustache you a few questions." Of course, I had candy, too, but the evening began with a prompt where I asked students about self-esteem, motivation, and what it takes to develop secondary school readers. We did many exercises around self-esteem and then applied what we thought with characters in literature, including Nick in Alexander's YA novel Booked. My hypothesis was that our discussion could apply to almost most of the narrative poems in the book that help to tell the story of a young man's coming of age and understanding of language, divorce, change, standing up for one's self, and mystery (Hmmm, maybe self-esteem was in the box).

I should be spending today writing my post in reflection of life as it's been thus far, but I can't muster the energy to think about it...I need space to simply process what 2017 could be.

And, of course, the Facebook birthday bonanza began and there's tremendous joy in receiving all the well wishes. I will absorb them all today as the clock clicks me closer to the inevitable 50 years ahead. I still feel 15. At some point, all the memories and experiences become overwhelming and I wonder, "What am I supposed to do with it all? I mustache myself what does it all mean?"

Ah, if I knew, it would take all the fun out of it, so I'm simply going to sit back today and enjoy it.

Thanks Mom and Dad for giving me life, and for everyone who contributes so much joy to it all, especially the core: Cynde, Mike, Casey, Dave, Chitunga, Abu, Lossine, Nikki, Dylan, Sean, Jacob and all the dogs. Elephant Shoe.

Now, when can I get a good night's rest?