I received a jury summons, and it’s looking an awful lot like I’m going to be spending a lot of time at the courthouse in the near future.

This is much better than receiving a court summons, but still.

I went in last week for the first step in the jury selection process, rescheduling all of my meetings so that I could sit in an overheated, high-ceilinged room and stare out the window at the fading sunlight on the bare trees and the hills beyond as a patient judge gave us an eighth-grade civics lesson. Tomorrow, I have to go in again.

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Some people live in the past. I’ve spent years living in the future in my mind.

Whatever I was doing was a means to an end. It was a train trip to some better destination.

During the one year I spent working in public school, I used every single one of my prep periods to research what I might do next, from teaching English in China to moving to Nashville or LA to be a professional musician.

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Among Aimee Mann’s many beautifully poignant songs, there’s one called “Save Me,” that includes the lyric, “Can you save me from the ranks of the freaks who suspect they could never love anyone?”

And there’s a similar sentiment expressed in “Ray,” from her 1995 album “I’m with Stupid”: “I think I know another lonely exile when I see one/And you appear to be one.”

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I keep getting asked how I feel about closing my school after ten years.

It’s a question I appreciate because it’s thoughtful and empathic. It’s also a question I have no idea how to answer.

On the last day of school, I felt the same bittersweetness I’ve felt on every last day of school. We enjoy the togetherness and camaraderie of what we’ve built together and the slight relaxing of social norms as the line between teachers and students blurs just slightly.

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The other day, one of my students (let's call her Maureen because no American kid is named that in 2022 and it's funny), was working on a math problem that was really more of a number puzzle.

Maureen turned to me and asked a question that I was utterly prepared for: "Am I really going to need to be able to do this in my life?”

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