V is for VERITAS

Veritas – Truth.

Today is my birthday. Usually, I don’t even think in terms of numbers but this morning, it hit me. I am 41 years old. No more pretending to nibble at the edge of my 40’s – I am officially there! However, this does not bother me as much as I thought it would.

For some reason, I have been thinking about the plans I made when I was growing up, and nothing has gone according to plan. I thought I would be married and have a big house filled with a whole slew of kids, dogs, etc., be making lots of money …. Instead, I never married and never had kids. I rent a house with my sister and a couple of cats, and have just started a new career. I don’t make nearly enough money and yet I am truly content.

There are people who should be married and then there are others who are really much happier without the whole family thing. When you look on husband and children as excess baggage, that’s probably not the right path for you. I share a house, on the river, with my best friend – someone who knows when to make me laugh and when to give me space. I’m enjoying my job and learning a lot of new things. I work with some fantastic guys, who can really make me laugh and who gave me plenty of space when my baseball team imploded in a feat that will go down in the record books, even though they all root for the team across town who are considered arch rivals. That’s a lot of self control on their part. And this job allows me to do some traveling – something I always wanted to do, but which was completely out of the question when I was teaching.

And one of the things I am most proud of … I co-own a business. Helen and I started Hey Teach while I was deciding what to do about my teaching career – it let me keep my hand in the education side of things while I determined if I wanted to continue teaching or go another route. Teaching lost but the business blossomed. We are now going through growing pains and having to decide serious issues – such as how big do we want to get? Do we want to supply to schools but then have to wait months for them to pay us? How much more inventory to we take in before it takes over the house completely? (I can hear Helen laughing even now as this is on its way to happening. When you have boxes piled in the guest bathroom ….) How do we take the business to the next level? By catalog? This is a scary time because we’ve invested a LOT of money into it, and pretty much all our time for the past 4+ years. Helen is working for Hey Teach full time which is wonderful – both that she gets to do something she truly loves but also that it is big enough to need a full time person – and scary because her salary was so much bigger than mine and while the business is contributing heavily to the upkeep of the house, our third boarder just got his own place and so we lost that income too, and it’s getting a little overwhelming. As is that sentence:) But we both agree it’s time to close our eyes and leap! We love our products and enjoy meeting and talking to both customers and vendors. And I get such satisfaction from when we can help someone find the right item – either as a gift or for themselves. Last year for Read-Across-America, we helped a lady who was going to the local children’s hospital find the perfect thing to give those really sick kids to remember the day (Dr. Seuss pencils). And just last month, we sent one of our ducks to be part of a play with Gabe Kaplan.

I just have to remember to keep breathing…

So I say again – Cats…. Books …. Life is good!
Oh – and Happy Birthday to me:)