I had a bit of a nervous breakdown last weekend.  My ability to hold down my corporate job, write for my magazines, teach my class, parent my daughter and exist as a functioning member of society petered out like a garden hose.  As I cried to my husband on the ride home from my parents' house, he (just as my mother had when I snotted all over her in the parking lot of an upscale strip mall in Omaha) asked me What. Can. You. Cut. Out.?

People are always asking me that.  And I usually want to throttle them, because they always suggest I cut out the "extracurricular" stuff, like getting a master's degree, writing fiction, writing magazine articles, writing my blog, teaching my class, seeing my friends, traveling. In other words, the things I like to do.  No one ever suggests quitting my day job, because We. Need. The. Money.

I know, everyone has to work.  My family is often shocked I would question my need to earn.  It's not that I don't want to work, though - I love to work!  On my writing! I just don't! Love! To! Work! In! An! Office! Doing! Stuff! That's! Not! Writing!

Still, I know he has a point. I need to be doing this now, while he builds his business.  So I've been looking for a job that will allow me to at least work sane hours and not make me want to drive a nail into my eyeball every time I attend a meeting with more than two people around the conference table.  That's a project in process.

He also brought up that of all of my "extracurricular" activities, teaching offers me the least emotional return on investment. I spend up to ten hours a week driving to and from class, teaching the class, grading papers and doing the administrative things. For this, I get only enough money to make us owe taxes every year.  I did it initially because I thought that some nice community college would hire me for a full-time teaching job eventually, allowing me summers off and hence more time for the writing.  It always went back to how can I get more time for the writing without having to go all Toni Morrison and get up at four a.m. to write.  I know she did that. I bet her kid didn't wake her up every morning at two, though. This morning I got up at two, fell asleep on her floor, got off her floor and went back to bed at four, then got up to get her some milk at 5:30 and finally gave up on that sleeping thang and got in the shower at 6:30. This schedule of naps that I like to call "my nighttime sleeping" is not so conducive to early-morning inspiration.

I'm bitching to you, aren't I?  (sigh) I'm trying really hard not to be so negative.

Anyway, I decided that my beloved did, in fact, have some good points.  Something had to go. Time with the little angel is the nonnegotiable constant in my life.  Everything else lines up in a little row, including, unfortunately, my beloved and myself.  So in order to not just be a ship passing in the night forever, I decided to get real about finding a more manageable day job and stop with the teaching.

Last night, my shining star student told me her twin sister was going to take composition from me in the fall. Then the guy who's my age and hates school told me I'm the only teacher he likes.  It was kind of like when you finally decide to chop off all your hair, then it looks AWESOME on the way to the salon.

Here's the thing, though: I know I'm good at teaching composition. I like doing it.  It is with not a small amount of wistfulness that I sent the e-mail yesterday to my dean telling her I'm not available except to sub in the fall.  I also like biking, but we've decided we're not going to go on RAGBRAI (a bike ride across Iowa that my beloved and I both love to do) this year, either, because we don't really have time to train for it, and we just can't handle any more pressure right now.  I like to sail my twelve-foot AMF Puffer, but we didn't do that at all last year, and I want to make time to do it this year. I like to see my friends. I like to go on dates.  I like to do a million things that I'm not doing much of right now.

In retrospect, letting go of teaching was good in that it made me sit down and list all of the things I like to do.  I'm a really interesting person.  Whee!  I hate having to cut things out, though.  My father-in-law once told me the hardest thing about having kids is having to give things up.  I thought he was just being negative and old-fashioned. I thought I would be able to bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, make cookies and write novels, all without skipping a workout.  I've been humbled by this parenting thing.  But rather than giving things up, I'm trying to look at it as forced prioritization. I'm actually writing more than I have in years, simply because I've had to give up so many other great things to do it.  So maybe this whole exercise hasn't been a total loss.

Next week is my final exam.  I wonder if I'll ever give another?