After this I have to keep writing my stories.

1. I have a friend with whom I can play pick-a-language when we talk on the phone. We start out in Spanish, usually, spend a little time in French, and end in English. It's amazing when I stop to think about it. He's the only one I can do that with.

2. My side-job Spanish classes seem to be a hit. I got a really sweet email from a student saying she loved my enthusiasm and enjoyed the class. I had people who aren't in the class tell me they heard about how good it was. Wow. The downside to such praise is that now I have to keep it up.

3. I am trying so hard not to think about turning 29 in a couple of months. It's not a big deal. People turn 29 every day. But it's taking everything in me to fight off a spreading sense of panic. I'm living at home and I have stuffed animals on my bed, fuzzy bear slippers on my feet and wear college t-shirts over pajama bottoms with hearts on them. My future is hinged on entering a PhD program which I'm ambivalent about. The only official relationship I've ever had was embarrassingly long ago, and the history after that been strewn with ambiguous disappointments and inappropriate disasters. I cannot afford to let this quicksand pull me under again. There are only so many times you can bounce back.

4. I'm a teacher. I'm a math teacher who majored in Spanish. I'm also a Spanish teacher who originally majored in English. I teach teenagers (Miss Smith). I teach adults (Chantell). I teach children (Sister Chantell). I teach toddlers (I wan sum appo duce). It's what I've always done.

5. Sometimes I find myself in the middle of doing something, and I'll feel outside myself. Like I'm not the one doing it, but I'm watching myself do it from an imaginary psychological distance. Sometimes I'll be struck with the fact that I am myself and that I will always be myself and that the world will only look to me the way I see it and that I will never be able to see it through any other eyes, gender, race, culture or experience and that no one else will be able to see it through mine. At no time will being me be over, and then I'll move on to the next thing. This is it.

6. I feel abject when I have nothing to do, when I'm not working towards something. So I fill my coffers up with tasks and get involved with things. Then I feel pressured because I have a lot to do and deadlines loom and showtime arrives and evaluations hover. Because there is always a reckoning.

7. I get annoyed with myself because my existential quandaries are nothing unique to me. There's not some special, weird thing about me or the situations that arise or the things I think about them or the ways I cope with them. It's actually standard procedure. It's not an everlasting problem needing a solution. It's just how it is.

8. I think I'm addicted to pepperoni pizza. I never tire of it, and I crave it quite often.