I started my 23rd year of teaching two weeks ago.  We are full time, in person, but all people in the building must wear masks.  I am vaccinated and content with that.  I no longer have to be fearful of catching the virus and passing it to my dad.  He died in March.   My mother-in-law died the previous July.  I think at this date, eight or so people I knew personally and cared about have died since the pandemic started and less than half of them died from the virus.  Cancer, overdose, and unknown are the other causes.  I have not travelled anywhere since November 2019.  Fritz has been sick since December 2020.  Multiple misdiagnoses, the removal of a mass from his colon, possible FIP, cancer diagnosis ruling out FIP, then the true diagnosis of FIP.  Nearly 100 days of injections, and into the seventh day of three months of observation.  The first Saturday in June, we nearly lost him.  The club has reopened but my social anxiety has kept me from getting over there all but three nights since then.  It is the one place I can go to and feel like I belong, but anxiety is tough.  In some ways the time since March 2020 has been profoundly terrible.

In some ways the time since March 2020 has been amazing.  Teaching remote was wonderful because I had total autonomy and didn't really care if I got into trouble.  We were instructed to teach with care and I did.  I let the kids keep cameras off, against the rules.  I was flexible with due dates and how they approached their projects.  I really felt the kids were happy to see me, even if I never saw some of them.  Lots of them told me they appreciated my respect for them in letting them keep the cameras off.  One kid I never saw, who I thought was bored in my class, took me again this year because of his experience with me last year.  Another kid, who I no longer have, emailed me last night to tell me about a cool find in a local park.  I thought the work I was getting from my kids was the strongest in years.  When I put the art show video together and saw the work from the other classes, I was even more pleased.  My students created such deep, thoughtful photos.  I have not had so much work impress me so much since 2013.

I loved not seeing a single person from my building.  I loved not having the face-to-face encounters that always involved bitching about the administration.  I loved not having to pretend to like everyone.  I loved not feeling like I needed to watch my back.  I loved not having to walk past that unity garden.  I have had positive experiences with three people in other departments in the past year, but I would be kidding myself if I ever categorized them as friends.  But they are good colleagues.  Communication from others is always so negative and, luckily, that trickled to nothing over the summer.  In the days since our return, I have had few visitors to my room and I am close to happy.  We have new administration and while people are acting as if this is wonderful and a 180 from the previous administration (who they claim was horrible) I just do not care.  I don't care that people tell me I am wrong about my feelings about the previous regimes.  I don't care about any of them, their feelings, or opinions.  I am in that building to teach young adults to be photographers and good people who will learn some wonderful things in their time with me.

And I feel great about that.  I like being alone in my room, cleaning and repairing equipment, tinkering with new processes and methods, looking into new ideas and photographers to present to my kids.  I like knowing I have time to watch cool videos from museums around the world and think of how to use them with my kids.  I am so sad all the time, but nearly happy as well.  It's interesting.