I am more than my email.

So we (me, husband, kid 1 and kid 2... aka Alyssa, Kris, Luca and Julia) just drove in a car together for about 9.5 hours. It was so fun. We were traveling from North Carolina where we witnessed a wonderful wedding full of love and sweat (it was about 90 going on 150 degrees) and dancing. We were traveling back to our home in Pennsylvania. We traveled on a Monday so it technically was a work day for both him and me. His job is a little less flexible with defined work hours so he had to write a few emails and be on a few calls. Since he was driving I wrote the emails for him. (I don’t think anyone from his work will read this, but if this gets into the wrong hands... this message will self destruct in 3, 2, 1.) As I was writing his emails for him I got to log onto a computer that was protected with his password. I got to click to sign on to the internet that his company pays for so he can be “in the field” and still be connected to his resources across the country and across the globe. I got to type on a real keyboard... gee it took my fingers about -3 seconds to remember where all the letters and punctuation keys were. And I got to DOUBLE SPACE. I know... big deal, right??? Not really. But it kinda was for me. Well, me being... me... I thought about this (#thethinker). I acknowledged that I used to feel important when I had my job as a teacher. I used to feel like I had an impact on people’s daily and future lives. I used to WRITE EMAILS to help students, communicate to other teachers and counselors and parents and schools/universities. All within a minute or two of me writing an email for my husband I realized that I have always told myself that BECAUSE I WRITE EMAILS I AM IMPORTANT. When a student would come up to me when I had to send an email there were times I would say “hang on one second while I hit send - this email is really important and it has to be sent right now so... (fill in important reason #531). Of course teaching and interacting with the young people I used to see every day was the MOST important part of my day. Those daily interactions proved that I was actually important... as were they. It’s not until writing the emails for my husband today that I realize I hold onto this idea that you’re not important unless you write emails. I didn’t realize that this has been part of a hard transition into a new identity for me. Maybe that developed because communication in a school as large as the one where I worked is made easier by electronic communication so email became a very important vehicle or conduit for important events or information related to teaching or to students school lives, etc. And when I left my job I left my email. I left an indication of how important I was. If I got 20 emails in my inbox I would maybe be overwhelmed at how much time it would take to respond, but I would feel important. I would feel like people needed me; they needed me to respond (about making it to a meeting, about helping during an assembly, about finding someone’s bag they left in my room, about waiting at school for 5 extra minutes to have a short conversation about a college application referral.) And I was needed. I was important. But what I am trying to also acknowledge NOW is that email does not define me. I’m kind of laughing at myself a little bit. Not only is email (important, or not important) but I'm writing a blog post about it. Time to shut it down. Goodnight.