Where do we go from here

One of my coworkers ran into me in the hall today. She was on the wrong floor; I rarely see her otherwise, but always, always enjoy our stream-of-consciousness conversations.

When she saw me today, and after she realized she'd gone up an extra flight of stairs, she said: "You know, you should really be on tv."

From there, we talked about vocabulary, lexicon-flexing, teaching English, expressions, immersion, Middlesex, homosexuality, ES classes, epiphanies, influence, change, growth, Dr. Ruth, and so on. I so thoroughly love those conversations, the kinds that spread over landscape and grey matter without effort. Complete ease, unsuspecting flow.

As we parted ways, she turned and called over her shoulder: "So what are you going to be when you grow up?"

Without hesitation (there may have been a slightly abashed shrug, because for as much as I like to talk about myself, I worry that people A) don't take me seriously, and B) see me differently than I see myself because, yes, I can be dense/a little slow on the uptake/silly-excited about the most minute things/and occasionally I think I don't show my intelligence simply because I don't want to) I said: "Finish my masters. Get my PhD. Go teach college level. From there... wherever it all takes me."

And write. Sometimes, all I want to do is write. It's just that the words get stuck on my ribs, stuck in my fingertips, smeared around my teeth and tongue and nothing comes out the way I expect it to. But, I write.

And I write because I generally can't form sense with my voice.

Part of this, all of this, is because of my dirty habit called Over-Thinking. I place too much value in not only the things that people say to me, but also the way that they say them. I pay more attention to tone than I do to body language. It's easier; I hear more than I see. Maybe I pay too much attention. Or maybe I don't pay enough.