Every week, one of my professors asks us to write a reflection on the past week and send it to her. This past week was a particularly unsettling week, and I wrote that I felt like I am pending. I have been feeling like this for some time, which leads me to think that this is the new normal…

It’s probably one of those things that happens when you get older. In your 20s and 30s you think that you’re somewhat in control of your life and then you crawl (fly?) into your 40s and you realize that you’re not really in control of anything. Everything is pending. No file is ever closed until it’s, well, closed.

This feeling of pending-ness can feel rather disorienting and discouraging, especially if you’re a closure-hungry person. Which I am. Very much so. For some time I have felt like my life has been buffering at an epic, climactic flying side kick scene of my life. And the thing about being suspended mid-air for all that time is that you lose your kick-ass scrappiness of that moment. Who were you kicking again? What was the fight about? Wait, maybe I was just jumping. It’s getting chilly up here. Uh, does anyone have a ladder or some other sensible means of getting down from here?

Some time ago, I was watching a gardening show (i.e., a sensible means of getting down) where the host was trying to navigate through this home that was built to lean (The Leaning House of Sacro Bosco). He was completely disoriented, trying to right his stance according to the lines of the structure and failing again and again. It completely captured how I have been feeling…trying to right myself in various groups, jobs, friendships that have felt tilted to me. This is NOT a critical statement on any of these groups/jobs/friendships. I have tried to right myself, change myself, adjust myself because I have felt “off” in various communities that I have been a part of. I have asked myself over and over again, “Is it just me??” My constant struggle throughout the last several years has been trying to figure out if the houses have been tilted or if I have lost my footing…or I guess, both. and even if I did ever stop buffering, would I be able to land my epic flying side kick in a tilted house where my perspective is compromised?

I have been considering some big life changes recently. Things that I feel might disorient my family in ways that I don’t feel comfortable doing. I’m the type of person who will buffer indefinitely if it means the people I love can kick some ass in their own flying side kick lives. Maybe that’s noble, maybe that’s fear, maybe that’s fear wearing a noble costume. One night when we were discussing all of this, my husband said, “Maybe it’s your turn.” Later on, a friend said the same. If I’m completely honest, those words injected a jolt of signal into my buffering self that sent me into fast forward x8. It felt good and awful at the same time. I panicked and hit pause and I am slowly, in short spurts, allowing myself to catch up.

So, what does this have to do with being an SLP? Nothing and everything, really. I don’t imagine that these feelings are foreign or outlandish to others by any means. Especially during these days of COVID, everything feels tentative, but people are making large decisions left and right, like teachers who are leaving education indefinitely. I suppose we’re all pending people. We have felt so stagnant this past year, and perhaps people are trying to just stop buffering by clicking all the buttons or by closing out the tab.

One of the inscriptions in the tilted house says, “Animus Quiescendo Fit Prudentior Ergo” or “The mind becoming quiet becomes wiser thereby,” illustrated by a straight window on the second floor which faces the sky causing the viewer to reorient him/herself by looking towards the heavens. In some way, I feel that all things have been screaming/whispering for me to look to the heavens, but I have been stuck on trying to orient myself with tilted lines. Looking to the heavens can mean different things for different people, but for all of us, my hope is that “Animus Quiescendo Fit Prudentior Ergo”.