Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Thursday, when I knew all of the folders/docs I'd had on my work computer were not going to be recovered, I told a colleague I was going to look at the situation as an opportunity to start with a clean slate. While I lost years of documents that pretty much told the story of my time at the college, do those documents really mean all that much? After all, I've already reached the top rung of the ladder regarding my teaching position -- I cannot go up. Thankfully, I cannot go down, either. I've reached a holding pattern. The clean slate just might be exactly what I need to move out of the holding pattern, move along the path that will be the next part of my life journey. As part of my clean slate state of mind, I went into work yesterday and set to work eliminating things that have been taking up space. I had two boxes of stuff -- trinkets students have given me over the years, pens, markers, paper clips, and a bunch of other little items I no longer need/use/want -- si...