I recently ended my sixth two-year term as president of a statewide union of educators following 20 years as a community college teacher and active unionist. I decided not to run for office for a seventh term but wasn’t ready to jump into the next career, whatever it might be. I needed a break and it occurred to me that while a “gap year” wasn’t a thing when I graduated high school, at least not for me or most of the kids I knew, why not now?

As a kid who grew up in Tacoma in a single parent family with four kids it seemed indulgent and of questionable judgment to consider such a thing. We weren’t poor growing up, but we didn’t go on vacation, got some of our clothes from second hand stores or the J.C. Penney sale rack, and didn’t take vacations. If we wanted a little change in our pocket we figured out a way to earn it. My brother and I would pick blackberries and sell them to the neighbors…whether or not they were in the market for them, they bought them, teaching us that work paid off. We also collected stray golf balls from the nearby course, went to the ball washer near the first tee, cleaned them and sold them back to the golfers. I think my weirdest job at about 13 or 14 was selling greeting cards door to door. This was a thing.

The impact of growing up on the lean side of the economic spectrum is alive and well inside me and it was no easy thing to get comfortable with the idea of not working for a year. Of course there was the money question, but there was also the question of worth, of earning the space I take up on in the world, of justifying not struggling and even more so, indulging my wants. But I wanted to travel, to reflect and ponder, to come to know myself more deeply, to choose what I want the next few years to look like.

I’m organizing my trip around national parks (no, I don’t intend to go to every one of them), major league baseball stadiums (again, no…not every one), civil rights sites in the South, getting to know people and life outside of my Seattle bubble throughout the country, and to embrace opportunities that spontaneously present themselves. I have family and friends who will meet up with me in different places and I’ll visit people I know around the country. Through taking this journey on my own, my hope is that I’ll come to understand myself, others, and the human condition as one element of this ever-evolving and mysterious universe.

That’s me in a nutshell. On a more superficial level, bicycling is my happy place whether on the road or a single track trail, I love baseball, science fiction, reading in general, all kinds of music, and spending time with the people I love and care about.