A matter of faith

I’m getting ready to head for my advisement meeting tomorrow at D’Youville College for the master’s in education program. This marks my formal re-entrance into academia. I have a course catalog, notes written to myself to ask the proper questions and my trusty notebook at hand. Soon they will be stuffed in the green backpack for the trip in the morning. I have some butterflies in my stomach. It’s been 31 years since I snagged my diploma at Syracuse University.

Earlier today I went to the Newspaper Guild office in the historic Larkin Building to attend a seminar on navigating the unemployment insurance process. It sounds like a relatively easy procedure, but it’ll be a weekly event to register and report any income. Big Brother likes to keep tabs on you when he’s doling out your tax money.

It made for a day that was anxious at times as I start down this road. There are so many uncertainties, but that’s what makes journeys interesting. I keep thinking of the advice I received from our neighbor in Chautauqua who advised me on “taking this leap of faith.”

“There’s something great out there waiting for you. You just can’t see it right now,” she told me several weeks before I took the buyout from my employer in order to pursue my education and devote the rest of my life to teaching – and learning.

It really is a matter of faith. I believe I will be successful at this, regardless of how daunting a task it seems as I write this on a mild April evening in Buffalo. Keep the faith. Remain positive. Take one day at a time. That really is the key: to refrain from looking ahead too far. Just handle the task at hand.

Self-help author Wayne Dyer would probably tell me to believe in abundance, and that the universe will provide what I need when it is needed.

So be it.