Last week I thought I was going to die.

My heart was beating so fast I thought I was going to have a heart attack. That wasn't unreasonable given my sister had one in her late '30's. I mean, I have made it to nearly 50, so that's good, but maybe that was it for me. I was breaking out into sweats, my hands were tingling, I wasn't sleeping, and I felt like bursting into tears, and often did.

Welcome to the life of an English teacher in Term 2, the busiest term of the year. And I'm only part time. It's hell. Each class set of essays can take 3 hours to mark. Then there's teaching, reports, planning, exam supervision, more reports, more essays, anxious kids, parents to deal with, and staff pushed to their breaking point. There's a constant influx of emails, so many that you miss more than one and start getting anxious you've missed a deadline, a meeting, an instruction. Combine that with a heightened sense of empathy that picks up on other people's sense of anxiety and stress, and it's enough to push you over the edge.

Hive duties, therefore, were not a priority. In fact, I had to consciously let them go in order to merely survive this week. Rare for me - I'm usually capable of juggling more than one thing, so much so that people wonder 'how I do it'. But the brutal fact is that I can't anymore. This is truly the end of my teaching career.

Random Melbourne Graffiti

But this week, I thought 'this is the end.' I'm either going to die, or I have to walk away from everything, and the two were almost not mutually exclusive.

I had my husband worried. He's a bit of a knight in shining armour, my darling man. He's always made me a priority, so he was rushing home from work to see if I was okay, and sitting with me holding my hands as I tried not to have a panic attack, which was reasonably successful, although I thought all week was a panic attack. It was hard to sit still, to close my eyes, to meditate, to do yoga or any of my usual thins to calm myself down.

The upshot? I'm finally quitting this job at the end of the year, when the school terms ends on December 13th. I'm so grateful to have had a job for ten years - it's paid well, and helped me pay off the mortage (along with a little bit of a BTC investment, thanks crypto world!) and taught me a lot. But I've hated it more than I've loved it. I loved teaching kids, but not the curriculum, the people I worked with, or many of the unreasonable demands this profession puts on you. It's taken a while to get to the point I feel I can walk away, as I know that I probably won't ever work such a well paid job again, nor likely ever have a permanent job again. My husband will be the major breadwinner now, which bothered me a lot, but he's convinced me that that's more than okay. He can handle it a lot better than I can.

It's an odd thing, getting to the end of something like a career.

But it's so right.

I've been thinking a lot lately about dying, and how I live my life. I've been thinking about how much we're led to believe a certain amount of money, or things, will see us happy, and how that doesn't sit right with me, and never has. I've been thinking a lot about the need to honour my body and my soul in the next ten years of my life, and how I'm going to spend the next twenty years of my life. This culture makes us believe that you can work and be happy, and that might be the case if you're lucky enough to land your dream job, but what about the rest of us? I've been thinking alot about the things I love, like gardening and yoga and surfing and writing. Maybe somehow I can figure out a way to earn a little bit of sustenance money from them.

Or maybe I'll just magically get better at budgeting and living off a shoestring, like I used to.

All I have to do is get through another six months without dying.