I’m huffing and puffing up the hill, swatting at gnats.

The Jonas Brothers’ Sucker comes on. I focus on the beat to set my walking pace (yes, walking), ignoring the title as I think back to the meeting at our new complex, which we left less than 30 minutes ago. My brain has been jogging 164 beats per minute since the speaker, one of our new neighbors and a former law enforcement official, finished his talk about his organization dedicated to integrating formerly incarcerated people into society. 

Throughout his 50-minute presentation on crime, rehabilitation, addiction, and recovery, the mantra of a former mentor kept reverberating through my brain. The mentor, a mental health professional, once posited that “the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. It’s connection.”  I have adopted that mantra as one unscientific but satisfying answer, not only to addiction, but to many other ills. The speaker’s story and the discussion and energy he sparked among the rest of our community bore that out, but as I swat at gnats and cross the street to get closer to the breeze coming off the Long Island Sound, I still have no idea how much those 50 minutes have seeped into my skin.

I turn down a quiet street and Firework by Katy Perry comes on, and I think about how the speaker invited us to join him and connect with people beyond our own community. At a time when so many people are expressing a sense of hopelessness about ongoing wars, economic fears, and social conflict, we heard someone talk about hopes being realized and lives being redeemed not 10 miles from where we live. 

We walked out of that room with a sense of purpose, and as I started walking, the ideas began percolating.

I’m an educator. Sometimes I’m an artist, sometimes a writer, but, if I’m honest, those things often take a back seat to teaching. It’s not just the papers that need grading or the IEPs that need drafting. It’s that teaching provides an avenue for ideas to come to life and hopefully make someone’s life better.

I’m ashamed to say it’s not the only reason I started teaching. I started teaching because I cared about kids, of course, but I also selfishly hoped it would provide a creative outlet and time to create in the summers. 

Eminem’s Lose Yourself comes on. It used to be a go-to run song for me back when my walk was a run.

The song’s soft, rhythmic “what if” wondering what you’d do with your one shot at “everything you ever wanted” accelerates my pace.  

I think back to when I joined the creative writing class that spawned this blog. At the time, everything I ever wanted was to write — to have a writing life. Acceptance to that class was the first time I’d ever had a professional tell me my writing was any good (not that I’d ever shown it to anyone). Approval seemed like the one shot to seize the moment. 

I stop at the edge of a road, looking around the harbor from a completely new vantage point. I can’t see the little cove where we live now, and the shore looks completely different.

I turn, pick up the pace again, and start thinking about ways to connect the school with the group. Does the group have/need opportunities for creative expression? I hit the back button on the iPod to go back to the beginning of the song to keep my momentum. I zone in on the second part of the “what if” when it comes around, asking if I’d let some golden opportunity slide on by.

So often I think I’ve “let it slip.”  I don’t write for a living. I don’t paint or even teach art. Then, I start to think about all the ways an impromptu Sunday connection just created dozens of shots to help people realize their hopes. 

Nothing has slipped. Maybe I just needed a better vantage point — one that only experiences can provide. What I really want isn’t a certain kind of life. It’s one with connection and purpose.  

If “Picking My Battles” were a child, I would have had to report myself to DCF for willful neglect, and I doubt my reasons would hold up in any court, least of all public opinion. But it’s a blog, and while sometimes it seems to telepathically reproach me, it and I know that the periods of non-blogging are often like the dark winter a tulip bulb needs to germinate.

Picking My Battles has taken a back seat in the trunk of my creative car while my dissertation has lapped up all my attention. That pecking order will rearrange itself soon, as I have some other things I carry.

The Big Guy and I no longer carry the constant kid schedules. We set down the care and feeding of a very unconventional house in the middle of the big woods for a much smaller condo on the Connecticut Shoreline. The Big Guy has lost most of his sight, and a more comprehensive infrastructure has helped mitigate some of that. I still teach but hope I will carry that love for as long as I’m able.

But there are some things I’m setting down permanently.

The weather gets warm much earlier in Connecticut than it did in Vermont, and we’ve been swimming almost daily for several weeks now. Being roughly the shape and texture of an overripe cantaloupe, I spent way too much time looking for a swimsuit that would camouflage like a tent and still perform like a Speedo.

My first visit to the community pool was in a suit that looked almost like a shirt combined with a tea-length skirt (sometimes it’s good to be really short). The Big Guy and I were almost alone aside from a new neighbor we had met on another walk. The neighbor was already doing his laps and completely unconcerned with what we were wearing. We slid in, splashed around for an hour, then got out, and, amazingly, no one noticed or cared if we were swimsuit-perfect.

The skirt suit was a pain in the neck to get out of when it was wet, so I trade to something with slightly less coverage and hoped no one would be there the next day.

But that was not to be.

The next day a small group was already lounging in one corner of the patio. I knew I had to choose my moment to ditch my cover-up and jump in when no one was looking. There was no such moment, but there was something much better about to happen.

As I slid into the water, one of the group members came over to get in as well. She was about my age and size but instead of wearing a micro-tent, had chosen a conventional suit with a gorgeous pattern that told the world she was ready to celebrate summer, whatever her size. She got in, and we started chatting about life, kids, and getting older, and not once did we think about whether we were too fat to be enjoying our time in the sun.

I’ve gone back almost every day since then, meeting other women of varying shapes and sizes, none of whom care an iota about who is too fat to be wearing this or that outfit. And I’ve stopped carrying some big things there and everywhere else.

I no longer bother bringing the giant coverup (a towel is fine for the short walk, thank you). I’m no longer carry the worry that I’m too fat or ugly to enjoy life in public. And I’ve decided I’m no longer interested in carrying the worry that things have to be perfectly in order to do the things that make me complete.

The dissertation doesn’t have to be done to take a drawing class I’ve always wanted to take. The house doesn’t have to be clean enough to work on my blog and a book that’s been rumbling in my head. Things don’t have to be perfectly in place to set down the things we were never meant to carry and enjoy our all-too-short time in the sun.

For the third year in a row, the Chinese club at our kid’s school hosted its annual International Cultures night. In a tiny rural school of 300 kids (K to 12), an entire town enjoys food from around the world. A local Chinese cultural group performs traditional and modern dances. Kung fu demonstrations amp up the excitement.

An outside observer might think this is the least likely town to embrace an evening like this. This midwinter tradition, though, has become comfort food for all of our souls. There is at least a foot of snow on the ground from the last storm. People are cocooning most of the days. On this icy February night, however, our gym is filled with warmth and connection, giving birth to my latest hypothesis.

In counseling and other helping professions, there is a saying that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is connection. Right now most of our town is clapping along to a Chinese folk song. People are waving at each other and at the guest dancers. It has me thinking that connection is the antidote to most of what ails us in society.

I connect to the world through creativity. I use it to vent and heal, and it helps me find the spark in others. My years as a special educator have been completely about finding and nurturing the sparks in my students. The sparks look different, but always serve the same function of reconnecting them with school or their community. Lately I’ve been taking a leap of faith and sharing more of my art, embracing the connections it helps build.

I could be wrong. Those connections may not be the answers to all the world’s problems. But even if they are only a small part of the antidote to division, I’m willing to chase them.

What helps you connect with the world?