I’ve been writing this one in my head for a long time. Instead of overthinking it, I’d rather just get it down. Put it out there.

When you are in your twenties and you’re figuring out what job you’re supposed to embrace for the rest of your working life, there is no way to predict the waves coming from future tides. We cannot see the storms, but we plan the journey anyway. To be fair, we cannot predict the island paradises, yet we still chart the waters. So it goes with most professions.

I began teaching high school English twenty years ago this month. I had a bit of a false start in a small Virginia classroom pretty far off the beaten path, but when an opening appeared to teach at Weir High School in Weirton, West Virginia, I applied with fingers crossed.

There wasn’t anything wrong with Virginia; I just wasn’t supposed to be there, I think. I drove the eight hours from Richmond for a midweek interview in West Virginia. I felt good enough about the interview, but I wasn’t supremely confident. On the drive back, I got the call about an hour in.

I’d say the next ten years were a blur, but they weren’t. The hundreds of students that moved in and out or around the corner of A Building grew used to my antics, but whatever is remembered of me, this is what I recall: we all grew so much.

I responded to journal entries brave enough to expose difficulties others knew not. We shared the triumph of characters and unexpected plot twists. We laughed at errant comments, and we shared silent tears when life’s challenges were tougher than we predicted. We read plays, short stories, and novels. We watched films that showed something that might otherwise have gone unseen, unnoticed. We played ball games, earned playoffs, endured tournaments, volunteered for students vs. faculty games, won contests, and danced through dozens of nights. We were in love with the day, even if the rearview sometimes showed pain, and even though the future held uncertainty. How I’ll never forget what it meant to accept each other even when we were not emotionally ready to be honest, or when disagreements created rifts that took too long to bridge. It was real life.

I’ve been gone for ten years, and when I visit the Ohio Valley, it’s sad to see the slow slip of time finally seeping into those areas immortalized in memory. All the wrong turns and right lucks are still whispered by the trees in the hills of old neighborhoods. The mill has closed for good, and those new jobs never did make it all the way to the nooks and crannies of a formerly industrial infrastructure. Still, there is resilience. Nobody is giving up, but like a fighter who is outmatched and refuses to quit, you root for the fight to go the distance. West Virginia has a good chin: I think this one’s going to go to decision.

I cannot list all of the students who were a part of my most formative decade. They deserve honor separately. There isn’t a post long enough to do them justice. Their character arcs alone demand a longer form.

Twenty years is a long time, but it’s not because of the days that make up the months that collect to become years. It’s long in the way you trace the plot movements. It’s the way the twists changed the original outline. That is why the words are so important. They were always going to go somewhere.

I’m heading into a new era, but I carry the unexpected joys and crushing defeats just inside my jacket pocket. To all who walked it with me, I thank you. I couldn’t have weathered life’s disappointments without your support. I couldn’t have challenged my shortcomings without the ways you helped me. Most importantly, I could not have understood just how much more is out there without the way you showed me.

It’s odd that three thousand days is only part of a much larger story. Thank you for reading this. I hope we continue to learn to love each moment, or that we remember that there is always another chance already on its way, or one waiting to be born.

What a curious thing, to feel hope for a falling action far afield.

Here’s to another 3000.