Fuck It, I’m Leaving Early
Navigating life after teaching—one awkward crowd, botched conversation, and early exit at a time.
I used to thrive in crowds. Readings, concerts, lectures—I was always in the mix, always organizing, always at the center of something.
Lately, though, I find myself slipping out the door early, ducking away from the noise, standing in the back instead of taking the mic. It’s not just about getting older or being tired.
It’s about something deeper, something I’m still trying to name.
After a day working at a new job where I am honestly just trying to figure out what I am doing and who I am, I went to see my friend take part in a Pecha Kucha night at a local college.
If you don’t know what a Pecha Kucha is, it’s a timed slide presentation, where there are 20 slides that automatically change every 20 seconds. It’s a very unforgiving format, but it has a democratic effect where there are 7-10 people presenting and meeting the same challenge. It was originally invented by graphic designers living in Japan who wanted to share work without people yammering on too long. And now it’s a worldwide thing with Pecha Kucha nights all over the world.
I was happy to come out and see my friend. At the same time, I found myself feeling meh, out of sorts, wonky, not quite myself. I was in a funk.
As I stood there in a crowded art gallery, I did what I always do when I am up in my feelings: I tried to self-diagnose myself. It’s one of my many idiotic habits of mind that won’t go away in my middle age.
First, for years, I taught my students with Pecha Kucha lessons. Most young people hate hate hate public speaking, and this strict format gave them structure and made them feel less anxious. And you could really sense that students were getting more confident as they practiced and presented their talks. Seeing my friend doing one was great—it’s kind of jarring seeing adults do them after hundreds of college kids. At the same time, I was reminded that those Pecha Kucha and teaching days were over. Pretty obvious, right? Well, Mr. Self-Diagnosing Captain Obvious couldn’t help but point it out to me as I stood in the back with a plastic cup of beer.
Oh, and the event took place at a college. As in, a college that was still in business and not closed. So there I am, in an art gallery of a college that was very much a “peer institution” as we used to say in meetings, and I couldn’t help but allow myself to point out in classic No-Shit-Sherlock fashion, hey doesn’t it suck that your college isn’t around any more?
And then there was the crowd. I have decided, dear reader, that I don’t like crowds anymore. There was a time I used to love large gatherings, aka parties, aka openings and readings and concerts and people having fun. This new me? Not so much.
In some ways, it was liberating or relaxing even. I had, over 19 years teaching, put together and hosted more than 100 readings of writers and students. Running those events are immensely fulfilling—we’re out of the stale classroom and students get to express themselves, or see people at the top of their game perform or read their writing. But it’s also exhausting. I would come home some nights from teaching at night and drop into the couch, social battery completely drained.
I had debated myself in the art gallery whether it was my ego suffering the indignities of not being the focal point or being less important. I decided in the end, maybe to make myself feel better, I was drowning in my own bullshit in slow motion for some other reason.
My old therapist, bless her heart, never used this term, but I have heard depression being described as anger turned inward, and as much as I don’t want to admit it, I think that metaphor applies here. As I saw all these lovely, community-minded people present Pecha Kuchas on community gardens, local ties to Ghost Busters, indie filmmaking, Kurt Cobain, and collecting records, my inner critic was clickety-clacking away thinking about how I was just rudderless in this whole tableau. I stood there in the crowd, an ex-professor in the local area, and spotted one former student in the front row, a former colleague confabbing with one of the other speakers, and it just felt all so very sad. And I was angry.
It’s not even that I felt like I didn’t belong there—it was more than that. It was that I felt like I didn’t have anything to add to the overall conversation.
I go solo to many concerts these days. Not all concerts, but some, and out of choice. I enjoy listening to music by myself, so why should concerts be any different?
My wife and I went to see Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service at our local stadium a couple months after my mom died. I thought it would be therapeutic, and for a good amount of time it was. But then there were all these lights and other people and for once in my life I wanted ear plugs to just have some quiet. I needed to leave. So I said to my wife, “I think I’m done,” and so we left.
Almost a year ago, I drove to Kingston to see another gig, a small venue this time. It was around my birthday and this was a gift to myself to drive a little out of town and see a concert.
I went solo. Anyone want to see an avant garde guitar player accompanied by antique synths on a Wednesday night an hour away? No? No. OK.
There is a distinct vibe shift driving south from Albany, especially when going to a concert or a reading or even hanging out in a coffee shop. I guess I could just pull a Hemingway and just say “yes, they have more money,” but it’s more complicated than that, I’m more on the F. Scott Fitzgerald side of things.
When I first moved to New York City, I like to say it was my first real exposure to people who have money, real money. Not new money or new cars or well-paying jobs. I’m talking about generational wealth. There are people with money in Albany, sure, but they don’t necessarily have the cultured wealth you might see from people in your Hudsons and Kingstons and certainly Beacons and Rosendales.
These are the New Yorkers who get a second home, Brooklyn expats who move up here and then are shocked (shocked!) that rents go up shortly thereafter. From the vantage point of the suburbs of Albany, it’s all kind of exciting to watch, since there is markedly less cultural energy going on.
So like I said the Kingston gig was around my birthday, two months after my college announced it was closing. I needed to clear my head. The place where the concert took place, Tubby’s, is a tiny place on a corner, hosts gigs for old heads like myself who want a soupçon of boho with their avant garde. Up in Albany and Troy, it’s a lot of hardcore and millennial punk. It’s as if post-punk never happened.
One guy struck up a conversation with me. For almost a year since then, I’ve kept his business card in my top desk drawer. The card has a photo of himself in a blue suit and tie, his right hand raised to grip the top of a camera on top of a tripod. He looks slightly to his right and smiles. It makes no visual sense, this business card, other than he is advertising himself as a photographer.
I know I just said I liked going to concerts alone, but I’m not a sociopath and if someone asks me questions I’ll answer them. I could sense my social battery draining as he talked about himself and about how he knew the guy who was playing guitar and how he was from Albany and knew such-and-such muckety-muck in charge of this and that, oh god let this concert start I kept thinking.
Then, at some point, somewhere around my second can of sour cider, he starts talking about how he’s tired of political correctness and Democrats and woke this and woke that and he was tired of the government protecting people and shit, I just tuned him out at some point. What in the fuck he’s doing at an experimental guitar/synth show in Kington, I have not a clue.
Here’s the thing about being a middle-aged white dude with glasses who looks like me. Other old white dudes with glasses quite regularly will see me and assume I’m down with talking about how we white dudes with glasses are some endangered species or people need to get a sense of humor or why do we need to have all these protections and pronouns and genders and we need tax breaks. My way of responding isn’t really great. I’m not a genteel conversationalist in these situations.
“What you think of as politically correct means just not being a dick to people,” I said to Mr. Photographer with the Shitty Business Card. “I think it’s really interesting how people who worked for the state and are comfortably retired suddenly want to bring it all down and not let other people have a chance to feed themselves. Have a good night.”
The owners of the two major record stores up here, until a couple years ago, were Rush Limbaugh types, total right wingers among aisles and aisles of revolutionary music releases. This guy who gave me his business card reminded me of those white dudes with glasses and so many others.
Trying to avoid seeing this guy after this exchange was a bit of a challenge in a 100-person venue.
I left that concert early, too.
It's coming up on twenty years since we moved upstate to Albany. That’s such a big chunk of time that I can’t present myself anymore as some arriviste emigre from Brooklyn. I am an upstater.
I’m writing this on a day off from my new work. There’s about 8 inches of powdery snow outside, and I’m sitting in front of a fireplace that’s working up to putting out a good heat. The dog is knocked out cold on the couch and Endtroducing plays on the stereo.
Except for it being the first days of Trump anointing himself Dear Leader, life seems good.
Sorting out my role in the world after stripping myself of this professor title has been more challenging than I have thought. It’s also way more subtle.
Maybe that’s what all of this has been about—figuring out where I fit now that I’m not standing at the front of some classroom, coaching people through their Pecha Kucha slides and not running readings, not tied to a place that no longer exists.
It’s strange to be untethered after so many years, like I’ve been cut loose but haven’t quite figured out which way the current is pulling me.
But maybe that’s okay. Maybe feeling lost is just part of the process. Maybe leaving early, stepping away, standing in the back with a plastic cup of beer—it’s not just about discomfort or longing, but about making space for whatever comes next.
I don’t have to be the one talking. I don’t have to have anything to add. I can just be here, figuring it out.
For now, that will have to be enough.
Or maybe just buy me a coffee.
