"Is there anything that I'm feeling especially grateful for?" I am really grateful for the ability to vote. So November 7th is our upcoming election and although I have not been very grateful for all of the just numerous flyers I've gotten to my house, also texts to my phone. So that's been tedious this season, but generally just having the opportunity and right to vote is really exciting. I did a training last week around voting and was working with some people or talking with some people that work with the refugee community, and they talked a lot about how they spend their time trying to educate people on, you know, are they allowed to vote? What is the purpose of voting? Who does it benefit? And so many of them are not used to safe elections or the option to go without there being folks with automatic weapons or, you know, it's just not a safe space always, and so that was a really nice reminder that we're very fortunate in this country that we're allowed to vote and that we can safely do so most of the time.

But in addition to that happening, there was a fire in the building. In my building, basically. So I'm in an apartment complex that has four units that are connected to each other in a separate building, and then another four in another building. So, two of the buildings or two of the apartments, mine included, face the street. So we're kind of right next to each other, and then in two apartments behind us. They face the parking lot that's in the back. Well, the fire was at the apartments in the back. So luckily, you know, the fire was not at my apartment. There's no fire damage. They didn't have to, you know, spray anything, you know, no water damage in my apartment or chemicals, anything like that, and luckily everybody in the other two apartments was okay. You know, no injuries or anything like that, but definitely a lot of damage to their two apartments and the smoke, you know, came over into mine. They had to turn the electricity, the heat off, in the entire building so I had to move out. Which has kind of - luckily, I have a place to go and I am safe and all of that, but it's really sort of been disruptive. And having been in my apartment so little in the past month, I just I sort of really feel displaced. You know, really feel like I haven't, like I kind of don't have a home in a way which is kind of a weird thing. I felt like I - earlier this week even before this happened I kind of felt a little like I was homesick, I guess, which is kind of strange. But I didn't really feel - like I hadn't really gotten settled in in my place yet. And then this happened and now I really am not settled there. So I'm not sure what's gonna happen. There's still a bunch of investigators, you know, going through to figure out what the cause was and to figure out if there's any real structural damage, if it's safe to turn the electricity back on, if there needs to be some obvious repair to the other apartments, but to mine, I'm not sure what they're gonna do. So it's sort of a waiting game basically right now and like I said, I'm lucky that I have…

Note: Some language has been edited out of the transcript that is not edited out in the audio When I'm approaching those deep, deep lows of "Is this where I want to - is this where I see myself for an extended period of time?" So soon after I have those thoughts of "Am I a good teacher? Do I belong in teaching? is teaching something that can sustain - do I want to sustain it? Is this where I belong?" Something happens and it's like holy s****. Ok. This isn't a coincidence that this thing just happened right now. One example is there was one morning last year, I think it was maybe December or January. It was in winter. It was a cold winter month in Michigan. I'm driving across M-69. And I did start crying because I just, I just wasn't excited about going to work that day and I hadn't been for a little bit, and I continually had these thoughts of like I was saying, like again, just - "Is this really what I want for myself? Is this, is this me?" Whatever. That morning after crying on the drive in to work that day, a student that I had during my subbing position, so from January of 21 to June of 21, gave me a note that she had typed, but she'd typed it out. And it was just one of the sweetest things and I don't remember some of the specifics. I remember some of the specifics, but I don't remember all of them, but I remember I read that. I read that before class then, before school started that day and again started crying, but for, you know, a totally opposite reason.