I Finished Year 27 of Teaching. Then I Left for Oregon.

Year 27 ended on a Thursday.

Friday, I was on the road.

That's not accidental. I've been teaching long enough to know that the summer doesn't refill you automatically — you have to actually do something with it. Not optimize it. Not plan a professional development arc. Something that has nothing to do with the classroom, with a GoPro running, with people you love.

That's what this trip was.

My brother Jaysen and I flew out to Oregon to celebrate our dad's 81st birthday. He lives in Portland, and his version of a birthday celebration was to drive us everywhere he loves. Mount Hood. The Columbia River Gorge — in the rain, obviously. The long haul out to Joseph, tucked into the Wallowa Mountains, which he insists on calling the "Mini Alps." He's not wrong.

The first stop was Janesville, Wisconsin, where my brother lives. He gave me a full golf cart tour of the Wishing Well RV Resort, complete with a detailed breakdown of which campground "demographic" I belong to. I won't spoil it. You'll see.

O'Hare added a three-hour delay because, of course, it did. My brother and I sat in the airport and reconnected in the way you only really can when there's nothing else to do.

From there: five days of driving, hiking, a sauna in the Wallowas, a birthday dinner for the patriarch, and a final push to the coast for crabbing on Nehalem Bay.

Make time for this stuff.

Not someday. Not after the school year settles down, or after you catch up on grading, or after you feel ready. You won't feel ready. The grading doesn't settle down. Someday is not a date on the calendar.

I know teachers who haven't taken a real trip in years. Who spend summers doing all the things they couldn't get to during the school year — the prep, the cleaning, the catching up — and then September arrives, and the tank is empty again.

That's not sustainable. Excellence doesn't come from an empty tank.

If you can't take a trip, you can take just a little time each week to do something just for you that is non-school-related.

Year 27 is done. I've got a few more in front of me. I want to show up for those years the way I showed up for this trip — a little uncomfortable, a little off-schedule, with people worth the drive.

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WHY EDIFYJeremy Jorgensen

This is Teacher Gone Wild — the Why Edify series where I step out of the classroom and just live for a minute. More episodes here. Want the weekly newsletter? It shows up every Wednesday: https://www.jeremyajorgensen.com/newsletter/