2016/2017: A Brief Look Back

This Thursday, I presented my final interactive history presentation of the 2016/2017 school year, and yesterday I attended my company’s end of the year meeting, a celebratory day of reflection. In that selfsame spirit of reflection and celebration, I here present a short depiction of this past year’s noteworthy happenings in the little world of Philip.  (If you’d like to let me know about your year, leave a comment below.  It’s FREE!)  
 
Over the course of this past school year, I presented two hundred and fifty-five interactive history presentations to over seven thousand students.  Each of those presentations was two and a half hours long.  During them, I talked constantly, all while attempting to hold the attentions of a room full of grade school students.  To do so, I used every trick I knew, including funny voices, props, costumes, and the corniest jokes ever conceived by humankind.  While doing so, I myself transformed from a person who was reluctant to work with students to a person who draws great meaning from the practice. (For more info about this new teaching job of mine, click HERE.)  
 
To get to these presentations, I drove over seven thousand miles, replacing as I did so three tires on my newly acquired (used) car, its brakes, and (several times) its variously required fluids.  I drove more in this past year than I have in all previous years combined, as this was also my first year owning a car.  Needless to say, my driving skills have markedly improved, although my fiancée will be the first to say there is still capacious space available in my skill set for further improvements. I am now intimately acquainted with the traffic patterns of Orange County, having also traveled for work to the Central Coast, Central Valley, Imperial Valley, and the Mojave desert.  I camped in Joshua Tree and hiked in Yosemite.  I even saw the Salton Sea!     
 
This was my first year with a steady, non-acting job.  It was my first year having weekends off.  It was my first year paying for my own health insurance.  It was also my first year paying for my own housing, as I have in the past always worked theatre jobs that provided housing or crashed (briefly) with family and long-suffering friends.  This year I signed a lease for a condo with my fiancée, Chelsea, and speaking of Chelsea, this year I proposed to my fiancée Chelsea.  Chelsea and I get married in 19 days, and if my last few posts have seemed to focus more and more on Chelsea and I as a couple doing couple things, it is because we are getting married in 19 days, and everything else seems to pale in comparison to that brazenly florid fact.
 
This upcoming summer is also my first summer in seven years without an acting gig, unless you count getting married as a theatrical event, which I am tempted to do.  There are, after all, so many similarities.  There will be a rehearsal.  There will be an audience in attendance.  Chelsea and I will both be in costume.  And, we will have lines to say!  I may in fact put the wedding down on my theatrical resume, which is currently collecting cobwebs.
 
Why don’t we leave things there for now.  I’ll be back next week with a proper essay.