Chicago for another year

Today, I accepted my boss's offer to make my organizing position permanent. I told her I'd like to stay, potentially, for another year. Who woulda thunk it?! I left the office at 11pm tonight, having stayed late to prepare for our staff retreat tomorrow (and still not finished). Now I'm working on my lesson plan for my second to last class for the 8th graders at JRC. I question if this is really what I want to be doing. Yet the decision feels so right. It's exciting to be hired on without a short-term contract. I already have a different sense of legitimacy as an organizer.

I smiled, though, as I dismounted my bicycle thinking about my commitment to another year here because the poem by Langston Hughes, "Dream Deferred," popped into my head.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

While I had dreams of what to do with my time post-June, when I was originally going to end my tenure at LAC, for some reason each of those feels less urgent now. But I do wonder what will happen to them. If I'll ever leave Chicago... if I'll ever start to address my bucket list... if I'll ever start to live my 20s the way I dreamed of living them when I was in college. But alas, to look back and say that I learned and worked as a community organizer working on healthcare access issues for over 2.5 years, that ain't so bad. And after all, there's still plenty of time left in my 20s.