Deanne Byerly:  

Life Hello: After years of solicitations from this group, I decided to join and see if anyone I know is still out there and if so, what they've done with the last 50 or so years. As for me, after following a highly mobile spouse (Ken Byerly) around the country for twenty five years, we found ourselves in Baltimore (1984), where we raised the last of our four children. In between stops, I managed to complete college and graduate school (probably wouldn't have done the doctorate had I not been offered a full fellowship). I have been a teacher (middle school through graduate school), editor of the Kalamazoo Magazine, and finally, in Baltimore, found myself helping some of the least likely students in the world go to college and stay in college to graduate. The effort needed professionally left me with little time for any other form of living. (If you’ve ever seen the HBO show, The Wire, you’ve not only seen some of my students as actors, but seen the lives of some depicted in the story line. The show, while dramatizing certain events, manages to be somewhat accurate.) Shortly before my 69th birthday (February 28th), with far too many commitments, I burned out and didn't know it until I had time to think, plan, and direct , my energy toward living my life as opposed to helping others live theirs. Actually, I think what happened to me is what happens to most "work-a-holics", especially obsessive-compulsive ones---I ran out of hours in the day before I ran out of things to do. With contracts complete I began re-directing my energy with th...Expand for more