Newly divorced and in my mid-50s, I moved 1,800 miles from the area where I lived and worked for nearly four decades. I took a job in what I quickly found was a deeply dysfunctional Intensive English Program whose administrators — not unlike my ex-husband — had been deceptive and duplicitous.

The curriculum was inauthentic and anachronistic, the program had lost its CEA accreditation and students were considered customers who were always right. Employee turnover was (and is) rampant, with everyone from administrators to faculty to staff regularly quitting.

In the midst of considering my options and planning my exit from my job, my beloved companion animal, Sylvester, became seriously ill, and I had my third hand surgery. The timing of the surgery proved fortuitous — if not serendipitous — because it was soon apparent that I could not work as my hand healed, and not working meant I was able to spend all my time with Sylvester, time that yielded great gifts and great wisdom.

Three days before Sylvester died in my arms and a miserable 29 months after I began working in the sick IEP environment, I quit. Correction: I liberated myself. Both Sylvester and I were free of pain and anguish.

In "To a Mouse," the great Scottish poet, Robert Burns, observed, "The best laid schemes o' Mice and Men/Gang aft agley" (often go awry). And so it was with my plans. What lay ahead for me wasn't clear; I fell into the standard — and often necessary — belief that I had to find another job and fast. After all, I had bills to pay.

For months prior to my job departure, I spent many hundreds of hours applying for many hundreds of teaching positions and interviewing. I flew to many schools for interviews and had other interviews via Skype, FaceTime and phone.

With each interview, I was burdened by dread that I might indeed be offered a position that would thrust me back into a traditional teaching environment. Increasingly, I knew teaching in a conventional program was no longer meaningful to me.

Profit — not proficiency — is frequently the driving force propelling programs and institutions that profess commitment to higher learning. Recently, The Atlantic and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published articles examining the troubling issues arising when universities' emphasis moves from education to profit.

Along with begrudgingly coming to terms with profit's preeminence, I've begrudgingly learned from years of teaching in ESL programs that too often those enrolled have no investment in their education because they are sponsored by their wealthy governments. They see their time in the U.S. as a prolonged vacation. Programs' accountability provisions are weak because the dollar is strong.

Perhaps my ambivalence and misgivings about working in another conventional program revealed themselves during the interviews because I had no offers.

Initially, I was disappointed with each rejection, but soon thereafter, I was relieved. Remarkably relieved. The more I learned about the programs, the more disenchanted I became. And I had such lousy interview experiences that I wrote about them.

I asked myself if I really wanted another teaching position in another traditional American program even if it did mean the security of a paycheck, health insurance and a retirement plan. The answer was no. The rejections had saved me.

The rejections — and the lessons I learned from Sylvester's life and death — allowed me time to reflect creatively, innovatively and imaginatively about what I'd pursue next.

When I adopted Sylvester, he was starving, traumatized and catatonic. I do not know what caused his psychological injury, but it was severe. However, with unconditional love and care, he incrementally improved and ultimately blossomed and thrived.

After nearly 15 years, he had transformed from a starving, wounded and desperate orphan paralyzed by fear to a loving, brave, curious, interactive, ornery, tenacious soul who taught me that great things can come from patience, and there is always a reason to be hopeful even when it seems as though there isn't.

It has taken me a good deal of reckoning to come to terms with the reality that Sylvester was my only dependent. Because he no longer needs me, I am free to make decisions I would not have made if he were still alive.

Initially, I felt guilty for considering what I could do now that Sylvester was gone. I had to accept that looking beyond life with Sylvester did not mean I was happy about his death or looking forward to life without him. But Sylvester was dead, and I had a choice: To learn from and celebrate his life by living — really living — or to play it safe. I began to consider what life could be.

As I ruled out what I don't want, I began to envision what I do want: I want to do meaningful work, I want to use my talents and skills to work with those who are committed to and value education and who are eager to take advantage of my talents and skills, and I want to travel.

But what, I reconsidered, is education? What has passed for education is no longer enough.

It is no longer enough to try to bring authenticity to the confines of inauthentic curricula, doing what I can to infuse my courses with credible and legitimate exercises, assignments and assessments based in multiple intelligences and critical thinking and critical self-reflection. It is no longer enough to try to teach and inspire those who don't want to learn or who want only to pass the TOEFL or their courses because they are just T's to cross and I's to dot on the way to a diploma.

It is no longer enough to try to teach or inspire those who have no time for or interest in education's remarkable and infinite gifts. It is no longer enough to longingly pine for a position in a progressive program, one rooted in the work of my intellectual heroes, among them John Dewey, Paolo Freire, Howard Gardner, Jane Healy, Oliver Sacks and John Holt.

"School is bad for children," Holt incisively observed in his nearly 50-year-old essay.

School. Not education. School. We teach that "learning is separate from living," Holt perceptively and boldly declared. School isn't bad only for children, I've learned. I've learned it's time for me to "live and learn and pass it on."

Ever since I was so small that I couldn’t articulate my thoughts or feelings, I have been keenly aware of my mortality. That awareness formed from watching my mom's long-term and remarkable fight against cancer and her death when she was much too young and I was only 20, followed quickly by my dad's heart attack and triple bypass surgery, his battle with the insidious and debilitating cancer of multiple myeloma, and then, a quick six years after my mom's death, his own.

As I rapidly approach the age my mom was when she died, I'm no longer willing to accept a life of the American status quo. There's too much living and learning to do. I have no dependents, I have some savings, and I am healthy. Now is the time.

Health psychologist Dr. Kelly McGonigal advises the best way to make decisions is to, "Go after what it is that creates meaning in your life." Decades before McGonigal's suggestion, renowned writer and teacher Joseph Campbell urged, "Follow your bliss. Find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it."

And so I am.

After months of thorough and percipient research, my plans have taken shape. I have begun educational consulting and a photography business, and I've made plans to volunteer for three organizations in distinct parts of the world with distinct missions. International volunteering will allow me to do meaningful work with those who value education in all its manifestations and who are eager to take advantage of my talents and skills while I explore possibilities as I explore the world.

As the year unfolds, I'll be publishing accounts of my adventures, and I look forward to having you join me.