An experienced teacher with the pseudonym Dean recounts feeling stuck professionally, and uncertain about his future career trajectory. Although he has had a variety of teaching roles and has experienced previous satisfaction, currently he feels becalmed and unsure about how to regain momentum. The teacher relates this sense of emotional stagnation to the multiple competing pressures affecting his work, and to the complex relationships that he needs to navigate. He seeks to assure the interviewers and himself that he is not apathetic, yet he is clearly engaging in occupational pausing to take his bearings before potentially changing course and heading in a new professional direction. The authors (who co-interviewed the teacher) analyse his sense of feeling stuck by reference to the lens of positioning theory (Harré, R., & Van Langenhove, L., Positioning theory: Moral contexts of intentional action. Blackwell Publishers, 1999; van Lente, H., W. P. C. Boon, & Klerkx, L., Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 36:485-497, 2020). Applying positioning theory to analyse the teacher’s account explicates the interrelatedness, and yet also the distinction, among position, speech act and storyline as experienced by the teacher. Doing so also affords analytical power in understanding the complex forces at work in influencing the teacher’s narrative. Positioning theory emerges as a productive tool in teachers’ and researchers’ armouries, thereby contributing to the posited new emotional discourse framing teachers’ work and identities.