Vacation Blog 1 Dec 2021

 Well, I'm a week late again. I suspect it has to do with my habits. Once it's vacation time, I'm off my normal routine (one of the con's of some vacations for me) and so I forget stuff.

I flew to Fairfield with Suzannah, and it seems that it beat my body up quite a lot. The n 95 mask I wore hurt my nose like a punch to the face after a day of the painful metal band digging into the bridge of my schnoz, and by the end of the day I was curled up in bed with a splitting headache and nausea to the point where I didn't want to move or think because it took all my focus just to... be.

And now it's...two days later, and I still have a mild headache, and slept from around 3-5 when I only planned on taking a half hour nap. I feel bad for my poor body, but I'm not sure what's wrong. It doesn't feel quite like normal sickness symptoms, but I suppose it could be, which would be  pretty sad itself. My vacation degraded by being sick during it.

Regardless, I'm trying to enjoy my time at least, and it has been very nice spending time with friends. Have gotten almost no work done though.

My first free day of break, (which was Monday, as I was doing classes all weekend) I sat down and seriously asked myself about the state of my work life, my purpose, what my next steps were towards having a job I love, that's dharmic, that uses my strengths and the things I love to do and my unique makeup to greatest effect to give what I'm best suited to giving, to the world. Something I can develop a sense of mastery with, get into flow with, something that gives me energy and joy rather than taking it.

I got a little bit of clarity, not a lot, but one thing that was clear was whatever I end up doing next, it's got to at least start out part time. I am hurting from the hours I'm working. 

I've already written more, but it needs to be edited. I'm not sure how much of my nascent thinking about jobs should go out to the world yet. Also, I need to put out another blog post already, so I'll save it for #2

-I Out

T-minus 5….

 The final countdown. That is, one week, 4.5 days, until winter break, a full 2 weeks off from work. 

Yes, I’m looking forward to it.

Though I am also already projecting myself to the last day or two of it, where I’m wishing it was going on for longer and worrying about all the stuff I wanted to get done but didn’t do.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about my journey as a new teacher. Things are slowly improving, emphasis on slowly. I still feel far away from anything resembling mastery. But I do notice I’m getting better at the things I’m doing. Discipline, making sure the kids are working, teaching lessons. In a nutshell, I’d say, “still far away, but improving.”

I was reflecting via a Tom Brown course I was taking this weekend (It’s been a long time since I’ve done any of them and I felt the need to do at least one before the year ended.) on what it is that makes me not look forward to going to work. And the answer I got was that I’m afraid of failing. It’s perhaps the main reason I sometimes fantasize about creating an effective teacher training program. I feel utterly unprepared for my job. It feels like taking a class in college that has no teaching, just tests on lessons you’ve never learned. Like some kind of advanced calculus class, where you don’t know what half the symbols mean. Every day, is test after test, where you’re being judged and are acutely aware that you are failing. 

Unfortunately, this class has no text books, no Wikipedia article. Or more accurately, it has lots of books and articles, but none of them actually show you how to solve the problems. There are various tips about how to solve the problems, but how to actually apply that to the daily testing is unclear, and when you try to, it seldom works at all, and if it does, it is only moderate, and often temporary.

Math is not a good analogy, because we are dealing with human psychology here. It is an ever changing field. There are theory’s but little consensus, and the application of the theory’s is hard to figure out. And in addition to all that, the hours are long and the work is taxing. There is little time and less energy at the end of the day, to try and reflect on how things have gone and how to make them better.

But ultimately, the painful part of that is the feeling that I am a failure, that I am doing a bad job and that is not ok. Or if not truly bad, then deeply mediocre. Nobody wants a life where they spend most of their day being deeply mediocre. It is not a recipe for going to bed satisfied with the day’s work.

Obviously, my psychology is making me miserable. If I was simply totally fine with being mediocre, day in day out, then I would be fine. If I was not worried about failing, then I’d be more playful, experiment more, learn more, etc.

Part of the problem, I think, is not having clear, inspiring goals that I can be working towards. My goals are pretty vague. “Be a good teacher,” “help them grow as human beings.” And even those, I rarely stick my head above water to think about. Usually I’m buried in the minute to minute needs of the children and the classroom, and don’t have the mental space or physical time to pause and reflect on such things.

Time to go. Next post will probably be during my break. Woo!

Internal dialogue

 Should one continue to do a job that you are constantly counting down till the next weekend, break, etc.? My love-hate relationship with teaching continues. I’m glad I have the word ambivalent because that’s what’s going on. Mixed and conflicting feelings.

Voices in my head:

- “most people do jobs they don’t really like, why should you get to be different?

- “most people are unhappy and we are all living in a fairly sick and partially dysfunctional society, so conforming to that is not a sign of health or sanity.”

- “maybe you just need to get better at it and then you’ll come to really love it.”

- “or maybe I’ll find a job where my strengths are desirable and my weaknesses aren’t an issue and then I’ll love it from the outset. But I certainly won’t find that if I keep doing what I have been doing. Also, perhaps it’s not true, but if I extrapolate from my failures and successes with relationships, it’s is much better to find someone you really click with, if not immediately, then pretty shortly after really getting to know and interact with them. It does not take that long to get a feel for that kind of resonance, or the lack thereof with people, it seems reasonable that the same would hold true for jobs.”

- “but you don’t know that for sure. Plus it’s easier to date a bunch informally than to do a bunch of jobs informally.”

- “maybe, maybe not. If I’m willing to work as an unpaid intern for a few weeks or a month, I might have reasonable flexibility.”

- “that seems unfair because so many people don’t have that option.”

- “but that doesn’t mean that I should avoid using whatever tools are at my disposal.”

- “you signed up for a 3 year contract, you should be focusing on how to do your job as well as possible until that contract is up.”

- “what if it’s clear to me that I don’t want to be doing that, before the contract is up, isn’t it reasonable to at least ask if I can stop early?”

- “everything happens for a reason, perhaps you’re being forced to stick with it for so long because the universe knows you’d try and run away from the unpleasantness if that was an option, but on the other side of the unpleasantness is some great learning and the opening of doors to work you do find really satisfying.”

- “seems like there’s no way to know, but my best guess is it’s not gonna do that, it’s just going to be another stressful year with moderate learning and easing of the difficulty without fundamentally changing how I feel about the work.”

- “you could be wrong, and then it’s unlikely you’d get as good an opportunity again any time soon.”

So, there you have a little snippet inside my head, at least on that topic. Others things bouncing around are a friends comment that me writing a book for teachers about all the problems I’m dealing with, and then solutions, could be really valuable, but my thought is, I’m not even a good teacher yet, who in the world am I to give advice to others.

More could be said on more things, but it’s time to wrap up. Two weeks to go till winter break. Then 5-ish months till summer break, then a year till I’m done with my contract. The next thing in my life I am eagerly looking forward to is being able to work part time. Unless I immediately find work I love, that is my plan. I can finally make a dent in all my independent projects that have been building up.

See ya next time

-I Out