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Happiness on the Horizon

I think this is something that I’ve talked about before but it i still something that I am working on. It’s so easy to see happiness as the next step. What I mean is…we spend so much time thinking about how happy we will be once ( insert event) happens. At this moment, I am so focused on leaving my current school and getting a “fresh start” and I am not working to find my happiness in right now. I’ll admit, I love to dream about and plan for the future and most people do but what is lost is the ability to appreciate what is going on in our lives at this exact time. Ever since I got the job offer at my new school, I’ve done nothing but think about what my new apartment will look like…how I will decorate it…getting new utility accounts….teaching without a co-teacher…working evenings instead of days…etc. I have taught myself that until my current contract ends, I have no business being happy.

Happiness should not be something that is always just out of reach. Once this contract is up and I move into my new apartment in July…start my new job in August…there will be some other life event that I will be depending on for my happiness. That’s no way to live but…how does one focus on the joy in today? (Esp.when they do not like their current situation…) I think that’s something I might want to look into…read about…do some soul-searching about.

Just enjoy it!

Getting your hopes up and then failing or being let down is an awful feeling. The fear of failing sometimes keeps us from doing things that we are capable of doing or enjoying blessings that come our way.

Here’s to enjoying my blessings! I got offered a new job and I will be able to stay in my city. The people in the school are so much warmer and more respectful. They are jumping through hoops to get me in their school and it feels great. I get to pick my own apartment and I can move in as soon as I’m out of my current one. The school is going to give me a housing allowance so I can live closer to the main drag and the subway. They are also still going to furnish my place for me!

I’m still interviewing at other places until the contract is signed but…its pretty much a done deal. I get to stay near my friends and work in a supportive work environment. Can’t wait to go looking at apartments…and to decorate my new place!

I get a second chance!

You Can’t Hide

I remember being a teenager and deciding that by the age of 25, I would either be married or in a serious relationship and headed in the direction of marriage. I decided that by age 30, I would have my first child and I’d have the perfect career. At that time, I didn’t want to avoid growing up, I was looking forward to it.

As the years went by, I quickly discovered that things don’t always go as planned and I’d have to be flexible. 25 came and went and I’m still single. I will be 30 next March and there is no child. I think that as I came to understand that I wasn’t always going to get what I wanted out of adulthood, I stopping looking forward to it. It’s kind of like the child who is losing the game or not getting his/her way and all of a sudden doesn’t want to play anymore.

I have to work to support myself. Plain and simple, that’s the truth. I have yet to find that dream job and honestly, I don’t even know what exactly I want to do at this point. What I do know, is that I wake up 5 out of 5 work days dreading going to work. I’ve taken more than my share of sick days that were actually ” sick of work days”. This behavior has been tolerated up until now….not in Korea. I know find myself in a situation where my ” I don’t wanna” days are noticed and used against me. I’ve learned my lesson for sure and I’ve adopted  new attitude. Nobody said this thing was going to be easy. Nobody said that it was all fun and games. I have got to learn to get up and push through even when I really don’t want to.

I know that my attitude toward working in the past has been effected by my depression as well as the people around me. I’m not going to find a perfect work  place where nothing ever goes wrong and where people are always kind of considerate so I’m the one who has to change. I can’t let people who are really NON FACTORS have that much power over me.

As for the depression, I am also working on that. I refuse to go back on meds. I’d rather find a therapist because I have been working through this for almost a year without meds and I’ve made a lot of progress with it.

I don’t exactly know how I have made it this far without taking full responsibility for myself but it has to change NOW.

Thy Will Be Done

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how people like to play God. Last night, I had a conversation with someone about various issues like homosexuality, religion, and marriage. ( All things that should totally be avoided on a first date but…oh well.) I told him about my friend who had posted on FB about her vote on Amendment One in North Carolina. She was angry because people were saying that those in favor of it were ” stupid conservative rednecks”.  Of course, a conversation started about rights and the sanctity of marriage. Her sister broke in to ask if she even really understood what she had voted on. Making gay marriage legal in the state was not up for discussion. What they were voting on was the definition of “legal union” and whether or not couples other than ” man+woman marriages” could be recognized legally. The way the Amendment was worded made people think that they were “fighting for team Jesus for the sanctity of marriage”.  My friend had the attitude that if a gay man couldn’t have any legal rights if his partner got sick or died, that was just an unfortunate side effect and it was not her problem. Her obligation was to God and she had to make sure that gay people were not allowed to marry. (Crickets) Yeah…as I have seen on many FB pages in the past two weeks, rights are called rights because people should have them…they shouldn’t be voted on. Also, everyone is entitled to their own religion and beliefs but…that does not give them the right to decide for others or to push their beliefs on others. Your religion or beliefs should guide you in your own life…your own way of living but it should not change MY rights or the way I live MY life because that’s for me to decide.

Why should anyone have to hide who they are just so that YOU don’t have to be uncomfortable? In this part of the conversation, we were talking about seeing people and not being able to tell if they are male or female. He felt like he absolutely had to know and I asked him why it mattered to him. Why can’t that person just be a human being? If you don’t have to deal with or sleep with this person…why do you care? Who gave you the right to demand that women look like __________ and men look like _________? Instead of worrying about whether this person that you are working with or standing next to is honest and trustworthy, you are worried about their lifestyle choices. Lame. He also talked about being in military and how ” awkward ” it was once they opened the military. He liked it better when the policy was ” don’t ask, don’t tell” because at least then, men weren’t coming back to their shared living quarters with their boyfriends. I pointed out to him that it should have been equally as awkward for men to bring women back because either way, someone was having sex in your shared living space and you could walk in at any time! It’s only awkward to him when there are two men involved of course. If it’s a woman inside with his roommate, he sees the towel hanging from the door and takes it as a sign that his roommate is getting lucky. Later on, he’s patting said roommate on the back for a job well done. Ah, the luxury of being  straight.

Another thing that I don’t understand is double standards. So, because you are attracted to women, it’s okay for them to be together but it’s not okay for men to be together? So…the world has to base right and wrong off of your personal preferences? Lame. You get to decide that a man who takes his time getting dressed in the morning is definitely gay?  Who put you in charge of the Gay Checklist? Why should there even be such a checklist?!

Bottom line is this…mind your own damn business!

Pity Party

Everyone needs to have a pity party from time to time. I find that when I get down low enough to have one, I end up finding the strength from somewhere to pick myself back up and continue. Yesterday felt messed up but then I realized how healthy it actually was. Just like we talked about in my Group Counseling class….conflict doesn’t always have to be negative and you have to work through it. In this case, it was a conflict with myself and I’d say that I’m working through it rather than around it. However, I still couldn’t talk myself into going to work today.

I’ve realized that I need a plan…not one that is so tight that I don’t have room for detours but…I need to figure out what I want from this life and start conducting myself accordingly. Obviously teaching…or maybe just the environments in which I’ve been teaching…is not meeting my needs. I cared deeply about what I was doing in the States and the kids I taught and basically I burned myself out. Now, I’m at the other end of the scale and I find that I really don’t care much about what I do now. I don’t care to get to know the kids personally. I don’t care about going to school everyday. I don’t care about anything other than proving to my colleagues  that I am capable.

I have a long while before I will be finished with the degree that I’m currently working on. I figured out that I will finish my course work in July or August of 2014 and then my pre-practicum and 4 sections of practicum start. So we are looking at 2015 before I’m finished. Once I’m finished, will I want to start a career in counseling or not? I am deeply interested in Counseling so I think that it is a real possibility. I also think that a career in counseling could possibly offer me more flexibility than teaching. Because of my personality and the nature of my own emotional and psychological challenges, I need a field where I can have some flexibility.

Educational Administration is something that I got a Masters in and knew from the start that I didn’t want to be an administrator. I just wanted a Masters in Education that gave me the option of moving up the ladder if I wanted to. The only way that I would consider being a school administrator is if I were working in a school with a Fine Arts signature or if I could go into a situation like in AZ where they hire an assistant principal for all areas. ( Instruction, Registration, Student Opportunities,etc) I would want to be the Assistant Principal of Student Opportunities so that I could work with athletics, The Arts, and Community events. I think that it would be nice to have someone in that position who is not an ex-athlete for once and have someone who actually has a background in the Arts. So many times, these administrators favor the athletics teams over the Arts and I wouldn’t want to favor anyone over anyone else. I would want to do the job so that I could help everyone understand that what they do is important and that athletics and Arts can co-exist without drama.

One question keeps popping into my mind as I think about the steps I have already taken and the steps I’m considering. How does all of this fit into my biggest long-term goal…my real dream…my Arts academy? Before it was a dance school but I think that I would really love a place where students could specialize in Dance, Theater, Tech Theater, Visual Art, Vocal music, or Instrumental music. I think that by giving myself all of these options for careers, I am creating the stability that I will need in order to start planning my academy. I will need to get myself straightened out financially before I can even consider starting any plans.

People are always standing on the outside looking in and telling me how much I’ve accomplished and how prepared I am but…to me…I feel like I’m stuck at square one.

Identity Theft

You’ve got my life. All those years it was ME wishing for the things you have. I was the one making plans and doing what I needed to do to ensure that I got what I wanted. Me…that was my dream…my hopes and aspirations.Your family spent all those years asking why you couldn’t be more like me and now it’s my turn to be jealous. Playing it safe, getting the good grades, going to college…none of that mattered. I watched you waste your life and be reckless with your heart…your body. Now I get to watch you enjoy the life that I wanted for myself while I wander around this life alone and confused. Marriage, children, a home…I deserve those things too. I never thought I was better than you…i just thought we were different. I never thought you’d have those things before me…never thought that at this stage of my life I’d still be alone. I guess sometimes all the planning gets in the way.

Despite all my rage…

I feel trapped. My current school refuses to tell me if they will bring me back another year but they also refuse to give me a letter of recommendation so that I can look into other options. My Co-teacher has acted as the middle man between me and the vice principal since she doesn’t speak English and that has made things awkward between us. They don’t understand what the big deal is and why I am in a hurry.

You are supposed to tell me in writing within 60 days of my contract ending if you will or won’t renew me! That’s what the contract says and Saturday marks the 60 days. I am being told that it’s too early.

So I’m supposed to just sit here while all of these jobs that I want are being advertised and wait to hear back from this school? I am not a happy camper at all.

When?!

I am getting no closer to writing this book. I have a few pages scribbled into a random notebook and a few more pages on both PCs. *sigh* From the outside looking it, it would appear that I don’t care about this at all. But I know I do…I perk up every time I see a blog about self-publishing…I get the urge to write and make notes and be creative. What’s the problem?

I think that I need a time and space to devote to writing. Everyday, I should go to a specific space at a specific time and write. ( Even if I don’t feel like it….even if I’m tired…even if I have a headache.) There are very few things that I absolutely MAKE myself do no matter what. Maybe I should start.

So, I decide a couple of months ago that a novel was a bit much for me at this time. I want to take things one step at a time and start with a short story. I definitely wouldn’t mind having my short story selling on Kindles everywhere for 99 cents. Hey, it’s a start and it would make me very happy.

I have read so many novels like the one I want to write. Paranormal romance and romance in general is all I read and I just find myself thinking ” How in the hell could I ever write something this wonderful?” I mean, my favorite authors make me feel so many things! Can I actually write something that is that great? Something that other people can relate to? Something they will love and want more of?

Doubt and fear…that’s what it boils down to. I know all of the published authors that I talk to always say to write without fear but that’s so much easier said than done! I’m told to just write and not to even read it over until later. Make corrections and changes later…for now, just get what you want to say out.

Ok…I think I can do that…

Sail

I’ve decided to delete my teacher Facebook account. It’s just too much. I realized that I am depending on my former students to validate me. I am obsessing over the thought that their new teacher is better than me….that she is giving them all of the things that I couldn’t. I need to step back and take a deep breath…remember that it was ME that started that program and I did a hell of a job. I not only taught them about dance but I also made them want to be better people. I care about them. I was an amazing teacher to them.

So…getting off of there will make things better. If I’m not constantly looking at pictures from their latest show or thinking about what I’m missing out on, I can move forward. I will keep in touch via email but that’s about it. There is no reason for me to have one foot in my new world and one foot in the old one. I have to let go.

I think that part of the problem here is that when it comes to my new world…there is still so much that I don’t know. So much is still being decided and I really hate not knowing where I am going and what I ultimately want to do with myself. I know that it’s my dream to open a dance school but until that dream can happen…what will I do? I know that I don’t plan to teach English in public schools forever. University I could stand to do for a bit but…once I finish this counseling degree…what then? Will I go into counseling? Go for another degree? Hell, two weeks ago I was sure I wanted to change my program of study to TESOL and the only reason I didn’t was because I’m in the middle of a financial aid year. Then I decided that I will stick in there with counseling. It isn’t easy but I am genuinely interested in it. The thought of helping families and couples through therapy really appeals to me.

Here I am…I am finding that the closer I get to 30…the less I know about what I really want to do. This is a really scary place to be right now. I think that I need to let go of any notion that 30 is the magic number and that I must have everything figured out by then. I need to stop planning and start living.