2008?

Am I here already? Have I survived the worst? No, there is more to come but I'm half way. I'm rested, vacationed, and I have new rock star red hair. I am not quite ready to go back to work, which is fine, because I have a few more days to get there. Think I will pop by and help Mr. G with the library tomorrow just to get myself back in the swing of things.

The good news is that the extra hour of tutoring I do at 7 a.m. looks really good on my paycheck so I think I can find the motivation to keep it up. This, I am sure, will earn me some extra brownie points with the admins--not that I particularly need them right now. I feel pretty secure in my job, having been told several times that they do not want to lose me as a teacher, that they want me back next year. That's good. Now I just have to be ready to step up and deal with the UNO madness. I think I'm ready to take it on again. I think I've cleared my head, steeling myself to get through it and hope for the best. I've got a lot of work to do in the next few days. Now I just have to make myself do it.

I've been sleeping and drinking and watching a hell of a lot of Farscape on the internet lately. I've been forgetting, which I needed to do. I haven't even skated since our last derby bout in December. I've done nothing responsible and it felt really, really good.

Teachers really do have the best vacation plan ever, deservedly so.

There have been a lot of interpersonal things going on in my universe. None of them need sharing on this, what is supposed to be a vocational blog, but many of which have served to put a lot of things into perspective. Finding balance is the most difficult thing for me to do these days and I can attribute a lot of my dissatisfaction and ennui over the last few months to having a totally unbalanced life. I am all or nothing. And I can't be that way. It is hard to feel like you have to care about these small people who don't have to care about you back. You do have to care, but you do have to stand aside. I haven't yet learned how to leave the kids at school, mostly because there are not enough hours in a day to do so and I am bad at time management.

I miss A, I miss my second grade girls, I miss the comeraderie of the other teachers, I miss students who give me drawings and poems they wrote. And I have to remind myself that this is them reaching out and I can't just leave them behind. I can't forget about them. But I can't let them destroy my personal life either. I'm tired of missing my friends. I'm tired of missing their lives and their victories and their defeats. I'm tired of not being able to be there like I want to be. I'm tired of meaningless flings, no matter how much fun they may be at the time, keeping people at arm's length because there is no time. I'm tired of being tired all the time.

So I guess my New Year's Resolution would have to be finding that balance. I took a big leap last year to do this teaching thing. And in all the chaos and newness and stress I forgot that this was something that I did for me. I chose to teach for ME and my sanity. Now I've got to own that. This has got to be the year that I make this life mine.