Life is Short

Sometimes, just sometimes I wonder what it would be like to pick an idea – just one – and to run with it.  Not have about dozen other ideas follow on from that one, not get so excited and fired up by ALL the ideas that are shouting around your head and clammering for attention, but you know – just have ONE idea.

Yeah, I wonder what that is like.

The older I get the more ideas and exciting projects I think of and therefore want to experience.  For years I was afraid of change and didn’t like trying out new things, because new things = potential failure.  Now, I can’t sit still.  I don’t want to sit still.  I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again.  I don’t want to still be in the same place one year from now.

Life is short and experiences fill it with a richness the English language can’t even begin to encompass.  I hunger for more, there’s always something new to taste, to possess, to create, to shape, to form, to give life to.

Life is short.  Every moment should be seized like it could be the last.

Living to work and Working to Live.....the Great Divide

If you're looking for the reasons I'm contemplating giving up teaching before I've even competed my NQT year, you need to read this post here. I couldn't put it better myself.

Ultimately, the work/life balance should be working to LIVE and not living to WORK.

Life is short, it may feel long and full of shit when times are challenging, but it is short and more importantly precious.

12, 37, Dory and Captain Hook

Maybe it's because the year is coming to an end and this is generally the time when you take stock of your life, but for whatever reason I'm lost in a world within.

It's New Year's Eve and my past, present and (anxieties about) my future are coliding, aided and abetted by the fact I turned 37 two days ago.

Every year I cycle through the same pattern: look back and weigh my achievements - feel disappointed and underachieving, like I haven't lived the life I was meant to live. That's usually the point I have the realisation that I'm in the same emotional and mental state I was in this time twelve months ago. Ha! Nothing rings more true than my inner voice telling me, "You're not the brightest star in the night sky at times...and this is one of those times!" I do the next predictable thing and make a resolution that this year I'm going to seize every moment and allow my instincts to guide me, I'm going to be confident and not doubt myself, I'm going to be more thankful for all that I have and live in the moment more, and I'm going to pursue my dreams...just as I did twelve months ago. I swear it's like ground hog day in my pysche, you should just start calling me Dory because there is a strong chance I won't remember my name is Natasha until twelve months from now.

I digress, whilst I'm looking over the last year I am acutely aware that I'm fearful of the future and that's largely to do with one, okay two things: I'm not sure I want to teach anymore and I think my biological clock has started ticking. I'm a dedicated and passionate person, which means I'm incapable of giving any task anything other than 100% (it's a blessing and a curse), I'm therefore a perfectionist and am consumed by everything I turn my hand to. Being that type of person is great for my employer - not so much for those I'm in relationships with, which means my two worlds are always colliding and frequently in conflict. There's been one shift lately though, I no longer feel the need to be stubbornly independent at the cost of my relationships and with that comes a whole new world of vulnerability (ugh is nothing ever simple!)

While I sulk maturely about that latest epiphany and trust me I've got a full on pout going on, I really do think my biological clock has kicked in. It's becoming so loud I'm starting to have sympathy for Captain Hook. I had to take a test yesterday and it was negative, but as I looked at it knowing it was going to be negative I was hopeful it wasn't. What surprised me most was how disappointed I was despite knowing the timing couldn't be worse because this next year is going to be one hell of roller coaster ride for various reasons I can't and don't want to get in to. I haven't even had the courage to tell L yet for fear of him being practical and pragmatic about it, he on the one hand would be right but I'm aware that I'm 37 and with fertility issues.

I could chase the ghost of that crocodile clock all evening and I'm damn sure part of my psyche will be, but it's New Year's Eve and there's beer to be drunk, so from me to you HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Wishing you all love, laughter and happiness for 2015! 😘

Outside of the Moment

It's half term and there's a million things I need and should be doing, being an adult is like that: your world is full of a multitude of chores that have you dashing from one moment to the next, thoughts whirling, toes tapping impatiently, smiles given in a hurry because you don't have the time to let them reach your eyes...

My life is like that - I rush from one moment to the next, my mind a maelstrom of to do lists, crazy ideas and ironic musings. It's like that because modern life is like that: busy, chaotic, fast paced and .....transient.

We live in the moment without truly being in it, our heads are there but are hearts aren't. The here and now demands our attention, the need to get the washing done, that report for work, the bills to pay, the letters to post, the car to fill up and the food to buy. They are the small details that block the view of the bigger picture.

I want to slow down so the things that I do are more meaningful and mean I take the time to think about what I say that I may 'feel' what I say too. Yet it's the one thing I'm incapable of, the times I try are out of sync with the times others try.

It occurred to me that really living in the moment requires you to feel in the moment, not prospone your processing of it to just before you fall asleep or even during your dreams. It's more than saying what you mean and meaning what you say, but how much more I've no idea.

All I can say is that I've just noticed that as a modern society we are selfish and incapable of communicating with each other when it really means something. There's a dozen ways to say how you'd like your coffee but when it comes to emotion or feelings, words fail us.

Women Understand Women and They Hate Each Other

That statement has been ringing in my ears for some time now. The rest of goes, so what chance do men stand and right now I'd place myself with the men.

I'm an NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher) at a special school for children who have experienced sexual trauma, obviously it's tough. On any given day the children are always verbally aggressive and abusive, often violent and rarely remain in their seats for a whole lesson. Despite being sick of being someone else's punch and kick bag, I'm not too put out by it - they are children with deep rooted issues and no access to emotional literacy to express their trauma.

What I'm really struggling with is the toxic environment created by my colleagues. There's a power struggle going on between the current head and a teacher who wants her job (and is making it personal.) It's exhausting and a horrible place to be.

I made the decision to distance myself from it, after all I'm there to teach and nothing else, but in doing so I'm now very isolated. I'm floating in no man's land like a ephemeral ghost, searching for souls to guide me but having no light to gravitate to.

Recent changes aren't going to impact me too greatly, I've already been doing the lion's share of the work, teaching, planning and marking that another teacher has managed to shirk. What angers me is sitting on this knowledge, quietly, silently, being the woman that does that, but then being told that I'm most definitely flapping about it. No, no I'm not because nothing really changes for me.

I want out. These people are not my friends and they are not nice people. So now I sit and pray with fingers crossed for Friday to come, bringing with it the list of teaching vacancies.

Temporary

I came away on holiday with excess baggage, what woman doesn't, and when I thought it would fade away as I unwound the only person I was deluding was myself. It has stayed with me every moment of our holiday and been a weight on my shoulders that wasn't a reassuring hand.

I have spent at least one day a week, usually 2 or 3, preparing work and things for the next school year. I even enlisted the help of my mum on one of her days visiting me and all of this I did willingly. Unpaid because I am agency but willing. I have worried that a pre-job offer booked holiday meant I wasn't going to be around to pull my weight work wise, that I wouldn't be ready come September for my class, that I would be letting people down. I have snuck in moments of work on my holiday, checked emails and replied, tweaked lesson plans, booked trips, drafted permission letters, risk assessed trips and bought resources out of my own pocket. All the time I worried I wasn't doing enough and meeting other's expectations of me. I let work erode at my time with loved ones.

A few days ago I received an email from another teacher saying our head was going to change the classes AGAIN! These changes are BIG and render all the work - work she asked us to do in prep for our new classes back in July - void. She tells us this with less than a week to go until the return to school?! She expects the planning and prep to be done but I, for one, am too deflated and demoralised to bother.

I think I reached tipping point and asked L how he would feel if I didn't go back to that school in September and asked the agency for another booking. He said what I knew he would say: we need to get my NQT year done as you only get 5 years after qualifying to complete it and I am already a year into those 5 years. He thinks I need to suck it up until July to tick the box of my NQT and once that's been achieved leave. I know practically speaking he's right but I am so fed up with feeling unvalued and invisible. It seems because I am agency I am not on the company email lists and therefore am never included in on important notifications. I was told I'd have a contract last Easter and that changed to January due to (apparently) missing a deadline for submitting paperwork and I've not had any further reassurances this is still going to happen. I am using the log on details of other staff because despite being there at the school since February, I haven't been added to anything as a member of staff. I am temporary staff, agency staff. All of that pales into insignificance when I think about all the work we've done over summer in preparation for our classes and the children we were meant to have...everything we did we did for nothing, it was pointless and a waste of our time. How's that for feeling valued, for having your work and dedication valued???

If I think about it everything reeks of temporary. Except my excess baggage.

Impossible Situations

There's a line in Pretty Woman in which Richard Gere laments his knack for impossible relationships and I sympathise, mine is for impossible situations.

It seems I can't go a couple of months without finding myself in one - stuck between a rock and a hard place. Usually involving a conflict between my work and home life...

I withdrew into myself today, turning things over and over and over in my head and my heart. Each time I arrived at the same destination: anger and hurt.

Eventually I tried to talk to a friend but she misunderstood the situation, completely, and I didn't have it me to correct her.

No matter which way I turn this problem to look at it from another angle, I see the same disappointing facet. And no clear resolution.

I could philosophise all day long about how I ended up here (again) and try to apportion blame, but I'd still be no closer to knowing what I should do. Or what is the right thing to do.

Sometimes love has a hell of a lot to answer to. And the damned military too.