Sunday musings

This morning I went out early with a couple of friends and answered phones for the local public radio station’s pledge drive.  I happened to choose the phone that rang first, so got to answer most of the calls.  It was fun.  I’d always wanted to do that, but had never quite managed to volunteer in time.  I think I could’ve been a good radio personality.  I love the sound of my voice on a microphone!  With those big headphones on it sounds so great!  (Not what I did today, but I’m just saying.) Or I could’ve been a phone sex operator.  OK, maybe not that.

So now I’m pushing to get some work done on my presentation for NWP in San Antonio in November, as well as lesson planning done for the week.  Then I’m going to something this afternoon called “Tapping.”  I don’t know what it is yet, but seems to be a spiritual practice of some sort.  Their website mentions Rhonda Byrnes’ “The Secret,” which is about the Law of Attraction.  Which is actually Abraham information translated into best seller format.  Anyway, I’m interested.  I wonder why it’s called Tapping.  Do they tap your meridian lines or your chakras?  Table tapping?  We’ll see.  I can use some spiritual renewal about now; I’ve been feeling pretty disconnected.

I think what I probably need more than anything is a day or so a week without touching my computer.  I spend too much time there, and not enough on my life, and I need to turn that around.  It is so compelling to just go check things out.  LIke I’ll be working around the house, and my mind will stray to something I want to know about, and I have to stop and go look it up online before I forget.  Then I get sidetracked and don’t get back to whatever I had intended to do.  I’m going to work on that, I think.

And now for the list…

I’m home from the AVID Institute, and ready for four weeks off.  The time will fly, and I feel like I need to plan it to make the most of it.  I need to clean my house, and get rid of a lot of clutter that congests it and myself.  Vickie White said that “Clutter holds your dreams.”  That strikes a chord in me.  I think that the stuff that clogs up my space holds me back.  If I have to wend my way around old stuff, be it physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual, I can’t go on with my life in any new direct way.  I have no room for anything new when I’m hampered by the old.  So decluttering is in order.  Cleaning and scrubbing corners.  When the house is clean enough for carpet cleaning I feel free.  Maybe I should schedule that now to put some pressure on me to meet my other goals in these short weeks.  Schedule a yard sale?

I’m going to the gym with greater regularity.  I will definitely continue that, trying to ramp up my workouts.  It’s funny, I hold myself back from a grueling workout because I fear not being able to do it, then feel a little disappointed when I’m not sore from the workout I do.  My goal at this point is to be able to go to and complete an exercise class – any exercise class!  I have four weeks to find the rhythm of this, and combine it with my goal of eating locally, organically.  I am doing rather well in this area, actually.  Hurray for me.

I have to write a book review and make some progress on the novel.  Yesterday Mayaoel was commenting on how some writers frustrate her, because they won’t even sit down to write.  She was excited when I told her I plan on doing some work on the book this week.  She was full of ideas, wanting to discuss mine.  I keep wondering why she cares so much about it.

I need to move my stuff out of my old office.  They are eager to clean off my computer so they can move it downstairs to their office.  I wonder why, as it is a 3 year-old PC that I brought with me when I came to work there.  I was planning to take it with me to my new school.  Just transfer it to that school’s inventory.  Why do they want it so much?  Are they checking to see what else I’ve got packed?  The demeanment from that arena just reaches out looking for me, it seems.  I have to plan my classes for next year.  Seventh and eighth grades I’ll be teaching.  I’ve written about that ad nauseum, I know.  The time is looming.  I also have to prep four days of professional development for the district.  Getting ready for starting school on my birthday, possibly for the first time ever in my life.  Shall I take cupcakes?  Maybe so.

I guess I’ll be doing well to get stuff cleaned up and cleared out in this time.  I hope I can fit a couple of days at the beach into the equation.  I am going to a storytelling festival if the woods aren’t on fire.  Maybe I’ll take a little trip to San Francisco to see the Frida exhibit at the SFMOMA. I will definitely make a new altar or two in my home.  Hang the prayer flags.  Make a new string of beads.  Keeping things moving…

Getting in Trouble…not!

Once again I seem to have gotten myself into a little trouble. Nothing big, but further debasement. (At least my frame of mind was in de basement when it was over!) I am always willing to go out on a limb for the good of the students, and recently I seem to have once again overstepped my bounds in that effort. I don’t feel at all bad for what I did, and the details of it are really insignificant. What it brings up for me is the realization that we all think differently, and without wanting to cause problems, sometimes we just can’t help creating a little conflict. Being the low one on the totem pole at my work, I back down every time, but I don’t think I am wrong. I am not such an in-the-box thinker as some of those I work with, and that definitely can create ripples. I understand that others have to report to the powers that be, which causes them to hold back, but really I think it goes beyond that. Some people are just naturally more cautious than others. And ne’er the twain shall meet, as they say. They will be glad to see my back, I’m thinking.

Now more than ever, I’m looking forward to change in my workplace, but also change in my life in the world. When I put too much emphasis on my work life – that is, when work becomes my entire life – I take the knocks harder than when the more valued portion of my life is outside of work. That may seem to be a no-brainer, but for me it is a lesson hard-learned. And the kids that I work with are needy in so many ways that it is impossible to put them on the sidelines. I just have to try to find a balance, and to keep on fighting for them. And fighting for myself, and what I believe is right.

Thanks for checking in!

Work and Spirit

In choosing categories for this post, I chose both work and spirit. I feel that I have lost the spirit for my work lately, and it is bothering me deeply. Before I was a teacher, I looked around a lot at other people, and I wondered if anyone really liked their job, and actually wanted to go there each day. Then somehow I got the idea to become a teacher, and for the first time ever, I discovered what it is to have passion for what you do. For fifteen years I went to school each day with enthusiasm. Whatever was going on in my personal life I was able to leave in the parking lot. Family crises, school crises, I was able to meet them all with equanimity, at times with grief, and sometimes even grace. I felt like I was making a difference.

When I was asked to become an administrator, I felt like I could make a difference on a larger scale. Last year I worked hard and I did a good job. I connected with kids, teachers and school sites. I still felt the passion, if in a different way, still doing something that mattered. Then this year that changed. I was given a different job to do, one for which I had no passion at all. I have seemed to sink into inertia, and can’t imagine even having energy anymore. I can’t even remember what I ever liked to do, or think of what I might like to do. I used to fantasize about going to Cal and studying for a PhD. I would get so excited just reading about a program they offer in culture and literacy. Although I told myself it was impractical and too expensive, something for a younger person to do, I still thrilled at the thought of it. Even that has changed. I visited Berkeley the other day, and came away feeling like studying there was on the bottom of my life list. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to do anything again.
It’s funny how now that the job that has taken my passion away has been eliminated, I feel depressed, and without control over my life. I don’t know what will come next~ certainly nothing I fear or dread. The worst case scenario is I will be returned to my passion, the classroom. I think I fear that I have changed, and that would no longer bring me the joy it once did. Or maybe I just fear losing the pay I now make. I think the key in all this, is the feeling of powerlessness. For some reason, I was put on hold this year, and now feel that I am a sacrificial lamb to the teachers’ union’s charges that too many administrators have been hired recently. I’m seen as expendable because I’m doing something that anyone could do, not the things that only I can do, or that I can do best.

I think the only way out of the depression, the robbing of my feeling of power, is to take control of those things over which I still have power. The condition of my home, the food I eat, the exercise I practice. I know that it takes only a small shift to make big changes begin to flow. I will start there, with calm and with joy and see what comes next.