[this is getting old fast.]
Just in case anyone has been attempting to contact me as of late, a brief note: on the first of the month, a water main in my complex busted, and as a result I was without water for three days while they found the hole and then fixed it. In the interim, though, the water leaked into everything, including the phone lines, which means that as of last week, my internet has been spotty at best - when I can stay connected, it works fine, but the signal is so weak that it drops my connection anywhere from every two minutes (as it seems to be doing right now) to every few hours. Needless to say this means I can get a grand total of nothing done, and am often too irritated to bother fucking with it. So until it's fixed, I probably won't be around much for fear that I might take my frustrations out on my poor innocent computer, so if you've tried IMing me or emailing or whatever and I haven't responded, that's most likely why.
In other news, I don't know what it is - maybe I'm just irritated with the way this month has been going thus far, or maybe it's PMS, or school stress, or tiredness, or whatever, but this semester isn't really going all that well. I know I've made some very happy posts, so let me explain something. My mother always used to get angry with me when I'd make all positive comments and suddenly came out and said that I was unhappy because she thought I'd been lying to her - that's really not true. My tendency is a) to continue to be positive at all times because often I can lift my mood and have a much more positive outlook on things just because of my attitude, and b) say the things that make me happy as a reminder that things aren't all bad, because they very rarely are.
In this case, overall, I am happy. I love my job - teaching is perhaps the most rewarding thing I've ever done, and seeing my kids when they finally get something they've been struggling with, or when they ask questions not because they have to know for some test but because they genuinely want to know, or when they're actually having FUN in school (god forbid), is a really amazing feeling. I don't know that I could be a public school teacher for the rest of my life - I think I'd get burnt out very quickly - but I'm loving every second of it at the moment, even on the days when I get the really rowdy groups and am so exhausted I can barely move by the end of them. In addition, the semester is working a bit better now - I'm more interested in the readings, especially the Kant we're doing, and I've started to connect a bit more with my classmates, though I know it'll never reach the level of intimacy and connection achieved over the summer. It's just not the same when you only see people for an hour twice a week instead of every single day. But that's I guess why I was so entranced by the idea of the Eastern Classics program, because they DO meet every day, and it's a much more intensive and thus more involved program. Plus I love Eastern philosophy, and I was super-excited about learning Sanskrit. And I am still applying, because I'd be happy to do the program.
I guess the problem is that...I really have been in college for almost 10 years, nonstop. I started when I went to TAMS, in August of 1998, and it's October of 2007 right now, so I've now entered my tenth year of college. That's a long time to be in school, especially if you add the highschool and middle school and such before then, which means I have been in school nonstop for TWENTY-ONE YEARS. I teach kids who haven't been alive for HALF that. All in all, it's a bit daunting, and sometimes feels a bit ridiculous. And frankly, it's not the first time I've felt this restlessness. When I went to TAMS, my first year I was crazily studious, but my second year, I really just kind of...blew it off. Though I remember tonnes of stuff from my first year there, I couldn't even tell you what classes I took my second year. And then in college, I had a studious year, followed by a non-studious year (granted, part of that was because I was sick a lot of the time), followed by two more studious years. And then I went away to grad school, and I really wanted to focus and study hard and everything, but I had such a hard time making myself CARE. And part of that was certainly that I didn't like the system of education at the school, and I couldn't get excited about a program where how much you were respected depended solely on how much you said (not WHAT you said) and how many famous books you could quote.
St John's, on the other hand, was exactly what I needed in that realm of things, and my first and third semesters of it have been fantastic - the second semester wasn't, due to reasons that had very little to do with the program and more to do with personal crap. But this semester is just...I think I'm ready to do something else. I'm a perpetually restless person, and I'm sure some of that comes from how much I've moved around - I can't be happy staying in one place, because I know how much else is out there still for me to experience. A lot of people tell me I'll be running around my whole life, and maybe I will be. Maybe I am running away from something that I can't even see, but it's something keeping me from settling down and planting roots, something that means that no matter how much I like a place, it's never enough for me and I always have to have more. I don't know if that's greed or delusion or what, but it's not a habit I've ever been able to break. My parents wanted me to buy a house and stay in Santa Fe for awhile, and Santa Fe is such a gorgeous city that I could easily go on living here, but the idea of settling down THAT MUCH scares the shit out of me, and puts this unscratchable itch under my skin that's impossible to ignore.
And on top of that...everything feels like...it's a step along the way to something bigger. That might well be delusions of grandeur, but I can't ever just be satisfied with what I have. That's part of what makes me a really great academic, and a great teacher, because I'm never satisfied with what's right in front of my face, but it also makes being a functional part of society really difficult, because it's next to impossible to have any sort of stable life unless you have roots. Holding down a job, or making friends, or fitting in somewhere...it's not something I can seem to manage anymore. I look around my apartment that I've lived in for over a year and still see boxes half-unpacked, and others waiting to be filled for the next time I move. My walls are mostly bare, impersonal, like all I'd have to do to leave would be to take the STUFF out of here - there isn't a whole lot of ME in this apartment. That's not right, is it? And the friends I've made irl...it's not like the ones I had in college, say, the ones I still talk to now (well a couple of them, anyway) - while I enjoy their company, there isn't anyone I would say I'm actually close to. For some reason I don't want anyone to know me. It was the same in Toronto - I had friends there, but the friends I considered close friends had nothing to do with my life there and were people I'd met through LJ, people I could go on talking to even long after I left.
There's part of me that really wants to find a place that fits me, and where I fit it, but nothing I've found seems to work, no matter how much I love it, or how much I want it to. I want to find something where I can feel like I'm really, truly content, not just something that I enjoy but that can't and won't last. The rest of me doesn't want that, because it hates the feeling that I'll get too attached and then will for some reason have to leave it again. Maybe that's what makes it easy for me to find faults with things, reasons they aren't perfect, because as soon as I get comfortable, it's too late. I always like to say that getting comfortable is a dangerous thing because then you aren't prepared for whatever life might throw your way - the more you feel you're in control, the less you actually are. And I do believe that, 100%. But at the same time, sometimes I really want that comfort, and I want to feel like there's something I can depend on to be with me forever. I don't even know that there's anything about MYSELF that I feel that way about.
I hadn't even intended to write all of this out, but it just sort of...wrote itself. Heh. I guess that's what happens when there's something bothering me that I don't want to face. I know I'm extremely good at rationalising, and it's something I try very hard not to do. I also know I'm extremely good at keeping things hidden, and not ever letting anyone at ALL close, never mind the people I know irl, and that's something I'm trying to break myself of as well. Which is why I'm going to post this instead of hitting the delete button. I guess I just...I don't know what I want to do with myself. I want a chance to do something radically different, to go somewhere else and meet different kinds of people and experience a different culture, especially since I never got to study abroad, but at the same time, a part of me I guess is scared that I'm going to do all that and then find that I have the exact same problem all over again. Sometimes knowing for sure is scarier than not knowing, if not knowing includes having hope. Not that I'm the sort of person who'll let fear stop her, but I just wish there was a way for me to understand why I can't ever be satisfied with what I have, because I get the feeling that if that runs as deep as I think it might, then going to another country isn't going to fix it - it'll just be yet another escape.
If you read that, you get a cookie. If you don't, that's okay - I don't know how coherent it is anyway, and I can't make myself go back and reread it, not now anyway. Instead I think I'm going to rewatch the second Death Note movie and contemplate morality in preparation for my very inquisitive ninth graders tomorrow.
In other news, I don't know what it is - maybe I'm just irritated with the way this month has been going thus far, or maybe it's PMS, or school stress, or tiredness, or whatever, but this semester isn't really going all that well. I know I've made some very happy posts, so let me explain something. My mother always used to get angry with me when I'd make all positive comments and suddenly came out and said that I was unhappy because she thought I'd been lying to her - that's really not true. My tendency is a) to continue to be positive at all times because often I can lift my mood and have a much more positive outlook on things just because of my attitude, and b) say the things that make me happy as a reminder that things aren't all bad, because they very rarely are.
In this case, overall, I am happy. I love my job - teaching is perhaps the most rewarding thing I've ever done, and seeing my kids when they finally get something they've been struggling with, or when they ask questions not because they have to know for some test but because they genuinely want to know, or when they're actually having FUN in school (god forbid), is a really amazing feeling. I don't know that I could be a public school teacher for the rest of my life - I think I'd get burnt out very quickly - but I'm loving every second of it at the moment, even on the days when I get the really rowdy groups and am so exhausted I can barely move by the end of them. In addition, the semester is working a bit better now - I'm more interested in the readings, especially the Kant we're doing, and I've started to connect a bit more with my classmates, though I know it'll never reach the level of intimacy and connection achieved over the summer. It's just not the same when you only see people for an hour twice a week instead of every single day. But that's I guess why I was so entranced by the idea of the Eastern Classics program, because they DO meet every day, and it's a much more intensive and thus more involved program. Plus I love Eastern philosophy, and I was super-excited about learning Sanskrit. And I am still applying, because I'd be happy to do the program.
I guess the problem is that...I really have been in college for almost 10 years, nonstop. I started when I went to TAMS, in August of 1998, and it's October of 2007 right now, so I've now entered my tenth year of college. That's a long time to be in school, especially if you add the highschool and middle school and such before then, which means I have been in school nonstop for TWENTY-ONE YEARS. I teach kids who haven't been alive for HALF that. All in all, it's a bit daunting, and sometimes feels a bit ridiculous. And frankly, it's not the first time I've felt this restlessness. When I went to TAMS, my first year I was crazily studious, but my second year, I really just kind of...blew it off. Though I remember tonnes of stuff from my first year there, I couldn't even tell you what classes I took my second year. And then in college, I had a studious year, followed by a non-studious year (granted, part of that was because I was sick a lot of the time), followed by two more studious years. And then I went away to grad school, and I really wanted to focus and study hard and everything, but I had such a hard time making myself CARE. And part of that was certainly that I didn't like the system of education at the school, and I couldn't get excited about a program where how much you were respected depended solely on how much you said (not WHAT you said) and how many famous books you could quote.
St John's, on the other hand, was exactly what I needed in that realm of things, and my first and third semesters of it have been fantastic - the second semester wasn't, due to reasons that had very little to do with the program and more to do with personal crap. But this semester is just...I think I'm ready to do something else. I'm a perpetually restless person, and I'm sure some of that comes from how much I've moved around - I can't be happy staying in one place, because I know how much else is out there still for me to experience. A lot of people tell me I'll be running around my whole life, and maybe I will be. Maybe I am running away from something that I can't even see, but it's something keeping me from settling down and planting roots, something that means that no matter how much I like a place, it's never enough for me and I always have to have more. I don't know if that's greed or delusion or what, but it's not a habit I've ever been able to break. My parents wanted me to buy a house and stay in Santa Fe for awhile, and Santa Fe is such a gorgeous city that I could easily go on living here, but the idea of settling down THAT MUCH scares the shit out of me, and puts this unscratchable itch under my skin that's impossible to ignore.
And on top of that...everything feels like...it's a step along the way to something bigger. That might well be delusions of grandeur, but I can't ever just be satisfied with what I have. That's part of what makes me a really great academic, and a great teacher, because I'm never satisfied with what's right in front of my face, but it also makes being a functional part of society really difficult, because it's next to impossible to have any sort of stable life unless you have roots. Holding down a job, or making friends, or fitting in somewhere...it's not something I can seem to manage anymore. I look around my apartment that I've lived in for over a year and still see boxes half-unpacked, and others waiting to be filled for the next time I move. My walls are mostly bare, impersonal, like all I'd have to do to leave would be to take the STUFF out of here - there isn't a whole lot of ME in this apartment. That's not right, is it? And the friends I've made irl...it's not like the ones I had in college, say, the ones I still talk to now (well a couple of them, anyway) - while I enjoy their company, there isn't anyone I would say I'm actually close to. For some reason I don't want anyone to know me. It was the same in Toronto - I had friends there, but the friends I considered close friends had nothing to do with my life there and were people I'd met through LJ, people I could go on talking to even long after I left.
There's part of me that really wants to find a place that fits me, and where I fit it, but nothing I've found seems to work, no matter how much I love it, or how much I want it to. I want to find something where I can feel like I'm really, truly content, not just something that I enjoy but that can't and won't last. The rest of me doesn't want that, because it hates the feeling that I'll get too attached and then will for some reason have to leave it again. Maybe that's what makes it easy for me to find faults with things, reasons they aren't perfect, because as soon as I get comfortable, it's too late. I always like to say that getting comfortable is a dangerous thing because then you aren't prepared for whatever life might throw your way - the more you feel you're in control, the less you actually are. And I do believe that, 100%. But at the same time, sometimes I really want that comfort, and I want to feel like there's something I can depend on to be with me forever. I don't even know that there's anything about MYSELF that I feel that way about.
I hadn't even intended to write all of this out, but it just sort of...wrote itself. Heh. I guess that's what happens when there's something bothering me that I don't want to face. I know I'm extremely good at rationalising, and it's something I try very hard not to do. I also know I'm extremely good at keeping things hidden, and not ever letting anyone at ALL close, never mind the people I know irl, and that's something I'm trying to break myself of as well. Which is why I'm going to post this instead of hitting the delete button. I guess I just...I don't know what I want to do with myself. I want a chance to do something radically different, to go somewhere else and meet different kinds of people and experience a different culture, especially since I never got to study abroad, but at the same time, a part of me I guess is scared that I'm going to do all that and then find that I have the exact same problem all over again. Sometimes knowing for sure is scarier than not knowing, if not knowing includes having hope. Not that I'm the sort of person who'll let fear stop her, but I just wish there was a way for me to understand why I can't ever be satisfied with what I have, because I get the feeling that if that runs as deep as I think it might, then going to another country isn't going to fix it - it'll just be yet another escape.
If you read that, you get a cookie. If you don't, that's okay - I don't know how coherent it is anyway, and I can't make myself go back and reread it, not now anyway. Instead I think I'm going to rewatch the second Death Note movie and contemplate morality in preparation for my very inquisitive ninth graders tomorrow.