Tag Archives: job

into the breach

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the floor in my bedroom is littered with books on shakespeare, photocopies of articles about his history plays, an ear-marked and marked-up version of henry v, student papers and lecture notes. i’m two days into my two-week teaching stint for a friend of mine. she teaches junior and senior english at  a small private school, and as a favor i agreed to teach one of her shakespeare units this year. i’ve never taught formally before, but it’s been fun so far. it’s about as exhausting as i imagined and about as frightening, too — but the kids are engaging, happy to jump in, and they seem to smile more than they frown…

i’d write more except im so wicked tired… did i mention its the 8:25 am period? yup. ok well wish me luck — finding a calling is hard work!

in a nutshell

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i only realized this recently, but the hardest part of this blog to write is the “about me” section. well, let me rephrase. writing it isn’t all that hard — editing it, however… describing myself at any given instant isn’t all that difficult, but going back and editing what i had once written takes a toll i had not foreseen. having to go through a paragraph about myself and realize that some of these things are no longer true, some new things bear mentioning, but i’d be lying if i say i didn’t get a little sad when i had to delete certain bits (you’ll notice, if you go to the “about me” section, that i didn’t actually delete anything. i just couldn’t quite do it. so i crossed things out and added new bits. but even that feels strange — as if the things in red are somehow less a part of me than the things in black — which of course isn’t true.

i do need to do a better job updating the “about me” section, but since i can’t quite bring myself to do it — and since i do want to keep you all clued into my current plans — i’ve just decided to post this little note.

all of that is a roundabout way to tell you that this is what i’m up to:

i’m still in a certain kind of limbo. i’m currently living in california with my parents (and, as fate would have it, all three of my younger brothers are staying here at the moment as well. oh the adventures). i had originally thought i would be living in our semi-converted garage, but my youngest brother decided he would prefer that and so i was given his room. no complaints from here, as you might have guessed. i’m working for a small christian publishing company, doing some materials development for electronic/online materials. it isn’t glamorous, but i believe quite strongly in the work we’re producing and i’m happy to be a part of a team that propagates it. i’ve committed to work here for a year, and i work 4 days a week. the 5th weekday (i hope) will be a day for me to focus on my writing. we’ll see how i do.

that being said, i’ve also applied for a few jobs in austin, texas. because, you see, after long last — after long long long last, as some of you know — i have decided on a Plan For My Future. i’ve decided to get my teaching certification and apply to teach high school english (possibly government/social sciences) for the department of defense — for the children of american military personnel who live on overseas bases. it’s not going to be a quick process, but i’m happy with it.

step one is to get my residency (either in texas or california) so i can get into a teacher certification program and only pay in-state rates. step two is to get into said program. step three (or maybe just two-and-a-half) is to finish the program and get my certification. then i have to apply for certification through the DODEA program, see if they have any openings, and rinse and repeat as necessary.

eulogy for a summer

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the end.

11 weeks, 4 countries, 3 currencies, 9 airplanes, 2 ferries, 10 beds, 7 passport stamps, 4 cell phone carriers, 2 roommates, 3 islands, and 1 birthday later (not to mention countless bus rides, train trips, a motorbike, a road trip, several languages and accents, and a million trips to H&M and topshop), my summer of awesome comes to an end.

parts of this summer were unduly stressful, i’m not going to lie — sometimes working on the proofreading project was really hard, way more than i bargained for; the continual traveling took a definite toll; and sometimes the culture differences i found myself in the middle of were frustrating. other days were sad — the night before my birthday; sometimes feeling homesick and then realizing i had no home at present to return to; saying goodbye to new friends. but there were calm days as well — peacefully uneventful, and yet satisfying beyond words — cafes and canal walks in holland; lazy days at the beach in crete; rainy afternoons in london; traipsing around the UT campus in austin. and there were, of course, the best of bright moments — the breathtaking (mesdag panorama), the hilarious (our road trip to bath), the inspiring (painting frames at the coys), the exhilarating (motorbiking around santorini), and the cherishing (quiet afternoons in romford) (those are my top 5 moments from this trip, incidentally). there were the good friends i reconnected with, the new friends i made, the family i saw again, and the me i discovered a little more about. taking into account all the ups and downs, the aims and failures, tumbles and climbs, i think this summer fits perfectly in with the best year of my life. every moment was not amazing, but on the whole — like the year itself — it was wonderful.

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real life beckons — i have moved back to california to work for a small christian publishing company. i won’t be doing anything too glamorous — just helping with some electronic materials they are using — but i’m looking forward to it. it’s a small cog in my Bigger Plan, but i’ll post regarding that in a separate post. for now, that’s the skinny.

3 am

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i don’t normally condone blogging in the middle of the night. it’s usually a gross reaping of melodramatic misconceptions and misconstructions, all completely devoid of any reasonable perspective. however, today it is  3 am, and i am w i i i i i d e awake. this is partly (almost entirely) due to the numerous multi-hour naps i took earlier today (technically yesterday). not that i feel like my perspective is any better, but there’s not a lot going on at 3 am… i’ve o.d.’d on facebook already, and no one is emailing me in the middle of the night — and as bad as blogging might be, i’m convinced that chatting would be worse.

i’ve picked a future, did i tell you? well, that is, i’ve committed to a job for the next year. i’ll be working in california for a christian publishing company, doing some material development for them. online stuff mostly. officey stuff. i can’t tell if i’m excited or not. it’s only 4 days a week, which is nice. i’ll be living at home at least initially, and i can’t tell if i’m excited or not about that either. at the present moment (i just realized) i am technically homeless. which means when i turn 30 in 10 days (9, actually, since its 3 am now), ill be homeless. how’s that for wasted potential.

ignore this post. 3 am is not a good time to write things.

in over my head

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if you type “overwhelmed” in flickr‘s search box, this is the first picture that comes up; and while it’s not entirely indicative of how i’m feeling lately, it’s such an awesome picture that i’m going to keep it.

and i am in a bit over my head, anyway.

i think you know i work for H–, but in the past several months i picked up a part-time second job (only a few hours a week) working for L– as well. (I feel like Ashton Kutcher in that new movie where he tells Katherine Heigl, “Let’s just say I work for the blah blah, and I have a license to blah.”) Anyway, the work for L– promised to be challenging and fulfilling — and has been  — so I took it on as well.

Then I was asked to cover some extra responsibilities (additional hours, additional monies) at H– while one of my coworkers is out on maternity leave… all in all which puts me in the middle of a much busier schedule than I previously enjoyed. To add irony to injury, now when I have so many extra responsibilities, my usual undemanding bosses have upped the ante as well, and I’m a bit sunk.

It’s all temporary of course — I’m saving up money with a certain and specific goal in mind (which I would tell you if it didn’t mean I was at the same time broadcasting it across the known universe), the new mommy will come back from maternity leave, and things will gradually fall into a happy rhythm.

in the meantime though, i feel like a juggling fool. and not a very good one at that.

(addition: going through flickr pictures of juggling has inspired me to want to juggle. apparently there is a club in town with a 15 minute guarantee: i.e., they guarantee that in 15 minutes, they can teach a person to juggle at least 3 balls. bring. it. on. … but not for a couple of weeks – i’ve got a packed calendar these days.)

the morning

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put everything in one big pile.

that’s how i start my workday: by scooping all the papers on my desk into one big pile, leaving clean space everywhere else.

open outlook. open gmail. open facebook. check outlook – its done loading. meh. check facebook – it’s never done.

turn my attention to the army of tiny post-its leftover from the day before. really, post-it has done a marvelous thing, if you think about it. when else would you happily use a piece of paper that was 1 1/2″ x 2″ to jot down your most important information? (never, i hope). but there they are: 4 or 5 tiny blue notes, reminding me of things i forgot the moment i wrote them down.

call marita. it’s too early for that. move post-it to the bottom of my computer screen. henry’s office hours – took care of that yesterday. trash. er, recycling bin. (does it even count if you recycle paper this small). order reading packet #4. meh, that’s not due till april; i’ll wait. leave it stuck at the bottom of the computer screen. thank you nicole! aw, that note from that student. save.

ok, what else can i do before tending to this pile. any emails? i deleted the junky ones already. don’t wanna do the other ones just yet. ok, pile, you win.

sort through the stack of papers, sticking a tiny post-it on each piece with instructions on what to do. stack the papers in order of priority (strongly suspect that i’ll go through the pile in whatever order i want, regardless of priority).