Surviving a New Job and a Shakespeare Intensive

For approximately the last three weeks, I have been pondering why it is that I feel compelled to make work for myself, to never allow myself down time.

I was looking forward to a winter break from school. This last semester was hard – I’m tired, chronically sleep-deprived, and my poor daughters are probably wondering if I’ve abandoned them permanently. A solid month of no classes would have been good for me, given me a chance to catch up on sleep, laundry, housecleaning, remember what my daughters look like, all the things I’ve been ignoring since going back to school.

Instead, after a conversation with a professor, I decided to sign up for a winter session course so that I could apply for Middle School certification in Language Arts. Three credits in three weeks. Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Shakespeare, and have been enjoying the chance to do an in-depth study of a play I was less familiar with. I’ve loved the work, the stretching of the mind, the exposure to a couple strange movies that I would never have seen otherwise.

Then half way through the first week of my Shakespeare Intensive, I received a phone call for a job interview, and got the job – teaching computer classes as the local community college. I love that work, too. The students are nice, the lessons are the kind of teaching work I want to do, so the experience will go a long way to helping me find a full-time teaching job. I’m having fun, I’m feeling useful, and the extra pay is really helpful even if it isn’t enough to live on.

But the combination of a 3-week intensive, plus a new job requiring syllabus writing, reading four textbooks, learning a new online blackboard system so I could set up for class, all amounted to overload, even for a work-a-holic. I’m living extreme life right now.

At the end of the week, as I take a break from writing my final Shakespeare paper, I am pondering while sipping my cup of hot chai latte. I wonder, what propels a person to work when a break is well deserved? What unconscious drive compels me to try harder, work harder, keep moving forward? What kind of Sisyphus-complex am I suffering from? Maybe it’s all a plot from my subconscious mind to successfully avoid cleaning my house!

“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day”
~ Simone de Beauvoir

Silly Horoscope Meme Thing

For your reading pleasure - an interesting and somewhat bizarre meme that my friend Suna posted. It came from Barb Cooper's wonderful blog. I love Barb's description:

Pay no attention to the fact that they seem to have been randomly generated by some astrological parody engine or a house elf or something.

Here's my response, for January.

JANUARY:
Stubborn and hard-hearted.

This would especially be true when I am yelling at my children after they did something wrong. At least according to them. I am a serious contender for the worst-mommy-in-the-world, quite frequently.

Ambitious and serious.

Uh-huh. That’s why I went back to school and massively back into debt as a single mom to learn how to be a teacher in a public school, working for peanuts.

Loves to teach and be taught.

Well, ok, maybe this is why I went back to school.

Always looking at people's flaws and weaknesses.

This is not why I want to become a teacher, and I spend all my waking hours most definitively not looking for flaws in people. However, that said, I do not hesitate to speak up when I do see weaknesses and flaws, and try to always offer suggestions for improvement. This would be for institutions, though, not people.

Likes to criticize.

Well, I guess the last comment said it all. I try to criticize productively and kindly, if that helps.

Hardworking and productive.

No arguments there. My children will happily attest to how unavailable I am due to the amount of time I spend on the computer (which translates to how much I’m working on school work). The upside to all of that is that my children are growing up with a model of how working hard in school leads to happiness and success. I hope. If I find a job.

Smart, neat and organized.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Except for the smart part. Single moms in school and working do not have time to be neat and organized.

Sensitive and has deep thoughts.

Yep, that’s why I’m reduced to responding to inane memes before blogger shuts down my blog due to neglect.

Knows how to make others happy.

Not right now. I’ve spent far too long ignoring my friends while I cope with school and work. I hope they all forgive me.

Quiet unless excited or tensed.

Well, ok. One item I might agree with.

Rather reserved.

One of the most important ideas that I am trying to help my children understand is that life must be lived … that we need to throw ourselves into life without worrying about how others think of us … that reserve is for banks, not humans.

Highly attentive.

Not when I’m reading. Again, my children will happily attest to this. Not when I’m in front of my computer, either. (Those two actions kind of go hand-in-hand right now, but my children haven’t figured that out yet.) I prefer to think of it as benign neglect which helps them develop their own creativity!

Resistant to illnesses but prone to colds.

What does this have to do with my birth month, anyway? Did the person who came up with this list really believe that all January babies are more prone to colds? Now that I’m an accomplished user of natural remedies, none of this is true, anyway.

Romantic but has difficulties expressing love.

Nope. If I can’t find a way to say it orally, I usually find a way to say it in writing. Anyway, how could I make others feel happy but not know how to express my love???

Loves children.

Only since I became a mom. That would discount the first two thirds of my life!

Loyal.

Yes.

Has great social abilities yet easily jealous.

No. Really, really no. I don't think I have a jealous bone in my body.

Very stubborn and money cautious.

Again, my children might claim the stubbornness. However, they are more worried about money now that we’re poor than I am.

That was interesting. A bit bizarre. I would truly love to know how this meme originated.