Back at it.

Back in the saddle, son.

A funny thing happens. I'll be dreading it. I'll be clenching my fists and trying to get my head around it as the countdown nears its end. But when showtime rolls around, I'm there and the cogs in the machine jumpstart and keep turning.

Waning

Rrrrrr . . . I feel like a fluffy, lazy old dog rolling over after a too long sleep.

I'm here at Starbucks to sit myself down and plan, to prepare, to woman up for going back to pounding the pavement on Monday, but aauugh . . . it's slippery and drippery and sticky and icky. I want to tiptoe around it. I want to flee across the border into the sunflower-filled land where things go my way.

I have to stop this. I have to put my foot down and say "Eat your mushy vegetables!" to me. I have to tug on my foot to bring my helium-filled head out of the clouds of conjecture and back down to the gravel road. I have to stop hoping things are going to fall into my lap. I have to stop wishing that a dapper, coffee-caramel man is going to wake up one day and come riding to my rescue. I must learn the lesson of object permanence over again. Just because I can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Okay, a wee bit of credit: I finished grading (and recording) tests last night (with help). I did go through and assign professional development credit to students from my other Spanish class this morning (which takes longer than one would suppose). Baby steps. Baby steps.

Onward.

Thanks

I do this every year to remind myself of how much I have to be thankful for. It's a very enriching exercise, counting your blessings. They are not necessarily in order of importance. I am thankful for . . .

1. My job. There are some people who are looking for work or who have been laid off from their jobs. I should be thankful that I even have a job. And not just that, but also an extra teaching job two nights a week.

2. My family. My family has always been so extremely supportive of me, and I don't know what I would do without them.

3. My friends. There are people who are not members of my family who love me, who are welcoming to me, who cheer me on and who remember me in their prayers.

4. My health. I have never had any serious health problems. My health has never been something that I've had to worry about interfering with my daily life.

5. My youth. I'm still on the green side of 30 and I still (God willing) have a lot to look forward to.

6. My transportation. I have a pretty decent car that gives me very few problems and gets good gas mileage.

7. My size. I'm a skinny minnie and will continue to enjoy it while it lasts.

8. Little children who run up to me and hug me. I can't get enough of that. It just lights up my life.

9. Long, hot showers. For a few luxurious minutes a day, all troubles melt away.

10. Options. I lament the fact that I don't know what I want to do. But I'm thankful that my confusion and frustration comes from an abundance of options instead of a lack thereof.

11. God's mercy. Though I have single-handedly transformed my life into a desperate tragedy at times, God has allowed me to dust myself off and bounce back.

12. Google translate. Since I have friends from literally all over the world, I can keep up with their Facebook goings-on that aren't written in Spanish or French.

Hear me out there?

This is what I want you to do. I want you to listen to me. Try to listen despite my muffled heartbeat, my muted voice. Read my mind. Listen to the sounds of telepathic silence pulsating towards you.

I dig in my heels for necessity's sake, out of an eventual will to survive. I blindly reinforce my soft spots with sterner stuff (what ambition's made of, says Marc Antony) to forge on. But the me still seeps out from between the cracks.

It isn't weakness, it's humanity. Or is humanity by virtue weak? Or is weakness by virtue human? Listen to me: I want to be extraordinary, I want to be normal. I want what no one else has, I want what everyone else has. I want you to feel the weighted tension of my contradictions.

I am clay. I'm being molded and kneaded and broken. Can't you see that I realize I am also in process? That I'm subject to change?

To think that we should remain untouched by the prospect of change is (as Marc Antony would say) the most unkindest cut of all.

I pray for the day you could hear the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart clearly. But until then, try to listen. Steel yourself, humble yourself and listen.

I keep

wanting to quit and then resolve to stick with it and then I'll want to quit again, and again resolve to stick with it, but then I'll feel like quitting again, and then I'll ultimately resolve that I have to stick with it.

I'm sure I'm going to want to quit again.

But I'm sure I'll resolve that I have to stick with it.

I'm really trying.

I'm really trying to trudge through this sludge.

I'd give it all up, I would. I'd throw in the towel, I would. In a minute. But I just can't. I know that I'm not supposed to.

Despite it all, there are still smiles in the hallway. There are tiny spots of brightness. There's a flower growing through the asphalt.

You'd think I'd be bone dead tired, splayed, exposing innards to dry in the sun after my days, but there's still a reserve of energy on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons when I teach my professional development class. Today a student told me that she was afraid and nervous when she thought about learning a foreign language, but I've made it so fun for her and made her feel so comfortable, it's all she talks about, and she takes every opportunity to practice. She thanked me. She made my day.

Good Things

1. Got my teaching certificate renewed! Old people tryna act like my Master's degree didn't count towards recertification at first because "it's wasn't part of a teacher education program." Well, guess what, suckas? After you denied my 60 continuing education hours I completed "because they were completed before the validity start date of my certificate" I sent my transcript in anyway. Now it's all good till 2015. (Um, yikes, that year sounds too futuristic for my tastes. Good Lord, what am I going to be up to by then?)

2. I've decided to stop being a weenie, woman up, and soldier on with my job(s). I've quit in my mind so many times. But some things you just gotta face.

3. Long weekend. Thursday and Friday off, son. And then we have an entire week off for Thanksgiving. Okay, my job has its perks.

4. Got the ball rolling for grad school application. Paid the application fee, sent off the transcripts, got the GRE scores reported. Now I just have to wait for them recommendations to come rolling in, get that statement of purpose out there, and dust off one of my papers for my writing sample. Juan Moreira and verisimilitude. It's a big word in Spanish, too.

5. Hanging with homies and laughing belly laughs. I need this a little more often nowadays.

Industriousness Strikes Again

Aw, yeah. I gotta ride this sucka out. When industriousness strikes I gotta get it while the gettin's good. I gotta strike while the iron's hot. It's Friday evening and I'm not physically spent, drooling onto my pillow in oblivion. I've got bedsheets in the washing machine, people! I already have my weekend to-do list written out! C'mon, now.

Today started out as an off the chain day. It ended as an off the chain day. But somehow, I'm still sane.

I struggle with indecisiveness, fickleness, even. I drive myself and those who enter my orbit loco because of it. But in the thick of writing office referrals during my planning period, it hit me like a shaft of light: I'm applying for the Romance Languages doctoral program at a school a state away.

I teetered and tottered between wanting to do it or not. But something made me make up my mind today. I think the reason why God makes us uncomfortable is because He wants to push us on to something else. Being uncomfortable lights a fire under our derrieres to get up and out. Thank God for some kind of clarity. I hope it all works out. It would be a shame if it didn't because this is the last year my GRE scores are valid. I don't want to have to take it again because I don't think I can pull those scores off again. My standardized test game has gotten a little rusty.

I feel like getting down to business. I feel like getting things done. I gotta ride this sucka out.

Dear Unattainable

Dear Unattainable,

I'm trying to put safeguards in place in order not to make you my god.

I don't want to spend myself, exhaust myself, figuring, maneuvering, performing mental acrobatics of the utmost futile kind in order to forge an uncertain path towards finally, at last, having you within my grasp.

You, elusive, desirable. Where wishes are pocketed. Where dreams dry on the line and blow in the wind. Where heart's desires burn.

I circumscribe you in prayer during dawn-lit drives. You're always in my mind despite my efforts to leave you in the hands of the True God.

Daylight Savings Time notwithstanding, time will pass. Life will pass. Shall I live it in pursuit of you? Or shall I live it despite you? (Is there a third-party rhetorical question?)

You're aloof. Unmoved by my sighs and groanings. You exist in a world away from me, yet would still have me believe that you're just beyond my reach. I'd protest that it's unfair, but that particular protest is grating and somehow beneath me.

I can't ask anything of you. I don't expect anything from you. I just wanted to let you know how I feel.

Sincerely,

Me