work – Page 43 – hannah ananas

Making space in my life

Today, I spent almost an hour going through clothes, organizing, folding, and putting them away into a dresser, etc., as well as going through four boxes of books and organizing them better and putting them onto a bookshelf. I have two new small sections of floor visible in my room.

That’s a message I just sent to my brother. Tomorrow onward, I have to spend at least 15 minutes each day, doing cleanup/clean-out in my bedroom and/or bathroom, six days a week. I am reporting the completed tasks to one of my brothers each day.

This has been one of the most difficult things in my life, moving to a near-minimalist lifestyle. We have this bit in our DNA, in our blood, that has us sit as though we need hoarding in our lives. My brothers and I have been intent on freeing ourselves from its grasp. I am the youngest, and have spent the most time with the family who exudes the gene so obviously, so I am the last to reach my own breaking point – I will live free of this. Now, I am simply dealing with my own laziness and exhaustion after a full day of work.

For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t able to get rid of things. I had clothing, among other things, that I did not want to wear. And yet, I could not get rid of it. Today, I noticed that, if the cashier girl had complemented my bracelet, I would have offered it to her willingly. And this isn’t just any bracelet – it’s one of the natural stone bracelets that I made. I love these bracelets. It is as though I am two different people in these two scenarios. The difference was what happened one day in my apartment.

I was looking around at my colorful explosion of clothing all over my wall bedroom floor. I enjoyed the color and the explosion at first, but I’d wanted it to go away after, at most, an hour…, and it hadn’t, and I knew it wouldn’t. I didn’t even have enough space to store all of the clothes around me, so putting them away just wasn’t an actual option. After some amount of time, I found myself crying, sobbing, really. I don’t want this stuff, I cried to myself passionately, so why can’t I get rid of it? And then the revelation hit me: I would be wasting my mom’s hard-earned money.

My mom was a mom initially, once she started having children. After she and my dad split up, she had to take on a more full-time work schedule, on top of being a mom. And she was a massage therapist, so her work was physical labor. I grew up knowing that the money she earned took a good amount of effort. It kind of was “hard-earned money”. And, for me, if I ever were to get rid of something, I felt to my core that I was wasting my mom’s efforts. And it applied to just about anything I had, whether it had come from her or not. I just couldn’t get rid of anything, because I subconsciously saw it as a sort of slap to my mom’s face, theoretically, of course. That very day, when I found myself sobbing on the floor amongst my clothing, and I discovered this simple fact, I was able to begin getting rid of things. By the end of only a few days, I had two or three huge trash bags of clothing ready for donation. (My cousin went through them first, just to pull out whatever she would use gladly from it all, because we always do that, anyway, and then she dropped them off at the place by where she lived.)

After that week, my struggle has just been laziness. I have a couple decades worth of things that have been living at my mom’s house. I have gone through about 15 years’ worth of boxes and bags so far, and things are really looking up. I have accumulated less and less these past several years, and so I really only have about 7 years’ worth of things left to clear out. I know of, I believe, two boxes in the attic, and an unknown number hiding somewhere in the garage. Otherwise, I only have two and a half small boxes remaining in my room from childhood. The rest of the boxes are from my apartment, and I don’t exactly have a need to be unpacking kitchen supplies, nor getting rid of them, when I’ll just need them all again in another couple months. I do, however, want to verify that I don’t have any excesses in those boxes, though that will wait until I finish getting rid of all of the other stuff, and possibly until I am actually moving, depending on the timeframe.

My plan is to finish things with my bedroom by the 30th of December at 11:00p.m. Then, I’ll have January and February (and hopefully cool weather) to do whatever needs to be done with the garage and attic. After that, I can move to helping my mom with whatever I can around the rest of the house. And then, possibly, grad school begins, and I decide where I will reside.

Anyway, that’s just what’s on my mind right now. I feel good about what I accomplished tonight, though I know I need to take things slowly, which stresses me. If I spend too much time on it all, two things will happen. I will get burnt out quickly, and stop doing things altogether to clean up/out, and I will get too little sleep, and suffer for it. So, as much as I dislike taking so long on all of this, the task moves from daunting to doable, when I split it to 15 minutes a day, six days a week. And that means that I can have it all be happening while I’m still working over full=time. I’m looking for a beautiful and easy transition to January, and that includes a clean, clear, and organized room, with an easy place to work. So, I’m hopping to it, and I have my brother helping me to stay accountable, in spite of my laziness.

Post-a-day 2017

Halloween sneakiness

Tomorrow, I’m going to school dressed as a student. No one else is dressing up for Halloween during the day… they’re all wearing Astros t-shirts with uniform bottoms. But that’s okay. I’ll enjoy being dressed as a student, whether other people appreciate it or not. I may even see about “getting in trouble”, doing things only teachers are allowed to do, but looking like a student. 😛

Post-a-day 2017

What’s next’s what’s next

I have been worrying lately about my future. Every time I aim to figure out how to steer my career for the long term, I end up somewhat sad and upset, and totally uninspired. Thinking about this this weekend, I had the sudden obvious realization that I don’t have to know my long term – I don’t have to know what’s next after what’s next. Just one what’s next is good enough. It’s better than good enough – it’s actually great. Ideal, possibly. Yes, I have all sorts of ideas for my future, but they don’t need to be solid, set in stone now and forever. Every year, my dad is ‘about to retire’, and that’s been for the past decade, I believe. And yet, he’s still chugging along happily (mostly happy with it, anyway) at his job. And he’s one of the most plan-y people I know when it comes to work, finances, and career choices.

So, if I go for this now, I can be looking for what’s next while doing it. I certainly know that I end up becoming a new, different person after every phase of this or that, so how could I possibly know now what the future, new I will want most? Though I have my amazing moments, I’m not God, so I don’t know all.

I guess it is kind of just a slightly altered perspective of “What About Bob”’s baby steps. Worry about this room… then, when I’m in the hall, think about that hall…, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, I’m down with that.

Also, Brad Paisley was interviewed by Jeff Foxworthy on the radio this evening, and it was delightful in an unexpected way. Find the recording, if you can. They now plan to write a song together, as a result of the interview. I’m looking forward to it. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

And the tears come rolling in

Today, I cried multiple times. Some were at work, and some at home…, one even on the way home from work. I am very tired right now, but the pains and hurts and strains of today, the ones that activated the crying, have reminded me of my time hiking Mt. Fuji. It was painful, and annoyingly so, because I knew that I could do it, but so totally did not want to go through the hassle and pain that I knew would result by doing it. And so were the various situations today – annoyingly painful, because I knew that I could (and still know that I can) deal with the various situations and circumstances, and they weren’t necessarily necessary for my life to move forward, so I just didn’t want to have to deal with them all (or any of them, really). But I also knew/know that something useful awaits me, and will greet me upon my successful completion of dealing with the stuff. So, I cried some today and now I will deal some more.

Post-a-day 2017

Today’s bumps, I guess

Two not-so-great things happened today at work. 1) I hid under my desk again (second time so far here). 2) I took a stupid typing test, and only got 60 words per minute.

For the desk thing, it’s just a whole new world, working here with these kids. Education that has felt like second nature to me most of my life, is a piece of education that has somehow eluded a good chunk of these guys, thanks to stereotypes and income levels of families. The first time I hid under my desk, I think I just wanted to be alone, after a good hour or two of kids being kids, unable to handle sitting in a classroom, even for five minutes at a time (we get up and about in the room a lot during class, excluding test and quiz days). Today, it was a bit of that, but mostly my distaste at the unfortunate lack of capability of many of these high schoolers to do basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I took these same classes at their same ages, and yet I flew threw most of this stuff. Not only was I good at math, but I had friends and family to support me with it, whether I needed the help or not. These kids just plain don’t. So, I’m not sure if it was so much the annoyance at the kids being restless today, as it was their social and educational backgrounds that really just have me wanting to curl up and cry, and go away… but ‘out of sight, out of mind’ has never really been one of my supported phrases in life.

And, for the typing test, it was stupid. It was for doing Aesop’s fables, including their titles and an introduction. I didn’t have a single error in the final product, because I corrected as I went, but the flow was difficult, because it was different formatting with the titles and such. Aren’t typing tests traditionally of paragraphs? Perhaps my belief in that is a false one, but it makes more sense to me for a general standard test than what I had today. Anyway, it was some free online test, so I don’t expect it to be the best standard… it was just kind of annoying. Hopefully I am right, and my typing speed is actually faster than just 60 words per minute. I didn’t even have a comfortable positioning of the keyboard and everything, either, so I don’t really see why I’m upset about it. I guess I’m just tired and feeling ill today, and that’s bringing me down in more ways than one right now.

Post-a-day 2017

Being a teacher… ouch

Being a teacher is hard. And by “hard”, I mean “incredibly difficult”. What calls to mind this idea today in particular – because we all know that there are loads of reasons being a teacher is difficult – is the aspect of life outside of school.

You see, to be a good teacher, the best one can be, requires arriving early to school, working through free periods during the day, actually teaching classes, working privately with students at lunch and/or after school, and then working at least a little bit more before going home for the night. By then, exhaustion is just about ready to set in, leaving time only enough to make it home, eat some food (maybe), and crash to bed. And then the alarm goes off at five-something in the morning to start it all over again. In other words, a truly dedicated teacher, at least in his/her first several years teaching a specific subject, works at least a ten-hour day daily, and has little to no time and/or energy to pursue anything else during the week. Social life just doesn’t exist alongside being a good, dedicated teacher.

Right now, everything is working for me. Right now, I have almost zero social obligations or immediate opportunities. I go early and work late every day, and I have this strong sense of ‘got-it-togetherness’. I am prepared for the following day by the time I leave for home in the evening. But I have no active friends. Sure, I chat with people at school from time to time, but we aren’t friends. Besides, they all seem to be doing things for various clubs and such for the school on the weekends. When I have wondered how things might be if I were a permanent teacher at this school, I have been almost certain that I would be staying even later for club activities, and sooner or later would find myself on campus or at activities (sports, possibly) for the school on the weekends. It really is wonderful to be an active part of a school. And that unfortunately means giving up most outside opportunities.

There is a delicate balance between having a life outside of school and making the school one’s whole life. Sacrifices must be made in either case – either giving up social time for school events, or giving up involvement with the school and kids (when kids are truly at their best, too) to go get drinks or coffee with a friend or family member. At my last two jobs, I wasn’t fulfilled as a teacher without being involved in things with kids outside of class. Be it playing in the band for certain events, singing songs together at the community piano, coaching lacrosse, or choreographing and assisting with the musical, those were the necessary pieces to rounding out the teacher experience and being fulfilled as a teacher. Unfortunately, those all meant giving up time that could have been spent on a life outside of school, getting to know people my own age or, believe it or not, older than I am. I could have spent the time running in the park. But I spent it with the kids instead. So, I was fulfilled somewhat as a teacher, and hardly at all as a person in life.

Anyway, that’s what’s been on my mind this evening, and is one of the many reasons why teaching is hard

Post-a-day 2017

Photography Skills…?

I don’t know what it is, but I apparently am great at photography. My cousin and aunt said that I really just have a great eye for it. I see what they mean, but I keep wondering if it is only for certain circumstances that I am any good at it all, that I only have an eye for specific photo situations and events. Sure, I had great ideas for a couple weddings, and a handful of other events in recent years, but they all shared in their nature-tied, almost rustic themes. Part of me wonders if I just choose to take photos of things that are already awesome, and I am merely documenting those things, as opposed to my taking whatever is in front of me, and documenting it in an awesome way.

That being said, there is another part of me that wants desperately to agree with them wholeheartedly, go find a good quality camera, and start promoting myself as a photographer. This is the part that tells me how I am always just a very harsh judge of myself, and the standards I hold are far beyond the usual standards for people, thereby making what I consider to be mediocre work of my own to be spectacular by regular standards. And I so want to believe this part of me…, but I don’t want to be wrong.

Then again, why do I not want to be wrong? It looks like I want not to be embarrassed for thinking that I have taste, and being called out about it, because I don’t actually have good taste like I’d thought. Also, that I want not to cause people to believe I am cheating them in any way…. and it looks like that’s about it. Huh… Well, I know that I have taste. Especially seeing as how I frown at professional photos that I see all of the time, because I am disappointed that the photographer would allow such photos to be paid for. As for finding an appropriate value for my “work”, let’s call it, I guess I can easily enough ask different people for guidance, and always verify with the “client”, shall we say, regarding an agreed upon value of the work. And, regarding my earlier concern/wondering, I could always just do photos for those similar settings, if it turns out that I’m only really great at those types of setups. Well, that’s too simple, almost.

Fortunately, the key word there is “almost”.

So, I guess that means that I am looking for a camera now, because my phone is not satisfactory for anything above instagram quality. 😛

Post-a-day 2017

My real voice

In college, I spent a summer studying in Germany. It was a language school setup, filled with foreigners, but in such a small town that everyone knew that we were studying German, and so everyone always spoke to us all in German. I had already studied abroad a few times before this adventure, and I had learned firsthand about what works and what doesn’t work, in terms of language immersion. I was dedicated to learning German, and so I made sure that I only spoke in German with others, even if they spoke to me in English. This made friendships hard among the people in my program’s group, since they all used English together; I came across a bit snobby, but I was just really committed to learning German.

I made friends with other foreigners rather easily, though, and especially ones in higher levels of German, which was even better for me. My German was improving immensely. But this led to a unique situation one day.

One day, near the end of either my time at the school or my friend Paul’s time there (he’s British), I found myself faced with a desperate Paul, actually begging me to speak English. Why?! was my repeated question to his pleas.

“Because I want to hear what you sound like!”

I don’t know if he was pleased or not by how I sound in English, but I spoke a little for him. And it was way weird, using English with him, despite the fact that I’d heard him speak English loads, and that it’s our common native language. I had just never used it with him.

And then this brought up a unique and interesting sentiment. He wanted to hear me, and that meant speaking English. I can guess that my native tongue was the one in which Paul believed my identity to lie. I know that it felt like I was setting aside a sort of mask when I switched to English with him. I even felt a little called-out… as though I had been hiding somehow, and it had been behind German. The real me (I) lay in English, in the English part of me.

Yet, years later, here I am, missing the parts of me that belong to these different languages in which I have lived. A part of me, true me (I), exists only on German, and others in French, in Spanish, and in Japanese. So much so that the real me (I) is this whole combination of languages – I feel a huge emptiness and feel not myself when I am using only English in my daily life. I listen to Spanish-speaking radio when I’m in Houston, mostly because I don’t get to use Spanish often enough. I read every night in French, and trade off an English book for a German one at times for my evening reading, too. I regularly pull out a Spanish book to read, or my German audiobooks. And I have noticed that I have been searching for a tolerably satisfying way to have Japanese in my near-daily life, too. (For now, it has just been the occasional music, and a perpetual repeat of a certain song being stuck in my head.) When I don’t have them all, it is as though a part of me is missing, and suddenly getting to speak with someone in them, almost reminds me of that mask I was setting aside in Germany with Paul… like I am again setting aside some mask I have been wearing.

Perhaps it is now a mask of monolingualism, pretending that I only speak English, while I long for the world to talk to me in several languages, all the time.

Anyway… I’m exhausted. And I miss Paul. He was studying opera, and was a really great guy. I wonder if he’s been really successful with opera these past several years. Maybe I can go see him perform one day. That would be awesome. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

Books for Previews

I read books in the movie theatre. It’s true. I really do. Not during the film, of course, but beforehand, and sometimes even during previews.

It all started when a friend of my dad’s gave me a book called Staying Alive in Year Five. I think it might be an Australian book. Whatever its origin, I loved reading the book. I remember being so excited to see what happened next that I took it with me everywhere, so I could read whenever I had the chance.

This, naturally, included the movie theatre. We always get to the film early in order to get good seats, and then the movie itself never starts at the specified time, anyway. So, I sat down in my seat by my family members, and I opened up my book and read. I was excited for the film, but I was also disappointed at having to stop reading, when it got to the beginning of the film.

Nowadays, I still read before a movie, if I’m there at all, of course. There hasn’t been much to spark my interest lately, so I haven’t often been at the cinema. And Japan was different, simply because I wanted to learn as much Japanese and Japanese culture as I could, so I watched all the previews and everything rather avidly. Aside from those specific circumstances, I read. I almost always have a book with me. Living in Japan meant that I ended up always having my Kindle, since hard copies of books in not Japanese weren’t so easy to come by. I would read at work, on the train, and at home. While walking around (once I bought earphones I could wear again [Thanks, Korea!]), I listened to audiobooks. Occasionally, I listened to music, but typically not. I just love books.

Post-a-day 2017

…holding out for a (anger) management position…

“The thing about giving yourself a pep talk is that secretly you know it’s all bullshit.”
That’s a quote from a Sophie Kinsella book (Remember Me?, I think). Today has kind of been a day where I got to live it. Though, since I already knew this, any effort to give myself a pep talk was dropped almost before I started. It’s not that I actually think life as I know or want it is coming to an end – indeed, the good stuff has only just begun. But knowing that has almost no effect on the feelings of total misery and hopelessness that arise when I hit places like my current one. Sure, I accept then, thank the feelings for sharing, and then move on to what’s next, but they really do suck when they’re busy hanging around.

I have been experiencing another one of these odd feelings of waiting lately. It is as though there is a set amount of time I must go before I find a job again, and then, after that time period, everything will fall into place perfectly, and the waiting will have been totally worth the misery.

However, when I get these feelings, I always have to take a first step, be proactive somehow, in order for things to fall into place. As I see myself growing more angry and on-edge each day, I find it more and more difficult to do anything productive, anything that could help with that first step. I even have some plans for that step, yet here I lie, miserable and without having taken any action for them today. I guess I would have to give up the idea that this isn’t where I want to be right now, living at my mom’s. I moved out years ago, intentionally, and had no intentions of returning for residency. Not for desire to be independent or anything of the sort, but because I don’t want to live the lifestyle of this house… at all. Nor do I want to be treated like a kid again, as my mother does automatically most of the time whenever I am here. Any time she has visited me in my own home, or anywhere else when I’ve not been living with her, she has treated me differently. Sure, she’s always still a mom, and fussed at me for this or that. However, it is not like how a parent talks to a child, how it is now.

Anyway, I have some things to get started with doing. I want to live elsewhere, and yet here I am – this is what is available to me currently. I want a good job that I love, and here am I, without employment. So, little by little, I guess I have some steps to take, including figuring out what they are. I know I’ll be all right, I really do. It has just been mentally rough lately, and I so want to be finished with this near-constant anger, annoyance, and sense of hopelessness. Guess it’s well about time I chat with Jude, hmm? (I’ll start there, and see what I can brainstorm in that mental conversation.)
P.S. Bonus points to you, if you know what movie helped to inspire the title of this post. It’s a family favorite of ours. My cat even watched it with me after I first got him. And he really did watch it. It was kind of weird that he did, really, but also totally cute.

Post-a-day 2017