Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Oh How the Tides of Shit May Turn

Oh how the tides of shit may turn and the winds of shit may blow. A once riding high and free and positive Kale with his new laptop, new full time job and big first Band Gig on the Horizon has been ever so defeated. Where to start?

Oh lets try the job. My job as Title 1 Math/Reading support teacher has degraded quickly into something unintelligible and dissatisfying and primarily impossible. Instead of teaching study skills, life lessons, math remediation and homework help, my daily job has turned into a moment to moment triage and adjacent battle with behavior problems, teacher difficulties, and systematic failure of a broken school/district educational effort. My job unfortunately never really had a definition and still doesn't. I originally thought that this freedom would be refreshing and exciting but have since changed my mind. When you have no real direction as to what it is you are exactly being asked to do you also don't know if you are meeting said undefined expectations. The thought of remaining in this position till the end of may is not only horrifying but also a little sickening. All I do all day is run around from over stretched classroom to over worked teacher to over sympathized student trying to put out behavior problems, collect missing work assignments and failing progress reports. I have lost 6 plus pounds from simply walking around all day and stress. I tell students not to call another student a "fag" or "gay" or "homo" or "retard" or last week "Homo-gay-fagtard" at least 20 times a day, get asked to go to the bathroom 50 times a day, provide penciless students with pencils more than I can count, and pick up endless shredded paper balls and eraser/pen parts. Furthermore my position and purpose was put together amidst three different agencies of school, administration, counselors, and teachers, making my overseeing authority a murky and undefined mass of faculty with little inter-department communication or set goal.

Then today I find out that my grandma has been sick and had to go to the hospital prompting fear of losing a loved one to rise up all day along with feelings of resentment that the idea of assisted living was even raised as an option. Hold in their Grandma I'm not ready for you to go yet.

On top of that, the booking manager of the bar my roomate and I are supposed to play on March 19th, called and left a message stating that they double booked our night and we are out. No big first gig after all. We have been practicing day and night to get ready I guess we can take a day off now.

I hate this part of the life frequency. Life can get so awesome so quickly and then dip back down into shitsville the next moment. The excitement of the new house has worn off a little and now chores and obligations are starting to mount. At least we finally got the racoons out of the attic...literally.

Tutoring has become a huge pain in my ass as well. Its not enough that I have to work my ass off all day getting kids to attempt to grasp the importance of being an 8th grader, but to then have to do it once again after school is just mind boggling exhausting.

Oh I blew my hip out last weekend during shenanigans at Sound Tribe Sector Nine in seattle (which was a shining star in a galaxy of poo-holes. I have been sleeping uncomfortably and limping around all week.

Even if my leg was healthy I never would have time to go skiing anyway because I work all the time.

Basically I sit here writing this listening to BoysIIMen sing "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday" on 92.5 Movin FM radio because I left my iPod at school thinking that this is a lame lame lame lame lame lame feeling, the feeling you get when nothing turned out like you planned (and a also feeling stupid for planning yet again despite plans never working out).

The only redeeming thing that happened to me all day was that I went to dinner with my mom and watched 12 horrible boys/mens American idol episode (realizing I love watching AI with mom and that the people on there aren't that good).

oh and this amazing puff daddy song that just came on the radio...yeah...blue ribbon day here in kale world, and a blue ribbon day deserves a blue ribbon...or two.

Whatever.

7 comments:

Randall H. Sloot said...

http://blog.beliefnet.com/freshliving/hanginthere.jpg

Susan Iverson said...

Don't worry, life is about these ups and downs. It will go back up soon enough. Without the downs, you wouldn't even notice the ups. And not all the guys were bad but I admit most were.

Anonymous said...

But at least you're not in Alaska, right?

Anonymous said...

Kale,
I so hear you on the blessing and the curse of no job description or previous expectations to be held to. That was my Americorps life. The beauty is being able to create your own job description and the curse is the never knowing if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. I think living/working in that situation for an entire school year was a growing experience for me. I only hope that one day you can look at it that way as well. It renewed my respect and appreciation for clear communication and expectations and forced me into ambition and innovation that was uncharacteristic for me at the time.

I'm sorry that you're dealing with the curse of the situation today and hope that you see the blessing of it tomorrow.

Take care,
Angie Abel

Smirky said...

dude wat up long time no big beard, how you doing yeah i know whot your going though but hey its what you have to go though in life to accomplish what your goin up against. yeah im doing good still trying to grow a beard and a peach fuzz well talk to ya later keep the beard on

serialstar said...

There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less that the one you are capable of living.-Nelson Mandela

b.r. said...

Ah Kale your post title reminded me of some favorite little ditties from one of my favorite mindless comedies, trailer park boys.

We're in the eye of the shiticane here, Kale, and this is a low-shit system. When you're getting pelted with shit balls, you gotta get a shit bat.
Something like that....


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