Work

A former employer phoned me this morning and presented me with a dilemma. There is an opening that I could certainly fill. It would include tutoring in math as well as English, but a pretty basic math level. I would only need some brush up on basic algebra. It is just ten minutes from my home, and I would be working with a population I really enjoy. It was kind of them to think of me. I know I could do the work and be happy at it. The pay is also decent although it is a part time job with no benefits as is so often true of community college work. So far it is only funded for this semester with a possibility of a supplemental budget item in the future. No situation is ever perfect, is it? And there is the already paid for cruise at the end of April. I went so far as to look into changing the dates since it would be right before exam time--a necessarily busy time for the tutoring. Change does not look possible. Considering all of this is giving me a headache.

Modus Operandi

Thoughts on 2007:
I wanted to have a blog.
I feared having a blog.
I thought a blog would become a chore I would avoid.
I am successful at self-fulfilling prophecies.
Since this is the only entry for December so far, and I have merely 2 days remaining, I detect a need to catch up on my life. Determined not to use this as some casual diary, I hesitate to list 2007's happenings with resulting feelings. I think I will instead concentrate on one recent occurrence: I resigned my position at a community college.
Quitting has been my modus operandi for much of my life. Chidlhood was less than ideal in the details although above average in the aggregate. In other words, someone viewing from a safe distance would have seen an okay family of comfortable means with two bright children. Purposefully myopic glimpses would have yielded none of the damaging pathology, but I digress. Baggage from childhood and several interstate moves while an adult have made me adept at leaving--before someone or some project leaves me. I have been trying for years to change that pattern, so quitting my job was anything but frivolous. And now that I consider it, I wonder if the job had really not been quitting me over time. I came to teaching at the college level eager and willing to contribute to committees and such. The 22-30 hours per week tutoring gig was an opportunity to work with a great variety of students. So I taught part time, served in small ways, tutored, and learned. Life at a community college all comes down to this: there are good and bad in every group from students to faculty to administration. Additionally, the truly bad, be they lazy or ignorant or too self-centered to see any other world view, comprise a small percentage of the population of any group. Only when that small percentage bullies the rest of some group into believing they, the shortsighted, have control does life become unbearable.

Fear of Writing

Maybe it is more a fear of life in general. It's difficult to determine. I have flirted with writing in this blog again for several days but was afraid to actually follow through with any writing. I don't know if I feel guilty for not having visited for so long. I really did not want to be tied in that way to a blog, having one more thing I would feel guilty about not doing any particular day. So much for my whining.
My life is typically messy. I have a family and a neighborhood and friends and church and work, so of course life would be messy if I am paying attention at all. Sometimes I just pay such close attention that I wake up one day and realize that craziness is reigning. Then there is the crawling back. In the Bill Murray movie What About Bob? the Richard Dreyfus character talks about baby steps to mental health. He publishes a self-help book about the concept. I personally think baby steps are a leap (forgive the mixing of metaphors). Crawling makes more sense to me. That action better expresses the weights that keep me from standing. I'm not envisioning a baby crawling but an adult in one of those Renaissance paintings of a classical figure pulling himself up out of the abyss. Cheery, huh? So I am crawling back once again, and posting to the blog has to be a positive component.
Work sucks. Not being listened to sucks. Being powerless sucks.

Application

In order to present myself in my best light when applying for a job, I must convince myself that I have a very real chance of landing the position. I have to want it, be passionate about it, see myself as the person performing it. In the meantime, I must continue on the job I already have, the one that now seems so unsatisfactory. I submit a long application, a personality questionnaire, my resume, a letter. I interview with administration and also with a committee of peers. During the one-on-one, I again answer personality questions. The committee asks more job related questions, but sometimes it is difficult to detect the nuances they expect. I try not to second guess. Instead, I go with what comes to mind and I give each meeting my all. I think the interview has been positive, but then I thought the same about that previous position. I was so comfortable, but someone else was hired. When I inquired, the director pointed out that my specific experience was not enough. Did they really need to get my hopes up to discover that the experience on my resume was lacking? Did they enjoy my performance?

But I must protest too much. Whoever gets the job has to jump through the same hoops. It's all part of the loosely choreographed dance that continues into the relationships once employment occurs. Allowing my optimism to slip away does no one any good. Like getting in shape for a sport, if I choose to seek a new job, then I will go through the required motions with the expected attitude.

beginnings

Having just force fed myself the exclamation pointed rantings of a distant but listserv connected coworker, I decided it was time to succumb to the technology of self-disclosure. The next decision will be how discreet I will remain.

On a much lighter note, Colleen looks happy about this college graduation thing, doesn't she?