Only three months into this contract and it feels like it's been a lifetime and once over. I think about what life would be like if I could wake up every day and not dread going to work. I wonder what life is like for people who wake up and are excited to go to work. What does that feel like? Because I wake up every morning, rub away the aches and pains of yesterday and walk to work with my head down. Is work meant to be this draining? Unpleasant? Tedious? Everyday I wake up and I'm already too tired. The sound of childrens' voices irritate me in new ways. Don't get me wrong, I love the children. I love my students. It's just different when you are their teacher and you are actually teaching 10 hours a day. As their teacher you are their educator, disciplinarian, personal encyclopedia and accountability but you are not their friend. You are so many more things but you are not their friend.

I avoid writing in this blog because I hate being ungrateful, dramatic and depressing. And I sound like all three when I'm honest about how I'm feeling. When I really get down to the deep, deep heart issues I'm just unhappy. I've never experienced so many different shades of unhappiness since I started working at this school. I live with regret. I regret my decision to come back and my decision to come back for this job. I wrestle with the idea of quitting and putting in my official resignation. Some days are better than others. I also think about the thousands of people who do not have jobs, still others who have jobs but hate it just as much as me. I think about others who are taking odd end part time jobs just to pay the bills to support their families, the people who clean toilets all day or the waiters at Butterfingers who get paid barely 5,000 W ($5) an hour and I think I have it pretty good when I put all that into perspective. I seesaw between a deep sense of unhappiness and a solemn resolve to stick it through. I go back and forth from depression and self-pity to thankfulness and determination to finish this contract and get my severance. Press on. Take heart. Endure. Those are the words of encouragement I've been receiving in prayer and in the Word.

I spend all my days tumbling ideas in my own head. I run through the different ideas for vocabulary games, grammer exercises, class activities, worksheets that I can make or print and powerpoints that need to be assembled. And then I run through the things I need to get done before I can go home like comments that have deadlines, books that need to be marked, grades that need to be inputed, essays that need to be corrected, books that need to be read through and solved, and stories that need to be read so I can teach them the next day. The work never stops coming and I never take a break when I'm at work and even when I'm not at work. I live my life in a non-stop, high-speed chase of multitasking and brainstorming; my job has fueled this sort of mind-numbing creativity in me. My job isn't a job that I leave when I clock out, it's become a mentality that has absorbed me and I tumble and reel in it every day. I never thought teaching was a mentality but it has become my state of mind. I am a teacher. I am a teacher. And that's how I think, like a teacher.

Some days, when it's really bad...I'll turn on Britt Nicole's "Have Your Way" and put it on repeat. I play it over and over again until I can say this prayer in my own words.

So I'll stop searching for the answers,

I'll stop praying for an escape,

I'll trust you God with where I am,

and believe you will have your way,

Just have your way.