Dreaming Paris

People want to come to the U.S. I think that’s cool. I do wonder why they can’t do it legally, though. Are our immigration laws really that tough? If so, why? If not, why so many illegals?

Anyway, Deck Deckert writes this over on his blog:

I’ve gotten several anti-immigration e-mails lately from friends, both right and left — excuse me, anti-’illegal’ immigration. Sometimes I sigh and let them go unanswered; sometimes I tell them:

We are a nation of immigrants. We first stole the country from the Native Americans who were here before us. Now we want to shut the door and tell no one else they can come in, not even the Mexicans that we stole Texas from.

Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

It does bother me, though, when they don’t learn English, and then businesses limit who they hire based on whether or not you’re bilingual. I think that’s wrong. Why am I discriminated against for a job because I can’t speak Spanish? On the other hand, I don’t have a problem with mom and pop businesses that cater specifically to a particular language speaking clientele, a place where you know that if you go there, you might be the odd one out. It adds to the diversity of the city and provides cultural oases, places where you can experience the richness of another culture. But when it comes to the mainstream stores, hello? This is America, we speak American, and if you want to live here, but don’t want to learn American, why should we bend over for you?

I know that things change. I know that languages move from one area to another as people migrate, but that was back when borders were more likely to be fluid as well, when people were still trying to conquer each other. I know that there are still people in power who would like to do some conquering, but in general, that’s a no-no in today’s world. Our boundaries are fairly well set, and we’ve decided what languages go where.

But then my mind throws up countries like Switzerland and Belgium, or the province of Quebec in Canada. So maybe places like Florida, California, Texas, etc. will just have to suck it up and give in to the inevitable and become like those places where two or more languages flow interchangeably, which is what’s obviously happening anyway. But I don’t like it. I’m American. I speak American. I live in America. I don’t want to learn Spanish, I want to learn French. Why should I have to learn Spanish to work in my own country?

I guess that’s what I get for choosing to live in Florida, eh?

I mentioned in my last post that today was my last day with a really great group of students. The dynamics of the class made it a lot of fun. One of the things that I like most about this course is that it allows the students to get to know each other, and in the case of this class, that was a pretty cool sight to see. I watched students gravitate to one another and to complement each other, where one student was weak, the other was strong and vice versa when they worked in groups or pairs. The gregarious would take the shy under their wings, and they would both shine when they had to present, each offering what they were good at to the project.

The final presentation is my own creation. This course follows a pretty straightforward curriculum and includes a lot of material pre-created for you until you get on your feet, but I knew from the beginning that I couldn’t go without making the class do some kind of visual presentation, which I have since incorporated in every class since (I’ve also chucked a lot of material and added my own). I decided to have them pick out 5 things that they learned in class that benefitted them, and to create a visual of them. Then they would have to explain the visual to the class. This gives the students a chance to articulate just exactly what they accomplished in the course. The practical value of this for me as a teacher is that the class ends up getting a great review of the material without me lifting a finger. But it’s also very rewarding for me because I find out what the students were thinking when we covered the material, where their thoughts and actions took them because of it.

Today I discovered that one of the students had planned to become an elementary school teacher, but because of the many tests, surveys, and discussions we had about what we’re really good at and the things we enjoy, he realized that what he really wanted to be was an EMT. Two of my students said they had been C students before taking this class, but because they began to put into practice the techniques they learned on taking notes and reading, but most especially because I stressed to them how much easier studying would be if they took it in small chunks every day, continually reviewing the material, so that by the time the test came, they’d already have the material in their memories so the major study time could be radically cut and they could be more confident going into the tests…deep breath…they were now A students.

They also made me laugh, many times over, because most of them were comfortable up there, and comfortable with the audience, and there was some good give and take and some real insight coming from these young people as they looked beyond where they were to where they wanted to be and what they wanted to do. I had one young lady who seemed to be going through a difficult time this semester, and you could tell she was having a hard time caring about school, yet she cared enough to at least want to pass, and when she got up, she admitted that she wasn’t very good at critical thinking, that she was a “biased jumper”, one of the types of critical thinkers we discussed. She said she didn’t think she could change it right now, that’s just the way she was, but maybe one day, when she got older, she could change. Hey! The fact that she could be honest with herself, that she actually understood something about her thinking and how it didn’t serve her very well, was critical thinking in the early stages, yes?!

I watched and listened to these precious, precious people; the young military man who would never have to work because he was injured while serving, earned a purple heart, and was financially supported, but wanted to go to school and learn and be a good role model to his child; the young woman in her 30’s, coming back to school while battling cancer; the older woman changing careers midstream; the young man who was in a car accident and suffered brain damage, causing him to have to work so much harder than his peers to keep up, yet having the grit to do it and succeed.

It’s when I have days like this that I do love teaching. But really, it isn’t so much the teaching as it is being allowed to be a part of these people’s lives. They let me in. They let their classmates in. And they were truly inspiring today, not just with their words, but with their actions as even the shy ones took their place at the front and confronted their fear of being there.

You know what always tugs at my heart? The young men with children. Because this is a class where students have to review their lives, their beliefs, and their desires, I end up reading some pretty personal stuff. They don’t have to be quite so personal, and some of them aren’t, but some of them are, and it’s always very precious to me when these young dads write so tenderly and lovingly about their children and what they want for them. The women do it, too, and it’s probably very wrong of me, but I expect that of women, I’m used to it. I’m not so used to hearing such caring from men, even though I know men care as deeply as mothers about their kids. But they usually show it in ways other than tender words.

Anyway, I’m going to miss this class, but we took group pictures, so I’ll be able to remember them. And they have my number if they ever need anything. Maybe I’ll hear from one of them one day when they become successful, not necessarily financially, but in ways that bring them satisfaction and fulfillment.

At the age of 19 my daughter finally has a serious boyfriend who actually lives closer than the other side of the continent or the world. In fact, he even lives in Florida. Still two hours away, though. Dad says that’s good.

It’s very strange to be experiencing what most parents probably experience with their teenage daughters from the age of 13-15 on, the hours and hours of talking on the phone to a boyfriend. It does my heart good, though, to see her so happy.

Okay, so to those of you reading, this may look like I’m having an identity crisis, or midlife crisis, or something, but I think it’s actually the culmination of a decade long midlife/identity crisis. I’ve written about some of this stuff before, and it’s no secret that I’ve been tugged in the past to make more of an effort to develop my artistic side. It’s because of this inner struggle that I first joined MW, so some of you have been along for the ride the whole time. As a result, you’ve seen me change in some ways, stay the same in others, and you’ve probably read some of the same whines over and over. Bless you!

So I come home today from a strained tutoring session in which my student tries to gleefully upset me by telling me what his dad and grandmother thought of me calling and cancelling our session yesterday and asking to change it to tomorrow (I have been experiencing some serious tennis elbow and lack of sleep, which only aggravated the elbow worse to the point that sleeplessness and pain killers were making it impossible for me to keep my eyes open yesterday, so not only did I cancel my tutoring, I cut short my class). Anyway, whatever dad and grandma thought, I didn’t understand because neither did the kid. It had something to do with resting and money, but made no sense. All I knew for sure is that the kid understood that dad and grandma weren’t happy with me, and he relished the telling of it. Oh, well.

So I get home feeling out of sorts, which is sad because when I left my class today, I was feeling great. In spite of my elbow, it was my last class with that group, and they were my favorite group. They gave their visual presentations today, and I was blown away by the excellence of their work! It restored my faith in students wanting to do well, and it also boosted my flagging ego because they said such nice things to me. It had been a wonderful class, and I’ll miss the dynamics of it. ANYWAY, as I was saying, I get home feeling out of sorts, which happens a lot at the end of tutoring this kid, and all of a sudden the thought comes to me I really hate being on display. And that’s when it hits me! There’s my problem. It’s not just needing new challenges, it’s the daily necessity of being on, of trying not to do things that might reflect badly on you, always being conscious of what others could be thinking about you, especially if you misstep, the every day, day after day necessity of being with people. I am a true introvert. I love people, but they drain the life out of me. I was not made to be social on a daily basis. I do not get energized the more I’m with people like some do. I MUST get away. I have to have down time so that I can recharge. I literally wilt after being with people for an extended period of time.

So that just gives me one more reason why I must arrange my career to suit the person that I am. You know, having to lead college students into discovering what they want out of life and creating plans to manage how to get there has probably had a drastic effect on me right now, as well. Here’s some advice for anyone who might end up where I am, don’t teach a College Success course when you’re in the middle of a midlife crisis. Then again, maybe it’s the best thing to do. There you are, standing in front of 20 or more young people telling them to verbalize who they are and what they want, and encouraging them to follow that inner leading, while knowing you haven’t done the same.

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird? - Pablo Picasso

Okay, so I’ve been thinking, my entire approach to this job thing has been all wrong, and I’ve known it for years. I know what I like, I know what I want, and I’ve been dabbling in it on and off since forever, and it wasn’t until I took the plunge with tutoring that I finally put it all on the line to have my own business, but the problem was, it was the wrong business. I’m tired of tutoring. I don’t mind doing it here or there for some extra money, but not as a regular business. I don’t care if that’s what I ended up knowing so much about, the fact is, I used my tutoring job to learn other skills, creative skills, skills that made me happy, and now it’s time for me to follow my heart totally. It’s the only thing that’s going to work for me.

Instead of sitting around day after day looking through ads and applying for jobs that I’ll never get, and wouldn’t like even if I did, playing at life the way the rest of the world does it, yet actually just wasting my time working cruddy jobs while waiting around for that perfect job to come along and throwing away what precious time I have left on this planet, I am going to use that energy to pursue what I want, never mind if I make any money at it. It’s when you pursue what you’re meant to pursue that things fall into place, and let’s face it, nothing has ever really fallen into place for me while I’ve attempted to “do the right thing,” which was never, and could never, be the right thing for me. I’ve fallen into a couple of good opportunities when I needed them, which seems to be the way life works, at least for me (rarely do I ever get what I really go after when I’ve been all about the financial aspect of things), and I’ve used them to my advantage, but they were temporary detours on what should have been a more straight forward path if I weren’t such a wimp.

Okay, so I’m a late bloomer, a little dim on the uptake, but by golly I’m going to pursue my artistic talents. Remember when I was posting those drawings and paintings for awhile? I was so happy then. I loved going to the figure drawing class. I loved spending time mixing my colors and experimenting. I simply CANNOT continue my life as I have been. I just CANNOT. I have a good side gig going with teaching and tutoring, which leaves me with time to work at my art. I have a studio now, one I haven’t even used as a studio since it was put up. It’s been my study while going to school, and then my office while developing the tutoring business. It’s time to turn it into what it was meant to be, dadgummit! An artist’s studio. But what am I going to do with my desk now? Ha! I know exactly what I can do. Oh, yes, this is going to work.

You see, over the years I have gathered together supplies that will keep me going for months, so there won’t be much outlay in replacement materials for a little while, at least. No real overhead. I have canvases, paints, brushes, drawing pencils of all kinds. I also have art and graphic software. And I’ve kept up my AJArtworks business license. So this is very, very doable.

But what about your bills, you say? Well, the creditors are willing to work with me to make payments affordable until I’m making more money. They have to be these days if they want any of their money back. This might actually be a pretty good time for me to pursue this, when the credit people are willing to be somewhat lenient. And don’t they say, “Do what you love and the money will come?” Well, it never has come for me while doing things I didn’t really love, just liked or tolerated fairly well, so what do I really have to lose?

But what about the economy? Art isn’t something people are likely to want to spend money on right now. True. And yet, my daughter just attended a 3 day anime convention at which people threw their money away on things that they loved, so if I just create things that people can love, it could work. It will take some doing, but I don’t mind that, not when in pursuit of a new project and doing something that brings me joy.

But what about your husband, you say, and having to work full-time while going to school? Well, nothing was different when he was first offered this opportunity, and it didn’t look any more doable then than it does now, but he’s going with it. It will work because that’s what he wants, and it’s his time. If it means my daughter and I don’t see him for the next 2 years because he’s working and going to school, well, that’s what it means, and he’ll have to do what he needs to do to succeed. Between the two of us, my daughter and I can keep him fed and clothed in clean clothes. We can share the duties of the house, and if it means sometimes the house is a bit…disorganized, well, what else is new? I lived like that for years while rearing children. Still live like that when C and I are both having bad days. But the bad days would be considerably less on my part if I didn’t have unhappy things to dwell upon because I’d be too busy doing things that make me happy, yes?

Eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, I will be successful as a painter of pictures, a mural artist, whatever, with my educational sidelines to fill in any gaps if necessary, and my husband will be able to quit work and be a full-time student. Should I give myself a time limit, though? What if I’m right here in the same place a year from now, getting further and further behind the financial curve? That would be very, very bad. You see, it’s those kinds of thoughts that make me not do what my heart tells me to do, and then I make very bad decisions, like settling for jobs that pay crap and don’t allow me to fulfill my potential, which just leads me right back here to this very same place of soul-searching and unhappiness.

You know they say you need an education to get anywhere today, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get anywhere, especially since degrees now are a dime a dozen. All I can say is that the best my degrees have given me is a slight increase in pay from clerking and food service work, but not much. My son, the pizza delivery driver, was making almost as much as I was as a supervisor (okay, I also had insurance, which is a biggie, but still). On my own, I didn’t even make a living wage. So why should I work so hard doing something I only like sometimes for pittance, when I can do something I love for pittance…and maybe, because I love it and infuse it with my passion for it, more than pittance?

Okay. I’m really scared about this, you know. And it feels as though I’m sacrificing my family for myself yet again, and if I bomb, I’ve only made yet another bad decision. But I can’t back down now. I’m here. I know what I want to do. I want to succeed. I have everything that I need, including time, which used to be my excuse for not pursuing it before. I was too busy making a living and too pooped when I came home to do more. If not now, when?

How could you reach the pearl by only looking at the sea? If you seek the pearl, be a diver: the diver needs several qualities: he must trust his rope and his life to the Friend’s hand, he must stop breathing, and he must jump. - Jelalludin Rumi

How awesome! My husband called a friend who knows about air conditioning. Turns out the capacitor blew because of the frequent electrical outages we experience in this neck of the woods, and lo and behold, the friend had a replacement that he gave us for free. Air conditioning back online.

YAY!

Well, my studio air conditioner is running again, though who knows for how long, but now our house air conditioner has quit. It’s actually a heat pump air conditioner, and my husband thinks the motor may have frozen but that turning it off and turning it back on again later might do the trick. We’ll see. I hope it will come back on because we won’t be able to fix it. It’s only 4 years old. My dad replaced the one that came with the house for us.

This is just not happening. Not now.

I’m terrible at it. I seem to make the wrong ones. I think they’re good at the time because they’re practical, they make sense, and for anyone else, they WOULD be good decisions. Problem is, I am not, at heart, a practical person. Well, no, I guess that’s not true. How should I describe what I’m like? I like to be practical in the sense that I’m good at coming up with solutions when things are broken around the house, or I’m trying to make physical things work. I have a great deal of common sense in anything that has to do with my hands, making things, that sort of thing. But when it comes to making decisions about living, I follow my heart, even after I’ve taken all the steps to be a practical person and do things that ought to make me a success in my chosen career-education.

But I’m just not happy with those decisions over the long haul. I always find a new challenge exciting and exhilarating, and I’ll love whatever my job is when it’s new, because I’m having to test myself and come up with ways to make what I’m doing better. I love doing that. But eventually I reach a point of saturation, a point where I feel, “Okay, I know how to do this, and I know I can do it well, what’s next?”

This is a HORRIBLE way to feel when you have to pay for a daughter who needs health care (not to mention myself now that I’m getting older and more creaky) and a lifetime of student loans because you end up very unhappy. I just don’t have what it takes to stick it out after a certain point. My job as tutoring center supervisor lasted two months shy of 8 years, the longest I’ve held any job, and the only reason it did is because my crew kept changing, so I was meeting these wonderful people from all over the world, and I kept developing creative challenges for myself in order to build my skills in multimedia, but eventually I was simply bored out of my mind silly with tutoring.

I am now on the Board of Directors for the National Tutoring Association. It’s an organization that I believe in, and I feel honored to have been chosen. It also looks good on my resume. But I’m tired of tutoring, folks. I accepted being on the board because it was the practical thing to do to continue to advance in the field of education, and I was flattered. I like the sound of it, “I’m on the Board of Directors, blah, blah, blah.” As long as I’m on it, I’ll do what’s necessary, and I’ll continue to create things and be a presenter at the conventions, etc., but frankly I resent any of the time it takes away from other things that are in my heart to do. I say I want to revise the book I wrote, and I know how to make it better, but I keep putting it off and putting it off because…I ALREADY DID IT! I’ve written TWO tutoring books (and I actually like the first one I wrote for my center better) and to do it again is a waste of my time (or so my heart says). I’ve proven I can do it. I’ve learned what goes into it. I have no desire to be a tutoring expert and write book after book on the subject, I just had fun testing myself. Capice?

I know now that the reason I entered education is because it was safe. I’m a shy person at heart, someone who has to exert herself and push through barriers to connect with the world. You know why I do it? Because I love people and hate being afraid. But I’m afraid. I was never afraid in school. I excelled in school. It was my comfort zone. It continues to be my comfort zone. But I’m not happy staying there!

Yes, right now I love teaching. Every 2-4 months I experience a completely new class, and right now, I’m still in the tweaking phase, I’m still creating new ways to do what I do. But going into my fourth class of teaching the same subject, I’m feeling those pangs of boredom again. I’ve proven to myself I can do it, and I can do it well.

I will always love getting up in front of people in order to help them learn something new. Teaching is in me. That’s weird when you consider my shyness, but I guess it’s because I’ve been given permission to lead. It’s an agreement between me and the audience, and as long as I’m in that role, it’s okay. It was the same when I was in plays in school. As long as the role was defined, I was okay. But please don’t make me push myself forward on behalf of myself. I suck at it. I really do. It was a real effort to develop my online tutoring business, but because I put myself into a role that others accepted, I was able to do  it, though I’m sure I could have done it better had I been someone other than me. Money was a factor in closing down, but it was also that part of me that was tired of tutoring and relieved that I had an excuse to close it down. Anyway, I was saying that teaching is in me, but just as everything else I do, I can’t do these things over the long haul. I need breaks, I need times of doing something totally new and different, and then, if I come back to teaching, if it’s a new topic, I’ll love it again.

Do you know what I never tire of? Planning things out and working with my hands. But even there, I always need a new project to do. I’ve done all kinds of artsy, craftsy things over my lifetime, but once I learned how to do it well enough to understand what went into it, I moved on to something else. I can crochet, knit, sew, decorate cakes, cane chairs, build/repair small pieces of furniture, paint walls decoratively, throw pots on a wheel, do ceramics, fill a home with decorative touches, and so on, but always, I’ve moved on to something else.

Sewing is a chore for me now unless I were to come across a beatiful piece of fabric that moved my imagination to find the perfect pattern to create a new dress for myself, but I’m so fat I wouldn’t enjoy it. I look at my walls and think I want some brighter, happier colors in the house, but the thought of painting them makes me tired. I don’t have small children to make fun birthday cakes for any more. I do love the thought of getting out and working in my yard except that it’s just too, too hot. I wilt after ten minutes when I try and get horrible, blinding headaches. None of this is here nor there, what I’m leading up to is the fact that something I never get tired of doing, maybe because the subject matter always changes, is drawing and painting, yet those two things are always left to last to do because my practical side tells me I should be doing all those other practical things that ought to be bringing a decent living wage into our coffers, even though they’re not and never have because I just don’t have the drive and follow through to climb the ladder of an educational career. I’ll think about moving forward and maybe eventually becoming a dean or even a campus president because that’s the way my mind works. I do like challenges, I do like testing myself. But I know that once I got there and could say, “I did it!” I’d be ready to quit. I’d actually hate the day to day of those kinds of jobs because it doesn’t feed my soul the way art does.

See, we’re back to the way I’m led by my heart, even when I try so hard to be practical. It’s my heart that doesn’t allow me to remain content in any job I’ve had. It’s my heart that pulls at me with such force that even when I determine to keep on keeping on for the sake of the people I love in my life, I end up falling on my face. I wish that I could be someone who could find peace and contentment in the knowledge that I’m taking care of my loved ones, making life good for them, but I’m not. I’m selfish. I need what I need, and when I don’t get it, I’m a mess. A wreck of a human being. And here I am, 50 years old and $50.000 in debt with student loans, not to mention a whole lot of other debt, and I’m contemplating spending the rest of my life in the field of education with horror (now that I’ve once again come against that wall of boredom when I thought that perhaps this time, finally, I’d found something I could continue to love), wondering what on earth I’ve done to myself, and by extension my family, by deciding to do something that sounded practical at the time.

Lifehacker had an article about websites that help you to make decisions, and I decided to try one of them just for fun. Heh. Like I didn’t already know the result of the query before I asked it, namely, which career path should I choose, art or education? Anyway, the site is Let Simon Decide, and here are the final screenshots.

Or rather, since I’m not an MWer any more, a get together of all my connected peeps. So I need to win the lottery so that I can plan out the best bash ever and then buy airplane tickets for every one to come. Paris anyone?

*wrevel - a revel for writers, word coined in the newsgroup Misc.Writing

From yesterday (I forgot to change the date, which is why I’m posting it today)

Je rêve de vivre à Paris un jour.

This should be my blog’s tagline.
(I dream of living in Paris one day.)