Sunday, September 22, 2013

September has come and almost gone.

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post and things have been interesting to say the least.

I feel a little lost and for the first time in my life  a little confused about what I want to do for the future.

Here's what I know as of right now.
- I have a great family and people who are willing to care about me and help me even when I am a jerk.
- I have a great little boy.
- I am relatively intelligent and can adapt to most situations.

Here's what I lost or forgot how to do.
- I used to be the funnest guy in the room. I laughed, I made others laugh, and people wanted to be around me.
- I forgot how to envision my future and know how to plan and get where I want to be.
- What I want to do professionally.

A year ago I was running around crazy and completely overwhelmed about working out my life around my typical shcedule and fixing the financial mistakes I had made while I was married. The main idea was to making life fit around the thing I wanted to do professionally and fit in life when I could arrange it. I wanted to be a good father and I really tried ,and still try, to be a good father. I was making it fit though instead of it being the priority.

Now all the things that were comfortable are gone. My life is completely about figuring out how to start over both professionally and personally and I am spinning around in circles to figure it out.  

One thing I now know thanks to a god shaking is that feeling sorry for myself and looking backward won't make things happen.

 I am figuring out now that I want to fit my job into my life instead of the other way around. For the first time I am completely ok with leaving band behind to have a life. That is a new and scary place for me.

I also know that I love teaching but, as it stands now, teaching has little to do with education. It has become this bargaining chip for unions and politicians. As evidence, in all the news stories about education how many times does the question, What is the best decision to help the students, come into play? I know it's bad punctuation and a run on sentence. I teach music back off.

Not teachers, or posturing to constituents, but helping kids have better lives. That's why we do it or, at least it used to be.

So, I have concluded that I don't know much, but I know I love you, and that may be all I need to know.

Thanks for listening and thanks for not judging my little thoughts on pixels.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Labor Day Weekend

It has been a good couple of weeks. There have been struggles to be sure and some things still need to be worked out but, over all I think things are good. 

My new job is very different than anything I have ever done and is challenging me in ways I would have never thought. I am not used to the ages of kids I am working with or the demographics.  Also in the past I have been involved in creating goals for both progress and the building of skills in a progression to create a program. 

This job is way more general music based and is supposed to be just to introduce kids to things and not to create any fluidity in the program. This is a hard change for me because the kids have no interest in excellence. They just want to do fun things and bang on drums. However an hour and a half of banging on drums makes things really hard to find things to do. 

I will figure it out but, it's going to take a minute. 

However, I do get home in time to take my son to do things, I am going to some concerts, went camping with him for the first time, I haven't missed an event at his school, and have still had the time to join the YMCA and start exercising. 

Another job thing, I don't take it home, obsess, or feel pressure to equate myself with my job. 

I am struggling with some things in this new life but,  I am going to make the best of things and live my life not live my job.