time for a change

Totally want to start a new blog about new things that are happening. Out with the old, in with the new. If you want me to send you the link once it's started, email me :  kathryn.tyser@gmail.com

Yeah, that.

Isn't it great when someone consistently reminds you of why you left them in the first place? I love having no regrets. But really....why must some people be so full of hate and ugliness?  It makes me almost wish bad things for them and takes a whole lot of restraint.  Let them live with their own misery is where I end up, but still.  So much anger right now that I need to put somewhere.  I just thank God every day that I am no longer married to someone who has no respect for me and treats me like a child. Some people and their idea of 'love' really is sad.  I have to believe there is a special place for those who wear such deceiving masks and lie even to themselves.

So far...

Things are going well at my elementary school.  My room is all ready for my little darlings, though they won't spend much time in there.  I am super excited about being in a school where I will be able to practice Spanish as much as humanly possible and a place full of such caring people.  I'm lucky to have gotten the mentor that I did and I can't express enough how grateful I am to my Vice Principal and the ESOL secretary in PG for giving me the lucky break I needed.  My only goals are to not let them down this year and have a great time doing it.  This is the culmination of everything I have been working towards since 2008 and everything I've sacrificed to get it.  Although school doesn't officially start until Monday, it was worth every hour of anxiety, fear, tears and frustration.

Other things are going fine too.  It is just a matter of deciding about where I am and where I want to go.  I promised myself when I left Spain that I wouldn't allow that experience to make me jaded and untrusting which is a daily effort.  There are times when it doesn't cross my mind for days.  Other days he is right at the forefront and right behind my distrust of everyone around me.  The slow fading is what I'm hoping for. Like the scar that it is.

J.O.B.

Yay! Officially employed as of today.  I will ignore the fact that in order to qualify for official certification for MD I have to take credits and courses that seem silly.  Instead I will be happy that they gave me a chance in PG and excited/nervous about the weeks to come.

I don't know who it is that listens, but I feel like my prayer was answered.  Now, to tackle all of their requirements during the next year- I feel up to it.

Holy Horoscope Batman!

"And if nothing is repeated in the same way," says poet Antonio Porchia, "all things are last things." That's a good principle to adapt for your own purposes, Virgo. A few weeks from now, I bet you'll be enmeshed in an orgy of novelty, creating yourself from scratch and exploring experiences you've never heard of before. But in the meantime, as you bring this cycle to a close, be equally inventive about how you finish things off. Don't imitate the approach you used in tying up loose ends in the past. Don't put stale, boring karma to rest in stale, boring ways. Nothing repeated! All things last things! 

Before I begin, a disclaimer...I do not subscribe to all that astrology claims to know. I'm simply amused by Rob Brezsny.

Which cycle? That is my question.  Is this referring to the end of my current job?  If that is the case, then I think I get it.  I should put stale, boring karma to rest and as my new vice principal says 'be a rebel.' The message is coming at me from all different angles lately.  So I think I have decided that instead of letting someone who has made me feel uncomfortable at work and seems to enjoy making my life difficult when I need flexibility and pushing me into corners (for a part time job that offers no benefits, mind you) that I'm going to do what makes me happy and not necessarily what the right thing is to do.  Probably not wise to lay it all out here, but instead of taking the high road and having an uncomfortable confrontation, I'm just going to avoid it. I feel terrible about it already though because I have really grown attached to a couple of the kids I work with.  Such is life I guess.

Or perhaps it is referring to the stale cycle of the last two years of my life.  I am SO ready for that to come to an end too.  I am doing everything different this time- so all things really can be last things.  If that would be the last time that I ever was so stupid, that would be excellent too.

Next week marks the beginning (at least in regards to work) of my life back here in the States that I've been waiting for since March.  I knew it would come eventually, but I'm so grateful that it's here and now.  Other things have been going pretty well since then and  it finally seems as if the light at the end of the tunnel is now the sun in the sky.

House of No

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
Khalil Gibran

Totally true.  As much as I'd like to think that it isn't, hindsight gives us the humbling knowledge that we love the things that hate us and we often choose the things that cause us pain.  Sometimes we even create them.  I am trying my very best not to self-sabotage lately and I have had some success, but I surely have my moments.

Trust is no longer my strong suit, even though in the past I was trusting to a fault.  Stupid, even.  But having had the experience one too many times of ignoring my gut and letting those experiences unfold (and later seeing my hand in it) it is difficult to even trust myself.  But there has been progress- that word again.

I never boast about myself, but I have to say that I'm a little proud these days.  I have gotten so much better at dealing with disappointment at this point in my life and I'm often astounded at how little I even recognize myself.  Years ago if I had found out that what I had been working towards for months, perhaps even years, was just taken off the table entirely I would have fallen apart at the seams- I have no doubt.  If I had gotten the news that the two surgeries I've had already were useless in solving the problem I would have crumbled.

But this time around is different.  When I found out that I most likely won't get my teaching certification because of my 'experience' in Spain I really only wasted an hour or two being a bitter, hysterical and sophomoric disaster.  And then I moved on and started to figure out a Plan B with a quickness.  One of the possibilities may even have worked out, but I don't want to jinx it. A lovely school in PG County decided that I was worth the risk and they want to give me a chance.  Now it's just up to the board and HR to get it going without any bumps in the road, hopefully.

I am not anywhere close to where I had hoped to be at this point, but I'm trying to have patience with myself.  In only a few months (which is really nothing in Old People Time) I have turned things around quite a bit and managed not to go off the deep end.  I even managed to do better than that!  I can actually say that most of the time I am happy now, regardless of the mess that my life sometimes is...still.

What I am hopeful of is that 35 will be different.  I am slightly older and definitely a little wiser than I was at 30.  I no longer wish for fairy tales or miracles, but instead choose to recognize the small graces that I am given.  I can accept the challenge when things don't go my way instead of moping and counting up all the other times things were not in my favor.  There is always a chance to make a choice to get upset in the face of NO and let it drive your life to places you'd rather not go. Personally, I think I've done pretty well taking the wheel instead and not letting it take over anymore.

I'm upset about some other things going on (e.g. my creepy supervisor who reminds me so much of my old creepy boss and his gross comments, my expectations of others not being met, etc.).  In addition, addiction has reared its ugly head in my family again, only this time it isn't me.  It's heartbreaking to watch it stretch us all to the limit, including the one with the problem.  Maybe prayers are only answered sometimes, but I'm hoping they are not all falling on deaf ears.  Lord only knows someone gave me a big break the other day which only tells me that I must have made the right decisions in the not so recent past.  Sometimes the only thing that I can do is put the left in front of the right and just hope for the best.  As for the rest, I'll just take it as it comes.  None of us are perfect, least of all me.  Like the sign I saw while driving home the other day:  When looking for faults use a mirror, not a telescope.

progress

In part, the actual definition of the word is movement towards a destination.  I guess I am making some kinds of progress in that sense, but everything seems to take forever and I have no patience left.  It's been about 4 months since I left Spain and in some ways things could not be more different.  Other things seem frozen and that frustrates me.  I'm still waiting on my pending certification to teach here next Fall, but I do have part-time work which is something I guess.  I really enjoy the job and sometimes think I get more out of it than my students.  Hopefully within a week or two I will have some word on whether or not they are going to give me the certificate in Maryland and I'll be through the last test for D.C.  One of the two has to work out, right?  At least that is what I keep telling myself. Today I had to send the Board more information so they are reviewing it and right now that's all I can wish for.

The things that stress me the most lately are money and the fear that history has even a snowball's chance in hell of repeating itself. The money aspect because I only have so long before it runs out without a full time source of income and I'm always worried about that anyway- call it a Virgo obsession or just plain paranoid.  When you've fallen enough times you learn to respect the pavement, you know?  History repeating itself...well that doesn't require a whole lot of an explanation.  To think that my judgement about a person, place, or thing could ever again be quite as off as it has been in the last two years is a terrifying thought. Terr.I.fying.  Will I allow the fear of being wrong again stunt me and anything green that might come? That, I guess, is the question. For the sake of someone in particular, I hope not. There are moments that I am sure of myself and then in a moment it can all blow away remembering where I have been and how I got there.

Family has required a lot of attention lately and I feel myself being pulled in so many directions.  Regardless of whether the problems are mine, I have a sense of responsibility that I can't shake and that stings more than I'd like it to lately.  Parts of me are still raw...that I know.  It leads me to react to kindness with something harsh sometimes...as if I can't believe in its sincerity. I hope that feeling takes a vacation really soon...it isn't fair to those around me and I don't want to be that person.  It's fine if I lost material things when I came back from Spain, but I don't want to lose the goodness that was there before.

I guess things are mostly fine, for now.  I feel like my friends are either distant or gone and this divorce has really been something that I've had to do alone which is probably best in the end.  The kids I work with give me a purpose and the hope for the future keeps me going.  Sure, there are still the petty small problems of putting life back together here after being gone for so long, but it's getting closer and closer to normal.

My iPod fried itself once again which has forced me to use my computer as a source of music.  Today this is making me kind of happy:



Oh. and this.