Of Mishaps, Accidents, and Change

I have not had very good days lately. Yesterday, I was sent home from work because my craziness got me all antsy and sickly. Today, in an attempt to clean the apartment for the impending Super Bowl festivities tomorrow, I managed to do the following:

1.       Spill an entire bottle of perfume on the bathroom floor
2. Break the bucket used to hold the mopping solution
3. Proceed to get water all over the carpet and bathroom floor
4. Break off the top of the bath towel chest dropping everything that was on top of it on the wet bathroom floor
5. Slip on water and almost fall

I still have to wash dishes (I did manage to break a glass while doing dishes), get a haircut, and get my mail from the post office*. So much room for more accidents.

THEN, there was the botched project at work. I totally ruined this event we were planning because I was dilly dallying around. I really hope I can find a new work home for next year. I’m so done being a headless chicken. People say it’s me because I do like to work and be useful and make people happy, but I have had jobs that I’ve done all of the above and still had time to come home and cook dinner and exercise and spend time with people I love. I try to rationalize all the work that I do by saying, “It’s for the kids.” Because when you think about it, it does come down to being about the kids, but I can’t save the world. I have this mentality that believes that even if I don’t teach all those kids, I can touch their lives by educating their teachers. But I can’t because some of their teachers are headstrong or have better ideas or just don’t care, and I don’t have the power to change that. Maybe I will finally get the picture.

*There was a furnace explosion near the office at our complex. The explosion burned down two apartments, our mail center, and the office. Had I mentioned this before?

No. 44

Oh my God, it is really, really true. I cannot even put into words the immense, overwhelming, absolutely wondrous feeling in my heart.

We Must Be the Change We Wish to See in the World...

I saw that quote a couple weeks ago on a cup at the Barnes and Noble café. I’m not much of a quote person. I get too curious about what else it says and if it was taken out of context or what.

But that Gandhi quote really resonated with me.

All around, people keep squawking about change and things are actually changing. You could hear the earth rumbling last year and then it picked up speed at the end of ‘08. At times it seems like they’re coming so hard and fast, they might crush a few of us against the wall.

It’s a little daunting to think of what is to come. Normally, I’m the kind of person that enjoys change, but I don’t know what it is that has me freaking out. Perhaps it’s the uncertainty of it all. The fear of falling face first on the ground. I know all of these things are normal, but I hate feeling them. I want that hopeless optimism to kick in already, and at the same time, I know it probably won’t until I make peace with all of this change.

And really, what I put in is what I will get out of this whole experience enter the Gandhi quote. Overall, I think 2009 will bring more of the good stuff and less of the crap that 2008 spewed out at the end. If anything, The Bush will be out of office; so it really can’t be that bad.

When my butt starts scraping the dirt, the Gandhi quote will be my mantra. 

No New Year's Resolution Here

So it’s a New Year. 2009. I will be 29 later this year. I will have completed my fourth year teaching and start on my fifth. I’ll be eight years into a relationship. I will be one year away from thirty.

Someone asked me what my New Year’s resolution is this year and when I said, “Nothing.” They were shocked. They could not believe that I wasn’t setting a resolution.

When I was taking a writing class a couple semesters ago, our teacher said that he was always interested in writing a story that took place on New Year’s Day. He tried to explain why, but I had one of my J.D. moments where I get lost in thought. I knew exactly what he was talking about. How people think that this year will be the answer to all of their prayers. This year will be the year that they decide to change their lives for the better by not smoking or eating or spending so much time at work or spending less time in front of the TV and more time at the gym.

So many people write against New Year’s resolutions. Then there are those that set their lives to them. I fall in between, I guess. If I really think about it, I have fresh starts so many times a year. There is the end of the school year, my birthday, the start of a new school year, the start of a new semester, and then all of those moments during the year that I decide I should change things or the universe thinks I should.

I’m avoiding the resolutions this year, not because there aren’t things that I want to change in my life, but rather because when they come about, I don’t want to have to wait until January 1^st to do it. In the past, when I’ve made life-altering changes, the date had nothing to do with it. I want to get away from this idea that it must be done at a certain time.