I was hoping at the beginning of the current semester to find the time to regularly collect my thoughts, enjoy my LEGOs, play my guitars, organize my photos, and make these blog posts. Yeah, that hasn’t happened. Hell, I’ve barely kept up just listening the podcasts that are part of my means of staying informed. I took a day “off” last Friday so that I could ensure getting my progress reports out in time, caught up with this week’s grade and plotted out the general curriculum for two of my six classes. I’m still cranking out ideas on a day-to-day basis for the other four classes. I just can’t seem to really get ahead of things. 

I’m over midway through my second year at this school. Not feeling like I can get ahead of the load would be a strong incentive for me to consider a job change. But then the effort to determine where to go next (and what to do) only drains what little time and energy that is already in short supply. I’ve spent far too many days watching the clock move across the day, with the realization that I do not have an endless supply of days to let slip away in this fashion, to feel good about just riding out this school year. Hell, this is my 27th year working the teaching game. Why do I feel like such a f-ing rookie? 

My non-confrontational, “let’s do this for the fun,” is too easily miss-read as “feel free to ignore my instructions and roll right over me.” One of the worse classes that I happily ended in December, students from that class come me and ask if I miss them because they say that they miss me and that their current class is “boring.” Right. It didn’t have to painful, but after nineteen weeks of hell I was glad to see that group go. And now they want to be in one my classes again. Yeah, you had your chance. That would be another incentive to move on.

I love the content creation and finding interesting ways to share it. But the rest is hard to justify. Yeah, “‘There’s got to be some way out’a here,’ said the joker to the thief.”