39: life update

Neglectful, neglectful, neglectful.

So you know how this blog is supposed to center around online dating? Well, it might have to veer off because my life right now is revolving around preparing for the new school year.

Last year at this time I had just finished my first year teaching in a (Christian) school and was eagerly planning improvements for the next year.

I took a 6 week online grad class on classroom management. I went to a homeschool educational swap and bought up loads of children's books. I discovered Pinterest! And I broke down each subject by month and brainstormed field trips and activities.

Enter July 16.

I was told they couldn't afford to hire me back.

I wrote in my journal,

Losing a job is a lot like breaking up with a boyfriend. You know you are where you're supposed to be (God knows), but you are still emotionally at sea, unsure of the future. We went to Costco afterwards. Found the perfect stepladder for my class for $20. Saw how much vacuums cost. Didn't look at the supplementary school books display.

Thousands of minutes spent preparing for next year. . . .

Lord, what now?

All that time spent propelling forward to a point in time, only to have that point in time obliterated and all the propulsion for naught.

my friend and I's idea for a history/science wall garden for next year

$5 bench from a thrift store - isn't it darling?

About a month ago I got another call from the administration asking me to come back!

And I feel I've come full circle.

This year has been GOOD. God provided a terrific tutoring job with a 2nd grade boy who needed help with reading and behavior. I have learned so much that I wouldn't have learned otherwise, about how to be the authority figure and how to teach reading. Just lots of stuff I wouldn't have learned if I had spent the year juggling multiple subjects and multiple students.

God also had to break me of materialism and idolatry last summer. I was obsessing over the coming school year, which is why I didn't know what to do when the rug was pulled out from underneath me. I had learned too to enjoy shopping and was getting a thrill from buying stuff. But until December, when I got a second job, I had to stop being so fancy free because it was cutting into my savings.

Now I'm back trying to figure out how to healthily obsess over school. And also I'm trying to spend more time with God, because I didn't bolster my spiritual life this year like I should have, and I need to be strong in the Lord if I'm going to do a better job this year than two years ago.

God's also confronting me again about materialism and how although I've enjoyed buying bargains, all the stuff is weighing me down.

So basically, all day long I'm thinking about sorting children's books or painting a frame for the kids' artwork or washing the footlockers my grandma gave me for classroom storage.

But I'll try to get back to blogging. Because I also love writing, and if I don't write, I won't grow in it, right? Write. Right.

Later, gators.