Failure

This morning I got the official email from a school district saying "thanks for applying but we've decided to move forward with another candidate." Yesterday I realized that the backup "safety" job I'd applied for, a long term sub position with a district I've worked with for the past two years, had been posted for over a month and I hadnt even gotten an interview.

Last week, one of my Facebook friends had a post about the Atlantic responding to a pitch she'd sent them and another post about having two more articles boosted on the Medium. She joked about her husband telling her "people are supposed to struggle." 

I'm happy for her. I am. ... I am? 

I am. But.

Right now I feel like a big old failure. 

I feel like no matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I work, I'm not getting anywhere. 

And also I know that I'm not trying as hard as I could be because deep down inside I still believe that trying and wanting is shameful. 

Deep down inside I'm still the gifted seventeen year old straight A student who sat down on the curb and cried the day she got three thin envelopes in the mail. 

Deep down inside, I just want to feel validated and wanted and loved. Deep down inside, I'm tired of being nobody, I'm tired of not existing and having anything that's mine, that makes me me. Deep down inside I always assumed that after staying home and raising kids for ten years, I could jump right back into being me, right back into things being easy and not having to try too hard.

Deep down inside, I have been ignoring for a long time all the things that I just never did because I was afraid they would be hard.

I don't wanna put myself out there. I don't wanna be vulnerable. I don't wanna get rejected. I don't wanna fail.

But I don't wanna be invisible forever either.

The work

 

“Should I stab my own eye out with a knitting needle instead of writing?” says the 14 year old sitting so close to me on the couch, I am reminded of the time when she lived inside my uterus.

I mean, I understand the question.

She reads this over my shoulder as I type it and murmurs. “Mmm hmm. There’s two. Now we can share” as she hands me my own knitting needle.

She’s writing a novel. She’s 2% into it and so far the characters have laughed 18 times and haven’t made it past breakfast. It’s the end of the world.

As she decides that maybe - MAYBE - someone will come to the door before they even have a chance to START eating breakfast and she’s back off and running, I stare at the google doc on my screen and think about how I too would like to write a novel. Or a memoir. Or a single blog post really. But it’s hard and it’s scary, and the knitting needle is looking surprisingly tempting right now.




All day I’ve felt on edge, tired and wired, certain that I want to be doing SOMETHING but that I have no idea what that is, that I am somehow falling behind, that I will never accomplish anything in my life. And the more I think about that, the more I freeze, the more I sink, the less motivated I feel to even do a single thing.

I want to write a book. I want to write articles and get them published somewhere. I want to find my voice again. I want to create things that people find meaningful. I created this human who has informed me that there’s no doorbell because OBVIOUSLY these are medieval teenage friends having breakfast together, so clearly I can create ANYTHING.

I just have to put the knitting needle down and get back to work.

Well, hello Summer. Hello self - what? Yes, there's yogurt in the fridge. Yes it's. Oh never mind I'll be right there.

 My summer vacation (and the end of my temporary teaching job) started on Friday. Today is Tuesday. 

I laid out a plan for myself in my notebook yesterday. 

1. Start the day writing.

2. End the day reading.

3. Clean something every day.

4. Make something every day.

5. Do something you've been avoiding every day. 

6. Do something fun every day. 

This is the summer that I'm going to find myself, find my voice again, figure out my life purpose, recover from burnout, get enough rest, heal some of my autoimmune diseases, improve my mental health, and remember how to have fun.

In the past two days I've gone to 3 therapy appointments total for my two kids, visited two different public libraries, driven at least one kid to theater rehearsal every day and both to piano lessons once, folded four baskets of laundry, and run the dishwasher at least 527 times. 

I feel like something is going to have to give. I don't want it to be me this time. 

Starting over. Again.

 Today is my first day of summer vacation. Yesterday was my last day of school in a permanent sub position, at a school I've been at for two years that will not have a position available for me next year. Yesterday was also big girl's last day of middle school. Yesterday I got confirmation that I did not get a full time contract teaching job I was hoping to get.

I have a lot of feelings.

I left school yesterday shortly after the kids left. I had comp time to use up and I was finished with my grades and my (her) classroom. I tried to duck out without seeing anyone, but I didn't quite succeed so i got a few hugs and teared up a little. There were a lot of people I didn't see though. People who have kindly accepted me as part of their community, treated me like a real member of their department, made me feel like I really belonged there.

I guess I never really did belong there though. I was always just filling someone else's place.

There's a long term middle school job available in the same district next year, and the department chair is making phone calls for me. There are people hoping for me to get it. But really I have no idea if I'll get it because for the first time in my life, at 44, I'm getting rejected a lot.

And I hope I get it because it's a good district, because it's a job, but also I'm dreading getting it. I'm dreading going into a new building with people I don't know, with kids I don't know, with a curriculum I don't know, and starting over. It sucks. I'm much too old to still be doing this every year. I'm too old to keep starting over.

I thought when I stayed home with my babies that teaching was  a thing I could always just walk back into when they were old enough. I thought I would still be able to do it, still be able to get hired and be treasured. I'm not.

It's my first day of summer and all I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry for at least two weeks. But I have to pick myself up, dust myself off, and get ready to start over. Again.

My place

I am 44 years old. My baby girl is 14, and her 8th grade recognition ceremony is in an hour. Little sister is 12. It's been a long road. 

When I had babies, I opened a blogpost and started writing because I just didn't know what else to do. I poured out my soul onto the screen. I reached out into the world and the world reached back and for that I will always be grateful.

And then one day I stopped. Blogging wasn't a thing anymore, there wasn't a community, and I didn't think I had anything left to say. Except I did. Of course I knew I did. I just didn't want to say it. 

Almost two years ago, I saw a long term substitute teaching job posted at a place where I worked 14 years ago and almost on a whim I applied. And I got it. And the past two years I've spent in a classroom again with 15 year olds who aren't mine. And it felt like coming home.

But here I am now, finishing another long term sub job, applying to more jobs, and I don't know where I belong. No one wants to hire me for a permanent job. I'm never going to find anything. Why would anyone want to hire a 44 year old mom with a 14 year resume gap? There are 30 year olds with more years of classroom experience than I have. It's frustrating. It's lonely. It's exhausting. I'm tired of getting rejected. I'm tired of trying.

But I keep looking, keep going out there because some day I'm going to find my place.

Who am I

My therapist thinks I should start writing again. She thinks that I know deep down that I'm a talented writer and that I shouldn't pin my opinion of my own writing on accolades and rewards and sponsorships and book deals. She thinks I have something to say that's worth saying, that people will want to hear.

Errm. Hi.

My 13 year old (YES SHE IS) thinks we should all wear pins with our pronouns and with other distinguishing features about us. She thinks this would make life so much easier for all of us. My pin would say:

She/her
CisHet
Ally
Liberal
Mom
Teacher

I'm not sure what else it would say. My therapist asked me today what feelings I had about myself and not about the things that surround me. She asked me what my goals were for myself to make myself happy. Am I supposed to have those?

I feel tired. I feel discouraged. I feel overwhelmed and bored at the same time. I feel like these are a lot of the same things I felt when I had babies even though now I have a tween and a teen. 

Is it me? Is it them? Is it the world?

My therapist seems to think there's still a me in here somewhere, separate from everything I do. A being not a doing. A self. She wants to know who that is.

So do I, friends. So do I.

Self care

 I went for a walk today. 

Every session, my therapist asks me, "Did you get to any self care since I last saw you?"

"Wellll."

Yesterday I went to my endocrinologist. I have Graves Disease, have I mentioned that? It means that I have an autoimmune condition that makes my thyroid VERY CONFUSED and so it spits out too much thyroid hormones all the time unless I take medication. If I'm high, it can make me jittery and anxious and can also give me a lot of extra energy and productivity. And make me lose weight.

"Your thyroid is a little high."

WHAT THE HECK BODY? WHERE HAVE MY BENEFITS BEEN? I've spent the past month barely able to get off the couch.

Thanks for nothing, thyroid.

Anyway.

I went to my endocrinologist yesterday and he said my thyroid was high, and he increased my medication but he also asked my how my stress was.

Hahahahaha.

So today seemed like a good day to Do The Self Care.

I went on my group chat of local mom friends and said "Does anyone want to go for a walk to ignore our meaningless lives for a while. I mean, my life is meaningless. I'm not saying your lives are meaningless. I'm just. I'm gonna go."

And I laced up my shoes and went for a walk with my own self, Glennon in my ears, the (okay I didn't know it would be THIS strong) wind in my hair.

45 minutes later I thought to myself, Self, that was a good walk. I walked a lot of the demons out and I feel better and now I sure am spent.

I was about a mile away from home.

20 minutes after that, I stumbled through my front door, plugged in my now dead phone, and rooted around my room until I finally found a marble notebook because if we're doing this, we're doing it.  Coffee in hand I plopped on the couch, flipped the notebook to the front cover,

And it had biggest girl's name on the front. Son of a.

Back up to my room I practically crawled, dug around some more, and found another notebook. I grabbed it and the pen next to it and sat down on my bed, my hand moving across the page in a was it somehow apparently did still know how to do.

And then I went downstairs to get another pen because the one I'd been trying to use was completely dead .

How's self care going for you, friend?