Following Lola: How to crawl out of a hole

I am sitting on my couch, in flannel pajama bottoms, wrapped in a soft-as-clouds blanket, and I am just so infinitely sad.  I miss my students, and I miss the positive changes I feel I was making in their lives.  I miss the bond we had and them telling me they finally felt understood.  I miss making them excited about material they'd previously considered as dead as its authors.  And as selfish as it sounds, I miss the sense of purpose that I gained by teaching them.  I am nowhere near an excellent teacher; I am not even a good teacher yet.  But I will be, and the primary reason is because I care.  I understand why I had to leave-- because it was a toxic environment full of teachers and administrators with the mental maturity of middle-schoolers, and that is not the atmosphere in which to learn about teaching-- but that doesn't change the fact that I feel like part of me is missing.  And that I feel completely purposeless as I sit at home, waiting.

I am awaiting my next placement, and I know that my next group of kids will be just as amazing and that I will find a way to touch their lives.  I just ache that the people who were supposed to be helping me become a groundbreaking educator are so incapable of modeling the values they want our students to exhibit.

This is my state of mind right now.  But I feel like I've been dwelling in negativity, and it's starting to turn me into the same bitter, hateful type of person against whom I've been railing.  That is not the type of person I am, and it is not the type of person I want to be.  As much as I struggle with faith and positivity, I can recognize that this negativity is only going to bring me down.  I don't want to be angry anymore.  I want to be the better person.  I want to take the high road, and I want to crawl out of this hole.

I will take a cue from Lola and make a list of lovely things to snap me out of it:

1) Ginger tea (I am sipping some right now)

2) The word "parapluie" (and the delightful film Les Parapluies de Cherbourg)

3) silhouettes

4) a stroll up the aisles of Trader Joe's

5) Brideshead Revisited and its lovely, luscious language

6) dry Austrian white wine

7) rain boots with bows at the tops

8) speaking of bows... (these)

9) a lavender-scented bubble bath

10) buying myself flowers...the types a boy would never choose

11) jumping in crunchy leaves

12) Lula

13) sugar roses, sugar mice

14) lantern-light

15) repeating to myself that I deserve more, I deserve more, and the path to brilliance is rarely easy

small steps, right?  

"I want to hear jazz with my eyes closed, and dig my toes into the sand dancing. I want to climb to the summit and yell and sleep under the stars. I want to laugh my head off and play marbles and sleep in and eat croissants in bed with butter and marmalade and spill coffee and wear lace and trip holding your hand because I am listening so closely..." ~Sabrina Ward Harrison