Collective Soul(less) Irony

"Better Now"

Oh I'm newly calibrated
All shiny and clean
I'm your recent adaptation
Time to redefine me

Let the word out I've got to get out
Oh I'm feeling better now
Break the news out I've got to get out
Oh I'm feeling better now

Oh I'm happy as Christmas
All wrapped to be seen
I'm your recent acquisition
Time to celebrate me

By Collective Soul


I've pretty much dropped off the radar since school started back last August. For the few people who do look and check in - I am sorry. Most of you know how much I love working with the kids that I do and how challenging the job has been with 4 principals in the last 5 years and the massive changes that our school has had to go through.

Well, I hate to say it but things got worse. I have been with the company for over 16 years and I am a flexible and creative person so I know that it isn't just me being resistant to change. 80% of the people that I loved working with have already left. The few who remain are more miserable than I am. It is, in fact, their misery that compounds my own because I am helpless to make it any better. We have even more huge changes coming up in the next few weeks. I am cautiously hoping for something positive to come from all of this (even if that means exploring new schools for me).

It has taken so much energy and will to get through the last 18 weeks that there has been very little left for anything other than survival. I have not chatted online with the people that I adore (you know who you are) and I have not even picked up my camera to take pictures or listened to hardly any music. I know that those last two things above all others are a big indication that I need to pull out of the funk (euphemism for melancholy/depression) before it consumes all that is good.

The goobers and Yibbyl have been total troopers in giving me lots of space when I cycle through grumpiness or tearfulness but it isn't fair to ask them to do that indefinitely. I don't want to use medication (though I would if it really came to that) because I truly feel that most of this situational and if I can make it until my contract expires in June then I will be past the worst of it. It is all that time between now and then that has me a little bit concerned.

It seemed like the timing of my dad's sudden health issues and death were just some kind of karmic trainwreck of bad timing. Then, as if I needed something else to worry about, my step-mom was not sober enough to participate in anything at all. My sister and I had to make the arrangements at the funeral home (he died in Oklahoma and had to be returned to the tiny town in Texas where my grandmother is) and that made us responsible for the bill, too. Ain't life grand?

I always seem able to help the kids at school to see the many positive things in their lives despite the other crap that they have had to deal with. And I DO know the great things going on in my own life. Sometimes it just feels like the garbage truck of life is dumping on my head and I have to get out from under it somehow. Isn't that just petty and stupid? I should be grateful. I should be happy. I should just shut up.

I can and will get through this. I miss my friends at RP. I miss my camera. I miss the music.

I miss me.

Today's Plan: Get a plan, find one, make one, borrow one if I have to, feel better then celebrate me.