Yes, I am alive....

Dear readers, once again I apologize for such a long absence.   I wish I had an excuse - truth be told, it wasn't so much that nothing interesting has happened to me in the last four months, it's just that I haven't taken the time to sit down and write about it.  My dirty confession is that I've taken to commenting on message boards for various news sites, mostly having to do with education.  A lot of it was arguing against some severely misinformed anti-teacher union sentiments out there...  which was kind of weird because I'm not so sure I'm a big fan of unions in the first place.  I'll spare you the details.  Suffice to say, I finally stuck my head out to see what was happening in the teaching world acRoss the nation, and I think I'd like to pull it back in again.

Anyway... tonight, I am suffering from a particularly potent round of insomnia. So, rather than staying in bed, where I'm likely to keep turning over in a futile attempt to find a position that will induce drowsiness, I thought I'd sneak down to my office and give some love to my long-neglected blog.  I'm not sure why I can't sleep - although I do feel a certain kind of anxiousness.  I would not call it a fearful state, more one of anticipation, as if for the first time in some weeks I am actually eager to go to work.  The strange part is that I don't have anything in particular that I'm looking forward to... but if I were to take a guess, I would say that it's more because of a lack of stress.   I just completed a very labor-intensive project, one that requires a considerable amount of planning and gathering of resources, both human and financial.  Each day of the last two months was a slow march towards the execution date - filled with worries about uncertain outcomes and aggravations that stemmed from trying to manage too many people in too many directions.

And now.... *POOF*.... all of that is gone.

So I guess what I'm looking forward to is a day of not being stressed at work.  That isn't to say that I don't have a lot of work.... I have tons.   But it's all in the realm of control.  And, fellow teachers, you and I both know that there is no more valuable a commodity in teaching than control.  That thought occurred to me last week when I was doing mundane paperwork as a way of distracting myself from working on the *big project* that was stressing me out - oh how I used to hate the boring paperwork that went with teaching.  Most of it seemed rather pointless, and I wasn't very good at getting it in on time.  These days, I'm much better at crossing my "t"s and dotting my "i"s - simply because out of all the tasks I have lined up for me on any given day - it's the paperwork that has the most reliable outcome.  Fill it out, copy it, file it, turn it in.... and you're done.  But the teaching... well, don't get me wrong... I love teaching... but the uncertainty wears on you after a while.  Plans that you thought were iron-clad can get torpedoed.  Students that you had come to trust and rely on would  suddenly let you down.  The daily grind can be like the emergency room in the wee hours of the night - you never know what will come through the door.

I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining.  I had a feeling the job would be thus when I took it, and I have every intention of seeing it through.  But sometimes I have this weird state of mind where I prefer my rooms when they are empty and silent...  silent of all things...  The chairs  neatly arranged or stacked in the corner...  Instruments  tucked away on shelves against the wall.  I may even douse the lights and lock the door, leaving my work space illuminated by the lonely oasis of light that is my $20 desk lamp from Target.  Then I dive blissfully and monotonously into the pile of papers in my inbox.

Total.

Control.

It all sounds anti-social,  I know, but given the number of people I know who occasionally hide themselves away in their classrooms... not just working... but meditating.... well, I know some of you understand.

Anyway, I promise a few more posts before the end of the year.  Got some stuff brewing I'll probably need to vent about...

...so much for control....