4 days until I depart

And so in four days I will depart this country for life anew.

When I left university I discovered a vital metaphor for balance. Either side of the middle line screams freedom.

I saw the middle line of life as a balancing act. It is an arbitrary walk between two potential extremes:

a) One side is individualism, the satisfying of instinct and indulging in satiation. It is aiming for artistic endeavour, the abstract and the universal. 
b) The other side is communalism, the completion of duty and satisfying society. It is aiming for a career of worth, the situated and the specific.

Both sides are in themselves not enough. An artistic life can lack connection. A communal life can be crushing.

The metaphor has not served me well. I look now, at 38, back towards the ancients. Life cannot be general. It needs to be situated.

This summer I have seen many friends old and new. The provincial welcome I enjoyed in the North of England was revitalising. I felt some of the old tensions of small towns. The passing fortitude of a few was appreciated, their ambition in the face of relaxed satisfaction still burnt. 

My family was great to meet. For three days a garden party ran. People behaved themselves and tolerated misbehaviour. For a family such as mine it was enriching to be with people in such a way, with love and warmth and occasional rants.

I have seen two of my pals. Both reflect my lifestyle and friendships over the decades, men who wander the earth as I do. We shared wisdom and love and life. The conversations were easy. And righteously so.

My finances are notable. I have almost secured a passive income. Questions remain over whether I will purchase property, but those questions will be answered in two years. Two years will determine much of my finances. 15-20 of doing what I have been doing already, teaching internationally, will be me well and right.

I have walked for most days for over two weeks. I have lost two pounds which is 1kg. My cardio and my leg strength has improved. Constant movement for the next year is needed. I am confident I can reclaim my body. That was not always possible in the misty past. Sacrifices were made to secure some finances.

I sold a lifetime of miniatures for two thousand pounds. That is not terrible. It is not great either. It is about a thousand pounds undervalued. However, it also clears out my mother's garage, something necessary. It also scrubs a little more my mark upon this world.

And so what lists of things do I need to take with me?

Clothes
Work clothes
Socks and underwear
Shoes


Paperwork
Bank cards
Passport
School receipts (in an envelope)
School adminstration


Electronics
Surface pro
Charges etc
Hard drives

Extras
TBC

I think that today is the time to begin to administrate my Wunderlist again. That and writing. Firstly, I spoke with mum and then I am walking for a haircut.

Managing my To-Do List

And so with three days left in the UK I want this: to manage my to-do list, leaving space and time to do the things I need to do.

I should realise that I do not need to leave huge tracts of time.

Working for a good amount of time on a Sunday used to be my...
Planning the content rather than the lesson is...
Taking time to socialise changes the brain...

Reading and moving...

I need to rename my lists.
Mr Reliable... stuff I have to do?
Meat Skeleton - Stuff for me?
A richer life - stuff I'd like to do?

Even just two lists is ideal.
Mr Reliable
A Richer Me

I also have:

Passive - Open List (for items that I could do)
Someday List (if I have free time!)

And so I am down to a minimal number of things to do. It would be interesting to see how my to-do list functions in my new place. I expect to be less busy. My mind might be able to focus on more of my own thing.

This renaming of the lists works.

Consuming Books

I want to consume books today. Next door sit five books that I want to rip and scan. Scanning might be tricky, but reading them is the hard part!

I then want to read essays. One a day. I want the rhythm of the voices to resonate within me.

Updating my website to express my new ambitions is next.

My website should promote teaching powerful knowledge. It needs to be situated in my experience as an international teacher. Provocative articles will be read more widely. Resources that I create can be happily sold. The social media aspect is next.

Its design needs to be updated. I think a splash page and then what? The division between school and life might be kept.

Design
How to update
Political arguments - what is framed
How to sell things and books and resources

These things cannot be considered if I am merely sat, slumped musings do not find clarity. 

Unusual relationships and lifestyles attract me.

Unusual relationships and lifestyles attract me. I have proved myself in many times. Today I have lost some of my fear. That fear will return in different ways, without doubt.

I need to embrace unusual relationships and lifestyles. This does not necessarily mean to marry. It does mean that if I have some social movements in these groups then I could be a bit happier than I am now.

A great colleague and mentor here speak about how his wife, and by extension all decent women, desire money and luxury.

What partners have I had in the past?

There are a number of women with whom I could have made a life. Like me, none had some magical package of strengths that outweighed my flaws.

I hope to have the clearness of sight to see what I want when I meet her. 

How to deal with types of teachers - pesonality types in the corporate world

I will wake up soon back in the UK with no need to return to the past. An echo of how others have been treated impacts me even now. Degraded with spurious feedback, being told to follow PowerPoints, hearing physically offensive comments in a professional sphere - these unprofessional and cruel attacks on others demean us all. I feel compelled to muster a response. To do this I will stoke some of the slag that sticks in my memory before sallying forth a more pious interpretation of their actions.

I have seen terrible weakness in my immediate leaders. I will address these in turn:

1) Type One: She embraces low culture, boasting about supposedly being in debt despite earning 100k a year and recently selling a 400k house. She refuses to read and frames our discipline in the language of commerce and the adult-needs model. She is not entirely stupid and recognises the artefacts of reading and writing. She claims to want to know the good practice of other places but shuts down such conversations in meetings formal or otherwise. She abuses immediate leaders with cruel and capricious comments.

2) Type Two: Lazy and quite stupid, she sees herself as brutally honest yet a secret hippy. She is capricious in her choices, blocking and removing people from positions on the basis of personal relationships. She failed to secure a job in a series of other schools thanks to her lack of cultural capital and inability to read literature. Perhaps she will make choices to leave teaching but until that moment she will continue as she is, damaging others in that mission.

3) Type Three: Childish with a loose tongue, nothing you say to her will be private for long. Surprisingly gained high grades at GCSE and A-Level, but stopped learning after university. Her childhood was bereft of culture and support and she yearns for a partner and close friends. Continually she denigrates the bosses and is smashed down in turn. She has damaged morale with her contentious gossiping. Many jobs have turned her down due to her uneducated vernacular and ill-formed philosophies of education. Most damningly, she shuts down intellectual conversations.

4) Type Four: A cute woman with a soft manner, she is dangerously efficient and perniciously ineffectual. Selected by Type One, she is likely a vegan. She has planned the kind of curriculum you would expect someone who sees English as depoliticised linguistics. Not as terrible as the rest, but fails to address or counteract their weaknesses.

5) Type Five: Machiavellian and perhaps insane, she derides her husband in public. Most happy stoking conflict in a team, she plans lessons with inane PowerPoint templates. Becomes an outsider herself.

6) Type Six: A 'here's the lesson, take it or leave it' teacher. Believes that emotional investment or responsiveness in the job is unprofessional at best and laughable at worst. Unlikely to change.

If I was to deal with such unprofessional and difficult colleagues in the future, I think that elements of NVC might be useful. All these types seem internally coherent in way. I do not think that see themselves as inherently evil. What would I say to them if there was a better person to mediate? In Type One, maybe we see a teacher who wants to impress an overachieving father. In Type 2 we see someone who wants a best friend and a boyfriend. In Type 3 we see a lost and barren teacher who might be suffering from the brutal mistreatment of the heart by a callous ex. In Type 4 we see a glass-woman, insubstantial yet maybe aware of her cultural dearth. In Type Five we see a person who responds to past bullying with the rules that make sense to her. In Type Six, we see someone who struggles with notions of pride. Perhaps in hearing their vulnerabilities, my ire would quieten.

What is important is this - while my mind flashes to these types of people and a spike of rage is felt, their immediate absence is a bonus. I seek instead people who operate in less spiteful terms, people who offer positive action. This act of creating instances of human interaction is better than the negation of those above. Since the brunch of the first year, I struggled with socialising. After Canada, I was better and felt happy to meet and connect with people more freely. I remember the absolute fear I had meeting the writing group - I stepped through those golden doors and spoke and wrote.

It is time for better from me from 2019 August.

Just saying my reasons to these people should be enough. Even if I crushed them or reconciled myself to them, the position for me would not particularly change.

If I was to situate my response and seek to apply NVC methods, what would I want these people to do? Would I want these people to apologise? Would I want him to send me a single message? Would I want there to be a change in attitude in them too? Are they not welcome to their attitude as they choose? As each of these possibilities is mentioned, they seem to melt in relevance. They do not impact my daily life. Their happiness or sadness is too distant to impact me either way. If I was to choose, it would be for them to be happy.

Nothing in this is tragic. There is no nobility in these people that I can see. They are not archetypes who strive for any kind of moral goodness. They are middle-of-the-roaders who have shifted into a dangerous lane. And the world in which they operate is not one that deserves my passion.

Knowing that leaves them in the tavern as I travel outside a dusty road.

Self-Esteem is a peculiar navigator

Self-esteem is an unusual word for how we move in the world. It is a capricious navigator.

I am two weeks into my time in the UK. Unlike past holidays I have seen people each day. Within the spaces around those connections, I have read and planned and thought. Each day I wake up at eight thirty at the latest. For two days I have walked well, read and thought well, and cast the net of my future into the dark winds outside my mind.

It is time to recount the poem of my youth:

All awareness is accepted in these halls of thought
Grand Tradition stands sure and fortifies the door
While youthful lusts endeavour a roomy infinite within

Yet outside these walls
Lies Utter
And all windows hope for a glimpse of hell

For decades this poem carried the flag of my mind. That psychology and the modern mind traps you within clever constructs. The formless terror of that which we must trust lies outside ourselves, unverifiable and potentially dangerous. Conventional relationships, marriage and mortgages, demand fatal commitments that we cannot escape.

Moving and living overseas is a method of being beyond the hearth of these modern constructs. Living in Scarborough was an incubation. People were friendly if a little parochial. The best of Scarborough seduced you into the majestic heights of its hungry valley, Italian gardens and fingers of trees stubbled the surface of Scarborough heights. I often stood on the beach of South Bay witnessing the infinite rolling of the waves. The world would eventually die but only many billions of years after my bones had melted into the dust of the stars.

The Ancients believed in the horrors of the unknown too. Their Gods would rape and desecrate at wanton will, driving via desire the destructive events of Ancient lives. What they call their Gods we call our conscience.

At this age of thirty-seven I find myself standing with worthy potential. The spirit of me is as real as these finger-tapping words. The meat skeleton it rides is not one I would choose. I would be taller and stronger, healthier and easier. But it will do. I have managed in the lonely corporate wastes of Dubai to educate myself, a proud training in the humanities. I watched people of limited capacity achieve positions in the last school I worked. And fair play to them. Why should they not nurture ambition?

My ambitions in my new places are clear: be with people to the extent and richness that I am capable; support and establish public celebrations of academic ambition; nurture financial and future security. These are simple ambitions, remarkably generic in their vision but brightly guiding my behaviour.

My conduct over time does not reflect my worth. I have limited my socialising to smaller groups and with smaller ambition. But I have not wasted my time entirely. I emerge from the sands as a man of better intellect with a spirit that can range the historical framework of modern and ancient times.

Ideas like momentum and ambition, family and love have been problematic. Reading history is to hear a voice; writing and speaking is to forge a voice.

Read and speak and write. Socialise and publish and love. These verbs are active and this life is finite.