It happened again, a job offer

Last week my boss was fired. 

This week I was asked if I would take his job. 

I spoke to my colleagues. Two of them were a little indifferent. One has yet to 'get back to me'. 

It is a decent enough department, although not without its issues. However, I really do not know if I 'want that responsibility. 

There are some complications: 

a) I am finishing my MA soon: it might be practically finished. Therefore, I have some headspace.
b) I am not sure if I want to be busy 'doing things'. My social connections are tricky. 
c) Whilst I want to help the department, I am also a little ambivalent towards them. A new staff member could change things, or they could encounter what is already here.

Am I happy with my headspace of 'guitar, books and music'? Do I want much more? 

Tom said that the job is 'as hard as you want to make it'. Why am I choosing to make the job as hard as I can make it. What does that mean to make it as hard as I want to make it. 

I also experienced a colleague's angst about his work. He felt that others 'take the piss'. I felt a mixture of feelings, both with him and against. 

I feel today is seminal. 

Or is it? 

Do I want other folks to listen to me? Do I want my voice to be heard? Am I OK to park my other blogs? I think perhaps so. 

I am a bit tired. 

People I love and trust speak to me and tell me that I would do a good job. 

_____________________

It would only take a few days to feel better I imagine, or even to feel worse.

Existential angst is also possible to feel. 

I will talk to Joanna to see where that takes me.  

 

 

Integration

Today I have some time at the start of my day to consider how I feel about the immediate future. 

I have the privilege to not seek or accept leadership positions that might disturb me from the rhythms I have established this term. 

For me, a sense of perpetual actualisation is a privilege: my music, my fitness, my reading - all of it is aiming for something that may very well never happen, or even come close to happening. However, it is something that makes me happy, at least for now. 

It is something that makes me happy because I can choose the extent to which I want to aspire to these creative ambitions. If I do not want to work hard on a particular day, I am not obliged to. And that feels good to me. 

For a huge length of time I have worked too hard, frankly. We are talking regular 50 hour weeks, often more. I lived an almost monastic life, interspersed with moments of hedonism. Now? I happily drink tea and feel better than before. The purpose of drinking beer seems to have passed me, waving only to acknowledge a form of culture that demands a huge physical cost for the sake of social cohesiveness, a price of flesh I wish to defy.  

Tomorrow I speak with a boss about a potential promotion. I want to make a pros and cons list for an application. The list encourages a rational approach to these decisions, an approach that belies how I usually decide. My decisions for changing my life are made because I cannot make an alternative decision. 

How will I feel if I am a teacher forever without any alternative? Perhaps not great, but I also feel it is a neutral job. 

Two things: 

a) Integrate colleagues. 

b) Seek headspace. 

I have almost finished my MA. That frees significant headspace. When that is done, what will I replace it with? 

I also want to integrate the voices of my colleagues into my psyche. When I hear the voices of a few, my heckles raise defensively, and perhaps not without reason. Before one man died, he told me to be wary of one colleague. That is perhaps the case with colleagues across the world: there will always be one or two that wish to occupy, to even just affect, the roles of leadership we want to play. 

For now, finish the MA. Talk and consider. And do not rush into something you do not feel you want. The choice is simple, and one that the little boy with big dreams once believed.  

 

 

Scheduling Emotion

Another half-term is upon us, and I feel well-positioned to enjoy it. 

I have three categories of work: planning; marking; school tasks. I intend to only complete work tasks if allocated to those three concepts. 

I do not have an infinite amount of energy left before I die. Many of my years, good years in me, have been spent inspiring young people. Very many worthwhile young people have passed into my care over the years. 

My emotional energy over a lifetime can be allocated to many things. Relationships, fitness, spirituality. 

Emotion Management

I have a finite amount of money and time: I have a finite amount of emotion to spend. 

I am moving into a new age. 

I want to be smarter about how I allocate my emotion and my time. Sadness and conflict are inevitable in life: an ennui can easily settle into my bones during a holiday. 

How did I spend my time? 

I guess there should be 'school tasks'.

Then I can consider how much I am actually spending, emotionally, on the tasks in my life: 

    

It seems that I mark for 4.4 hours a week on average. What do I think about this? This is about 10/11 pomodoros. This seems a lot more than my desired 1 pomodoro a day on average. 

I also plan for about 4.2 hours a week. That is about 10 pomorodos. 

This is relentless, so that include on holidays too. 

Is this sustainable? I mean... marking a class set of books takes about 1.5 to 3 hours for one set of work. 

My next term is 8 weeks as well, and so I should expect 20 pomodoros between the planning and marking each week (or 160 pomodoros over those eight weeks). 

Might I expect instead less than that? 

Actually, I have marked for 95 pomodoros this term (including a marking project with Cambridge), and I marked for 90 pomodoros this time last year. Or was that for all 16 weeks? 

I think that 10 hours a week on marking and planning sounds doable. 

Is that really what I want? That an average week is 8/9 hours of marking and planning? Does that sound ideal? I have about 4 free periods a week. There are other tasks that come up...  

I wonder if I can have a 'school related' pomdoro? So I have 

Marking
Planning
School Related

Because report writing etc has different demands. 

How to Retire?

In fifteen years I wish to retire. The major stress will of course be money, where I live and what I might do for a passive income. 

My boss has not had his contract renewed. An option rises from this for me to apply for his job. I am uncertain. 

I am uncertain because I enjoy some of my lifestyle now. I am uncertain also because of the stresses I would suffer managing some of the people around me. Their culture is one of... I cannot really capture it. It is the culture of people that 'do it already' and 'know better'.

When I want to work hard at something, I want to do so on my terms. I do not want to work, then I do not want to work. If I want to converge with the culture of others, I want to converge with their culture. If I do not want to challenge their culture, then I do not want to challenge their culture. That is where I am at now. 

 

Half-Term: Feeling Decent

Hi folks,

It has been a month since I wrote because my systems run the rhythm of my life. Beat, brawn, books: the foundation of my lifestyle is strong, making my health flourish and my mind sharp.

I am increasingly happy about how I approach education. Marking a little smarter seems ideal, but some of my approaches to notes seem cool. I want to write about that. 

Trivialising some of the pains I suffered in previous places turns out to be excellent at this stage. Life is not lived in a linear fashion. 

I am mean + pragmatic response + empathetic? 

Do I need more than a few days of holiday? 

 

 

Writing for Esteem

I am 39, although I thought this morning I was 38. One lap below 40 felt right. Yet I am 5 months from 40. I do not have a goatee, a child and a sweater. 

Instead, being 40 excites me because my social position frees itself from some expectations.  

My cultural expectations are limited, with no expansive heritage to pass on or conventional position of status to enjoy. I have little to lose, and need to remind myself of this. Yet I work in a competitive environment. It is hard to imagine what a non-competitive environment would look like. At school, I must occupy roles that impinge on others, regardless of my efforts or intentions.

My expectations are based also on fear. I work hard but cannot escape a strange fear of work. An email might arrive and my stomach drops. My angst against my tutor, and my old teachers, drives me even now. Still, I might in doing so sense a greater awareness of others and awareness of myself, like a familiar walk past the slapping bracken branches towards the mountain heights. 

The consequence of my cultural experiences and expectations is a fundamental lack of self-esteem. By 40 I am successful in many ways yet lack confidence.  

Is my presence with others an impingement? Must I fight my way in this world? 

When has my presence been a warm light? A guiding figure? When has my presence been detrimental, my actions and thoughts damaging to others? 

Has my behaviour and presence been good for a substantial time now? 

Simply being 'good' in the passive and pious sense does not tackle the danger of unintended outcomes. I can avoid drinking, but maybe that isolates me from colleagues or makes them spit ire at a perceived judgement of their drinking. Promoting the moral imperatives of education can make me seems zealous and annoying. I cannot escape that. 

I am a distinctive man. I want to live by breathing. 

My presence in a classroom and meetings can be made better by a practiced and calm intensity, through breathing my words out. Through employing silence. 

Within my cultural background are many versions of me that scream and shout in unpleasant and unhelpful ways. These can never be expunged, as once I wished. Instead they are integrated, residing in a careful and distinctive place in the infinite constructions of my stomach. The low hum of the strangely chordate harmony resonates in my chest. 

They can be fearful. They can live forever in Hull, in that cold house with the broken drum. 

Presenting a 'big S self' to the world, especially at work, is wise. Every Tuesday and Wednesday, integrations of me will scream in frustration. The Big S will respond. 

The desire to influence others will verify my voice. This is the power of teaching. But perhaps this is 'wrong', or at least not ideal. 

Instead, to nuance by understanding others is to influence them another way. 

I am a lower middle class man who gains power by aiming for achievement. Who knows the consequences of some of my compromises, for my sakes and others? What financial and social issues have I caused by investing myself in the ways I have? 

Aesthetic experiences and exercise seem open to me. Calm speech is a chance I have today to write for esteem.