Time off at last!

Time off at last!! At least for a few days…

College mathematics instruction has been challenging in that there are lots of new problems to solve, the biggest being an acknowledgement that teachers and students are experiencing an ongoing and extraordinary change in delivering and acquiring knowledge.

I’m stimulated by imagining solutions to what seems to be an endless set of questions and problems, but I’m also watching my savings dwindle fast, partly due to my own personal spending, some of which i am weak in defending (I thought I deserved to own a couch this year, for example).

I wonder at what state my health will be in on future days as the biggest problem with education is the easiest to solve, if the right leaders would stop pretending its solution is a mystery: teacher pay.

I always need improvement in the area of spending money, and I have had the privilege to choose work that I love doing, the kind of work where my thoughts cooperate with me well. I save my life every night when I make a choice to stop working at 6 pm, and switch to being an artist. But I’m not able to perform well as an instructor with that time limitation. I got so far behind in my job, failed at accomplishing certain tasks, that I had to redefine that boundary.

And this past Saturday, my sweet Dexter started pooping everywhere after the vet swore up and down that this new magic food would help with his IBS. It was one heck of a Shatturday. How in the hell are single teachers who have children surviving?

I think we might get somewhere as educators if we start talking more about our inner lives with one another. Until then, I will thoroughly enjoy the art work before me: I have almost 40 unfinished paintings to complete. I shouldn’t complain. I go to bed each night far better off than others I know who are struggling. My “shit storm” right now is at the level of cat poo. And I can handle cat poo. What’s it gonna be in ten years? That’s a great problem I can try and solve.