01. What's up in my world

Hello all. I am starting my blog today. And this first entry is going to read like you are in my brain moving a mile a minute (if we speak in light years, what is a light second? I'd rather use the speed of light as a metaphor for my brain cause that feels more in keeping with all those synapses firing every which way), or like you are on speed, or ... if you ever read The Bone People and felt like you had come home--the first time I read that book I couldn't believe how she wrote like she was privy to the inside of my brain.  Am I done with the parenthetical yet? I just want to be free from APA style writing, or doing it the proper way for school (not in my classroom dude!, you can write however you want in my classroom, you just have to explain purpose and audience to me and I'm with you. It was so much fun to help someone who wanted to make a really good Rover profile. We did so many drafts, and that writing was important to her. I keep telling my students, "let's step into the 21st century". There are so many many ways to be writing.  Ok, I think I'm done with my intro.

So I started grad school. (read that in a long sly drawl. go ahead, read it again in your head). I need an extra [bwahaha! am reading this later and realize I didn't write exit as intended. And these days I'm thinking I'll stay in teaching half-time, so I was right on about extra.] strategy from teaching. I have about 10 more years until retirement and about 4 years ago, I said to myself if I am going to change professions, I need to do it NOW so that I have a good 15 years in another profession. I looked around the world, and decided (for a lot of reasons I actually am not going to go into) to stay in teaching. I made the decision I would be "graduating" from the high school I teach in. (Teach at? it feels more like "in" cause I'm so immersed, and also ending with a preposition... I would be graduating from whence I began... nope). 

Pandemic.

Quarantine teaching.

Year after quarantine teaching being in a classroom that could have none of my couches, but all tables and we were all in masks and trying to sit six feet apart and I had my windows open through the winter and I bought a knitting machine so that I could make students warm hats in about a half hour. That was some fun, that last part. But mostly 2021-2022 was the hardest year of teaching since the first one 25 years earlier! BRUTAL.  I can't recognize people if I can't see the bottoms of their faces. I can't hear people if I can't ... read their lips? am I a lip reader? i don't know, but it sure was tougher than i could ever have imagined to understand some students (oh and i'm done with capital I now. )  Buahahaha--grammarly just turned on and boy is she mad at me.

Ok, where was I?  Oh, the horrors of 21-22. This last year 2022-2023, was not so bad. But I'm saying that cause it's summertime. Everything about teaching is brighter, shinier, better, more miraculous in the summer.

So I needed an exit plan and my friend convinced me to get a MS in counseling. And here I am. 

I should graduate in spring 2025. The plan for now is that if by then I am re-adjusted and back to loving where I work and feeling like there is no better place I could ever find, then I'll stay and run a counseling business on the side somehow to repay loans. If the world keeps going the way it is -- capitalism killing us all slowly? -- no, I mean if there are more worldwide virus outbreaks, climate chaos causes things like 90 degree weather in my not-air conditioned classroom, having to flip on and off between online crisis schooling and in person, (trigger warning), or the suicide rate at our school goes up, I can't stay.

I have discovered chat and I'm going to write the gpt part over here cause I don't want it as a keyword. It's the teaching assistant I always knew I needed and thought for some strange reason that it would be a person instead of artificial. It is a miracle drug for me--emphasis on drug. like addictive drug where I spent the first half of july just pounding it down (FYI, strange to me that I've mentioned drugs twice in this blog so far. i wonder if that is because my daughter is in a summer program in a neighborhood just two over from where I teach and I have been stunned, appalled, and devastated by the open use of drugs on the streets around there. i had no idea it was like that!) where was I?

oh yes, chat dudedette is my new best friend!  (I said that when siri came out. I talked about her all the time. and then she totally betrayed me by being utterly useless in all the times I really wanted her to work, so we broke up and now we are cordial when we meet up, but not close at all). probably will be the same with chatty. 

Anyhoo (or is it anywho? or anywhoo? not sure I care, cause really it's an ugly word. i just happened to have run out of steam and am ready to log off.

Thanks for listening. Not sure if you can comment, but you can write to lunarlaf401@gmail.com if you want to say anything.