To paraphrase...

To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, 3 A.M. is the midnight of the soul.

It's midnight on Wednesday, and I'm unsettled. Thankfully, almost nobody reads this blog, so I don't really have to worry about having a wide, unfettered audience.

I'm anxious about work, specifically because I think I fucked up pretty big. I'm a joker and I like to get along with people, but this apparently has rubbed some of the people I work with the wrong way, and they've gone to my superiors about it. 

This in itself worries me, as it would anyone else. On top of that, though, this happens in my career. The job that I love doing. The job I want to get up every morning and be thankful for.

You see the issue? How can I fuck up at something I love? This is my fear of failure manifest, and it scares me. I don't want to fuck up, I don't want to do this badly when so few others do... Why must I fuck up? Really? I mean, there are so many people in the same stage of my career who never go through this, who never fuck up this badly because they're better at it, or have a better mindset, or are just... better.

I don't know what to do. It's not a monstrous huge career-ending misstep, but there stands a good chance of it hurting my chances for future employment, mos def after I get off this contract. 

Geesh, and I thought life was supposed to be simpler than this. I guess all I can do is walk in, face the music, admit I fucked up and learn from it. Learn from it and be a man about things.

I dunno... I can't sleep because of it - I don't have the ability to turn shit off and just sleep - I wish I could, because it'd make life so much easier, especially since sleep hasn't been a particularly good friend of mine lately.

Well, on the plus side, I've got family. Man, I don't know how I'd handle this without family. And pops, who said "This too shall pass."

Sometimes, all I can do when I fuck up is to leave it in the hands of Allah, who has seen me through countless trials, and given me the strength to keep moving. It is in Him that I lay my life, and in His hands that I can find what I need to live. 

I'm starting to think that Allah has made Himself manifest in the people around me. I see a little bit of the Divine in all things, but I see it especially in the people who I love the most, and it astounds me. The power of the Divine, the infinity of it, are contained in my mother's smile and my father's ever-ready hugs. It just lends itself to my belief - the Divine is everywhere, and miracles are only the most egregious examples of its existence. 

Hopefully, I will take this as we take all struggles in life - With humility, grace, and an understanding that this obstacle was meant to be overcome, not to overcome me. I will be a man and learn from it what needs to be learned, and be a better person for it. 

I have done stupid things before, and will do stupid things again, but hopefully I will not repeat the same stupid things over again. I think everyone in my profession goes through what I'm going through at least once, and so I must take as such. 

Fuck 'em

You know what? Fuck 'em.

Fuck the people who make my life hard.

Fuck the unfriends, who ask things from you and give nothing in return.

Fuck the people who want you to give without giving you a reason why.

Fuck my career that asks me to give blood and wait.

Fuck them all.

I don't need friends like the ones I have, I need people. I don't want friends who'll ask favours and never return them, never show gratitude, and generally fuck right off to prevent ever having to admit knowing me.

Mostly, fuck them for getting so under my skin.

Fuck the job I'm supposed to have, that's supposed to be my career and supposed to keep me at a good place in my life.

Fuck my medication that makes me slow-witted and weight-gaining.

Fuck my life that constantly disappoints me, pisses me off, and tries to tempt me with an occasional ray of sunshine.


It may be Christmas, it may be a great time of year, but I know two or three people I can really count on to be good people. The rest can go fuck themselves.

Let's see just how many people actually want anything to do with me. Let's just see if any of my friends, after being gone for a while, want me around. Those that do, great. Those that don't...

Well, we all know where that's going.

As for my job, fuck it. I can't leave, but I don't want to stay. I don't like what it is or who I am, but it's all I've got to hang onto right now, so we'll see where it goes. I don't like waiting, I never have, but I like it even less when there's no indication about when it'll end.

And finally, my life: Fuck it. Fuck the rare moments of happiness followed by crippling sadness. Fuck the triggers that give me bipolar attacks for no fucking reason. Fuck it all.

I just want to pull the trigger and get out of here.

Untitled

I was struggling over a name for this blog for a bit, decided to give up and go the tortured-artist route with "untitled" :P.

iT was SurprisingLy cold YestErday. I was at a wedding in York when I realized that it was about 1ºC outside. Cold enough to stop the heart, even at a wedding.

For all the fervour around weddings, I... I'm not a fan of them. They depress me surprisingly much. I think it's the number of couples I see at a wedding; it's depressing to think that so many people have found someone and I haven't, blah blah blah. I know how formulaic this sounds, but every time I walk into a wedding reception, I get a familiar feeling of tightness around the brain, like someone's squeezing my mind into a head a size too small. I don't know what brings it on, but I venture it's the number of people around me. I have never actually found good conversation at a wedding. Maybe once or twice, but I've never really found anyone entertaining to talk to, despite myself starting conversations and trying to entertain. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't put too much emphasis on that.

Why is it, then, really, that weddings seem to depress some people? Is it the love in the air? I think it's a reminder of things we don't have... yet. At least, I know that's what it is for me - A remembrance of things yet to come, to paraphrase Proust. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to bother with weddings, but that's the antisocial part of me coming to the fore. I'm sure they're entertaining, but other than my best friend's and perhaps my sister's, I haven't really been to a wedding I enjoyed. It's a shame, too.

I think it all comes down to, I wish I had my shit together as these people do. I wish I was in control of my life. There are a thousand arguments around that, so I won't get into it today, but I will just say that. And that's all I'll say for now.

Peace,

K

Manic Monday

Appropriate, isn't it, to have a manic Monday, seeing as how I'm bipolar? Never let it be said that I don't have a sense of humour. Albeit a dark one, but a sense of humour nonetheless. It's shaping up to be an unseasonably warm day out today, 24ºC to be exact, which makes it one of the warmest fall days on record. Despite the clear skies and good weather, I'm a tad depressed - Probably because I've been indulging in a favourite habit a tad too much. Just so you all know, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and I'm going to have to indulge less if I want to keep myself mentally stable :P.

My weekend was good, if a little quiet. Then again, my weekends are always quiet. Discovered a nice new Chinese resto which surprised me quite a bit, as I didn't expect it to be so good for its location.

Despite all the stuff I'm doing to keep myself busy, my life still feels so empty. I don't think anything's wrong, I just feel really empty, like I'm not doing a particular something. Obviously, being unemployed has something to do with it, but still... I can't believe I'm feeling quite so... wiped out. I'm sure there are other teachers in my situation, but it still feels so lonely, I don't know what to do.

Redemption Music

Life has been a strange, up-and-down journey the last two weeks. I'm not going to try and summarize the last couple of weeks, but I will promise to write in the blog more often.

I'm listening to Paul Potts rendition of Music of the Night, that famed piece from Phantom of the Opera. I know it's a populist piece of music and looked at askance by more than a few lovers of theatre, but I have to say, when he does it...

It's a stunning piece of music. It staggers your soul, leaves you reeling.

I'm not here to blather on and on about how much I love a piece of music, or how much music means to me. I'm sure there are a thousand people who can do that with more clarity, passion, and intelligence than me, so I'll just leave it except to say that sometimes, just sometimes... Music hits me harder than I expect it to.

So I'm now volunteering at the local animal shelter, taking the various and numerous dogs for walks, playing with them, generally living out my dog-related fantasies so that I don't have to freak out that mom and dad are probably the most pet-averse people on the planet. THAT is what I call being proactive! Booyakasha! This should prove to be instructive, if not a little harrowing, and most certainly entertaining.

Right, I'm off for a dinner date in a bit, so I ought to get ready. Peace out everybody!

What a week...

Here it is, Wednesday already, and I have a story to tell.

So yesterday I went to the Toronto District School Board's office for a supply teacher orientation session (I've already been hired provisionally, this is just a matter of filling out paperwork, or so I've been told). I met some friends, generally had an interesting time. Until, of course, it turned ugly. Apparently, before I can set foot in a classroom, I have to undergo what is euphemistically called a 'full-disclosure check'. Unfortunately, during the initial interviews in January, I was not told about it, nor was I informed that I'd have to have one, which is odd. It gets worse, though - There's an 8-12 week waiting period to complete the background check and a $50 fee. Add to that a week to get an employment number from the TDSB, plus a week to get subsequent paperwork done, and it's minimum 10 weeks before I can set foot in a classroom. That brings the total of money that I've paid for paperwork alone to at least $400 to prepare for teaching (Licensing fee, background checks, paperwork fees)

That's two and a half months. Conservatively speaking.

All this is making me rethink teaching. Should it really be this much of a struggle to teach? I love teaching - Do I need to wait this long, pay this much, bear this much just to enter the classroom?

All I want to do is teach. I just don't understand what's going on anymore. I really don't. And now I'm facing the question of whether or not I should stay in teaching to do something I love, or leave for greener pastures. It's pathetic; the one thing in the world I really can do and love is the very thing that I'm being prevented from doing. I don't... really know what to do anymore.

Monday Ennui

Hello again. It's the Monday morning report, thought I'd start off with an interesting verse from a Simon and Garfunkel song I had the pleasure of remembering recently.

Hello darkness, my old friend,
Ive come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

It's been a silent weekend for me. By way of explanation I suppose I should point out that I'm not normally a loud and vivacious person, I'm more of a calm, quiet introvert. This weekend I fulfilled that role pretty well, and as a result I've bred a few questions - What's wrong with staying silent? I'm a silent person by nature, I suppose. Leave me alone, and I'm quite a quiet person. I rather like it that way. I suppose it's because for me, silence is comfortable. Like an old blanket that drapes across you. It doesn't demand anything of me, and yet it gives nothing, either. There is often so much noise in our surroundings that we're not given the time to think for the need to listen to what is going on. Instead, I have chosen to ignore the sound and focus on silence. Ignore the rush of what I'm supposed to hear and focus on what I should be hearing. Sometimes, it can be wonderful, and at other times miserably claustrophobic.

I mention all this because I had the (mis?)fortune of attending The Word On The Street festival, a literary festival held in and originating from Toronto every September. A wonderful melange of publishers, writers, seminars, and non-profit groups, WOTS is a great place to spend a Sunday, and maybe $50. Not to mention, it's a wonderful way to greet and pet lots and lots... and LOTS of dogs :).
The mood was unfortunately spoiled by one of my friends. N is a dear friend of mine. We've been friends since university, and know each other quite well. Unfortunately, I also know that she does not have an off switch when talking about her own personal issues. As wonderful, enthusiastic and, well, loud as she is, she treats me as though I'm her gay best friend, when none of that three-word epithet applies. Trapped for an afternoon, listening to a woman who recently broke off her engagement is neither my idea of a good time nor an act conducive to maintaining my mental health. While she pottered on about jobs, personal life, her recent and dramatic history, and several other events I can not name, remember, nor gather any significant emotion for other than apathy, my responses degenerated from lengthy, probing, intelligent questions, to sentences designed to show some agreement as well as my own opinion, to half-sentences, single words, and then phonemic grunts.
My grandmother has a wonderful piece of advice when dealing with people whose only mission in life is to have an audience listen to their problems: Take a Tylenol™ beforehand.
So my question to you, faithful readers, is how you would have dealt with the situation. Would you have stayed with her for the afternoon? Would you have listened and offered advice? Would you be okay with doing what I did?

I ditched her.

That's right, I ditched her. While listening to a terminally bore-ass seminar on some sort of magazine publishing, I wandered off to another seminar tent, assuming she could see me. Lo and behold I looked around, and she was not there. I went back to the space where the previous seminar had been held, and saw nothing. So I had ditched her with her help. Let it be stated for the record, however, that I did not ditch her immediately. Upon entering the space where WOTS was being held, I made a point of introducing the intersection of two streets, and stating that we would meet there if separated - Of course, I went back to this intersection, stayed for a quarter of an hour, and didn't see her. So, I left and went on my own merry way, enjoying not only my freedom, but my blessed silence!

And that, of course, will be where I end my blog, with a soupçon of flair!