November 30th Horror-scope
I read this at the end of the day and found it to be quite ironic given the events of the day and my current state of mind. It's sorta odd how these things have been so accurate this week...
Your harsh judgments about yourself may come to the surface today, but you might not be clear as to the underlying reason. You think that you won't get what you want, but you probably cannot see the big picture. You must wait until the current situation plays through. Although your actions may not have much impact now, everything can change in just a few days.
Wanted: New Lease on Life
I've just finished a really long haul of working both during actual work time and a lot of extra curricular obligations, and now I feel lost. I'm not sure what to do with my time. It's not like there isn't a long list of things I need to be doing, it's just that that long list isn't very enticing: cleaning, sorting, organizing. The problem is that I have this other list of things I want to be doing but know I don't have enough time to do them well enough for my liking.
I was having a conversation with a colleague this weekend about how I'm thinking about starting a new project. He told me I shouldn't because I'm doing too much as it is. I didn't like that. I hear that from people all the time but I disagree because the stuff that I'm doing isn't something I love. I don't count the 'job' as something I'm doing - I count that as something I'm surviving. If it were conducting, or research, or something, I'd be all for it but I'm not doing that stuff. I'm banging my head against the wall preparing for classes that I don't want to be dealing with and am in constant survival mode.
So how do I stop? I've been told time and time again that I'm a workaholic and I don't think that's true. I can do nothing and have for most of today. I am the biggest procrastinator I know. How do I start to like my job again and feel fulfilled in my work? Sometimes I feel the actual teaching part gets in the way of all the things I'd like to be doing with my job - how warped is that? Other times it's the other way but not as often. But hang on, maybe I'm confusing teaching with classroom management and discipline. I think that may be it. I'm burning out and fast due to the lack of discipline in the classes.
I'd like to think I've very good at classroom management, but I'm also thinking that I'm stagnating in my actual teaching abilities which is leading to bored students which in turn are disruptive. So then I get frustrated with my job and want to be doing something else. I can't be good at my job if I don't research things and prepare but I don't have time to research and prepare if I'm involved in job and extra curricular things. Then again, if all I do is continue to work like I am, I will be one of the many teachers that burn out after their fifth year. I don't want to be a statistic. I need a vacation.
Continued Obsession
I'm suppose to be sleeping but I'm surfing the web instead. I'm suppose to be doing a lot of work but I'm dreaming about other work I'd like to be doing.
I'm obsessed with the notion of travelling to a conducting camp/workshop/symposium/something and more specifically one in a far off land that would cost me buckets of money and likely a lot of stress. The past... um.... 40 minutes I've spent researching everything I could about this camp from location to organizers. Then I obsessed about the money and thought there must be something in North America I could go to instead, found a whole bunch of other things I'd never heard of before, got overwhelmed and logged onto blogger. *Sigh*
I was reading the various repertoire lists from these camps and though one of the following: "yup - I could do that," "what the hell is that?", or "ooo - tough but good."
Then I obsessed over the organizers of these 'new' camps. I don't want to go somewhere and feel like I'm wasting my time but then again - who the hell am I to say I know everything? These are the people who are "THEE PEOPLE" (so I'm told), therefore I'm likely to get something out.
Now to stop talking about it and actually do it.
This is a test
Part I - the background
I wrote a bunch of things down a bit ago in order to organize my thoughts. While I was writing, my initially sporadic ideas because very organized, almost - and yes, this sounds weird, almost poetic. I haven't written in a very long time and no one, other than me, has ever read my writing.
I use to write a lot. I use to write everything that happened to me and to those around me and it was in a more narrative style - like a raging teen aged rant more than anything. It's been close to 5.. maybe 8 years since I've actually written something that I have never intended anyone to read. My current writing habits are extremely academic and not at all containing any truly personal insight about a topic.
This was a totally different experience. To use a poetry term, it was free verse initially and then morphed into a dialogue or sorts that never lead to anywhere, it just was. What was also weird, was the form the writing took - I'm talking the actual 'what it looked like' on the paper. It was like lines of writing on a blank piece of paper but if you looked at it from far away, it looked like the lines of words were woven in a sort of checkerboard pattern. This just came out of necessity as I was running out of room but not things to say and I needed to keep writing. I never thought I'd say that - "needed to keep writing."
Part II - the question
Do you think that writing for the explicit intent of personal expression is as valuable as creating for an audience?
