If You're Happy and You Know It ...

I love the children's song "If You're Happy and You Know It (Clap Your Hands)". And I love it more because that's the only verse I am sure of.

Today, however, that song got me thinking. What if you are happy, but you don't know it? *beat* Give that a second to actually sink in. What if you really are happy but you have convinced yourself that you aren't?

I will explain my apostrophe (Hook reference - Mr Smee says "I think I've had an apostrophe" whereupon a very weary Capt'n Hook says "I think you mean an epiphany" -- love that movie. However, I digress ... bringing you back to the point now ... ), it came to me as I was trying to figure out if I liked being back at work or not.

I will have to (badly) explain a joke that made me think of the happy vs not happy thing in the first place: There's this store that sells men and it has seven floors. On each floor there is a type of man and you are free to take one from any floor. Each floor has an improved version. Floor One has a guy who will love you, take out the garbage and remember your anniversary. Well, each floor gets more and more extensive until you get to Floor Seven ... this floor has NO men, it sends you back to the entrance. Reason: If you hadn't found a man by then, there was no pleasing you. The punchline was that no woman ever left with a man because they always want something better.

It got me thinking. What if what you have is already making you happy but you are not seeing it because you are focussing on what you could be having instead?

To relate it back to me, the following: I left my job because I was unhappy there (I do not regret this decision in the least, best thing I've ever done for myself). However --- Now that I am back at the same school and teaching again, I have to wonder what it was that made me unhappy before (don't get me wrong, I have some very concrete ideas on this but none of them negate the absolute enjoyment I get from teaching. I keep talking about teaching ... all the time. People say that it's clear when I talk about it that I have a love for it).

I left because I wanted to discover a job that made me happy. I couldn't possibly be completely fulfilled doing something that was my last minute choice for college (because you could still sign in and I hadn't thought of anything else, yet), could I? Finding your calling in the job world does not happen by fluke, does it? You don't "accidentally" find the job that you love, do you? It can't possibly be a job that got handed to you. Can it? Really? Can it? Because all of the above apply to how I got started at the OSB.

In order to figure this out, I had to do an inventory. I have a few "gimmies" (read: meaning "give me's"), as my math teacher used to call factual components of an equation:
1) I do really love teaching kids the English language.
2) I do really enjoy working with teens and seeing them evolve into adults.
3) I enjoy the system the school I worked at, and am now back at, employs.
4) I enjoy the dialogue between me and my colleagues and, especially, me and the students.
5) I do not like being responsible for other people (read: students) and their conflicts and problems in life
6) I do not like parents (okay, I like some, but not a whole heckuva lot of them).
7) I do not like justifying my methods or reasons to parents or other people.

So, let's just take a step back and draw some conclusions.

My bottom line becomes the following: I love teaching. And, if I must say so myself, I am pretty damn good at it. I do not like being a mentor. I like "having a class" but I do not like the feeling that I am not "solving their problems" enough or making their life better. I realize those are unrealistic goals, but it's what I want to achieve nonetheless and it's frustrating to come nowhere near that goal, year after year.

But why do I immediately think my ideal job should be spotless, free of conflict and any kind of emotional involvement? Why do I think that my perfect job will be one where I don't have to worry, care, work hard, or even hurt? Because some of these kids have made me hurt. And doubt. And worry. And that is really hard. The job that makes me happy shouldn't be (emotionally) hard. Should it?

I thought my conclusion, after writing all of this, would be that, even with the hard stuff, I would still want to do it for the good stuff. But I am still not so sure of that. I really enjoy "just" being a teacher. And I hope that I find a way to keep doing that.

How do I combine what I enjoy with the parts of that job that I deeply dislike?

Am I happy? Do I know it? *clap your hands*

Back to Work I Go

As of tomorrow I will be joining the work force again. After 3½ months of deepest contemplation and soul searching I have decided to put off actually choosing what I want to do in favour of going back to my old job.

Temporarily, of course.

For those out of the loop, I am going to be subbing for an ex-colleague who will be busy giving birth to and then taking care of twins.

I will only be teaching English (and something called Talent For Future), no mentor class and I get to work with my favourite boss, Loes, again.

Wisely, I decided that this weekend was the best choice for doing some non-stop partying and getting absolutely no rest. I have either been drinking, getting drunk, being drunk, sleeping or being hungover this weekend.

It's been fabulous!

Restless as I am, I still think I'll be more than prepared to get back to work tomorrow. Mostly because I have new shoes and a snazzy new haircut. What more could a gal possibly need, right?

My Hair Was Holding Me Back

I have wanted to donate hair to a charity making wigs for children with cancer for years. Today, I finally made the cut (partial pun inteded) and got my act together. I had ±35cm of my hair cut off and I am going to send it to Stichting Haarwensen (http://www.haarwensen.nl/)

And then I felt light-headed! There is literally a weight off! Anyone who has seen my hair "live" knows there was a serious amount of it and now I have been liberated, in a sense. I have an über curly bob and, after 11 hours of it, I can honestly say that I love it.



All curls are natural and ... persistant! I have to say, I am loving it! And the best part ... there's going to be a kid somewhere who gets to wear my hair and feel better for it! WIN!!

Not All of My Ghosts Are Dead

My grandfather died a month and two days before my 16th birthday. The significance of my sweet sixteen is, in fact, not so significant. The thing that has always haunted me about his death is that I never got the chance to say goodbye.

My grandparents lived in Holland and we lived in Germany. So we visited back and forth a lot. My sister, mother and I would spend the largest part of the summer vacation in Holland and my grandfather would bring my grandmother to see us as often as possible.

He was still running a business of his own so he would drive her down to us, stay a couple of days and then go back to Holland. Then he would come to pick her up at the end of her stay. Because of this I spent more time with my grandmother than I did my grandfather.

That March in 1993 he had brought my grandmother and was heading back to Holland, as usual. He was leaving on a school day and it was hectic with two extra people in the apartment. I remember scrambling to get my things together and being annoyed with all the people in my way. Like any typical, surly teenager I was always very touchy about having my faults pointed out to me. Teenagers feel like circus freaks all on their own, add people publicly pointing out those faults and you can expect anything but a "Thank you".

So, when I was told to be more polite and say a proper goodbye to my grandfather the last thing I wanted to do was that. Mostly because I knew it was true and I should.

Instead I managed to grind out the shortest goodbye I could muster without actually disobeying and rushed out the door to the busstop, feeling like the whole world was unfair and why couldn't people just leave me alone?

I never saw my grandfather again. He made it back to Holland, safe and sound, and went grocery shopping a few days later As he was unloading the groceries he stopped to sit at the kitchen table, probably not feeling well, and his heart stopped. He must have gone very quickly. We found out when their neighbour, who found him after investigating why the car trunk was open for so long, called us.

I didn't see him at the funeral, either. I was a big blubbering mess but couldn't bring myself to view his body. I don't regret this so much because I don't believe he was there anymore, anyway.

Aside from moving into the house where he died and a few unexplained occurances there, I can't say that he literally haunted me. Even the odd occurances were comforting when you thought it might be him playing a practical joke.

What haunted me was the guilt of not letting him know, not taking the time or getting over myself for a second, to let him know that I loved him. So simple and yet, at that moment so impossible.

The thing that released me from the guilt was realizing that the whole experience was a wasted one if I didn't learn from it. So, what did I learn from it? It's obvious, right? Tell the people you love that you love them. Don't take people for granted (that one is hard sometimes, especially with the people you really care about) and don't take every criticism personally. More often than not, they are not meant to hurt you but to help you.

I think people get haunted so that they can learn things. Sometimes we learn from someone who died but we can also learn from people who haunt us while they are still alive. I was going to write about them this time but, while trying to put pen to paper it struck me that I can't get to them without talking about Opa first. I guess you could say he was my first ghost.

In my opinion, though, as long as I apply the lessons I learned from - and because of - him, he'll never really die. Ghosts don't have to.