This is what I was born to do

Shawn got the time off; a five day weekend lies ahead. Happy happy happy!

In other news, I decided (formally) not to rely upon on GDJ to give me a job. Though I like the working conditions he proposes (working partly at home, and partly in the office, setting my own hours) I do not like waiting until he gets things sorted out. I also don't like relying on a man who keeps suggesting we have an extramarital affair for anything.

Toward that end, I spent some time finding out what else I could do with myself to keep from growing bored and weird with my stagnant state, and came up with a few things. The pilates class is a good start (could it really make me taller? hehe) and I also got an audition to sing/guitar at a coffee shop on W. Avenue a couple of evenings and/or afternoons a week. That means needing to go get new strings because I haven't replaced my guitar strings for a long time.

I also got a phone call this morning from a local radio station asking if I would do an interview for Spoken Word, as a "local celebrity". This, I thought, was hilarious, because I am NOT a celebrity even in the most broad definition of the word. However, because I toured with the Winnepeg Comedy Festival at one time, and had some of my scripts performed at a professional theatre, this apparently qualifies me to speak on the radio. I laughed when the guy explained what he wanted to do and said, Wow you must be really hard up for someone to talk to! And the guy laughed too and said, Yeah, I am. That, alone, should have been just cause to tell him to piss off.

That, and the fact that I HATE the way I sound on the radio. When C. was working at the radio station back home she always used to get me to come on when she was stuck for material and talk about theatre. (This was, in fact, how I met Noah.) It drove me crazy when she would expect me to be able to talk for twenty minutes but have no questions prepared to keep things rolling. Anyway, I agreed to do a short interview on the condition that he would prepare questions rather than making me deliver a monologue, and he promised.

Beyond that, I think I have finally got my papers in order to return to teaching in the public system. Ironic how hard I fought to get OUT of that system, how many different things I tried in my desperation to find a job that made me feel appreciated -- and having been up and down that road, I now realise that I truly am happiest working with the crazy-confused-and-lost adolescents of junior high school. Weird. The hiring situation isn't too great out here, though, and it may be a bit of a wait to get something. My eight years of experience makes me too expensive, I fear, to hire as quickly as a fresh-out-of-school teacher. Still, I'm hoping for the best and feeling optimistic now that I finally got the right papers filled out.

There's also been time to do some real thinking about~ things - something I'd completely forgotten during my time overseas - and have been feeling more settled inside that part of my true self than I have in a significantly long period of time. Years, even. Being able to talk about things I haven't really talked much about has helped a lot. I am getting a better handle on what is different about me; why certain things work and why some of the old standbys just don't, and I am feeling more okay than ever about not being the same. Fitting into a community is no longer a concern, and neither is comparison. It's not the quick-fix I'd hoped it would be, but being honest with myself makes the journey less painful, and even enjoyable.