Sunday, December 26, 2004
(small warning - this changes half way through from a rant to yet another slightly philisophical post about clouds that may or may not require some thought... )
do i really have time to write this? i need to be cleaning or organizing or reading or... something else to keep my mind off of things that i'd rather not be thinking about... if i start this, i'll have to sit here til i finish, otherwise i'll lose my train of thought and never get it back... so... do i start? do i really want to get into this now? ever?
...ok... so instead i straightened my room and cleaned out the coffee pot that Cat lives in.... now there's sunlight in my room and i don't know if i can do this anymore... but i need to.... arg...
ok, so today was a bad day. Remeber the book Alexander and the Horrible No Good, Very Bad Day, or something like that? That's what my day felt like. I woke up somehow knowing it was not a good day. I was in a bad mood. I had to teach children's church, and I still didn't have a very good idea of what I was going to do. Last time I planned way too much and ended up only having two kids, both very young, so most of the stuff I planned, I couldn't use. This time, I was expecting those two, perhaps two others. But instead I ended up with 6, which isn't really that uusual. I'm in there by myself and am used to having up to 10 or so kids (age 3- 3rd grade) in there... Which is possibly why I always want to pull my hair out... Well, today, I didn't have enough goldfish, I shouldn't have had enough kool-aid, except that half the sugar I put in didn't dissolve, so it was all on the bottom and the stuff tasted horribly. Two of the kids were 5th grade or so, so I tried to change what little of a lesson I did have to keep them interested, which meant I lost the youngest kid... Well, and then there were the twins.... sigh... that never works.... nothing went right, everything was awful, not as bad as it has been in the past, but awful all the same. When I got in there, one of them was telling her friend that I was teaching today and that I was always "fun". I didn't feel fun today. I felt like I let them all down horribly. They didn't really learn a verse, they didn't really get anything out of the story, and I was scrambling trying to find something for them to do the whole time - the game I had planned would've been fine, for two... arg... So then I get home and drop the remaining kool-aid when I'm trying to get out of the car carrying all this junk and managed to get kool-aid all over both shoes and my pants... then during lunch, I manage to drop a chip w/ cheese dip stuff all over it onto my electric blanket/throw/whatever it is that i got for Christmas...
all that's bad, and no fun all around, but the worst thing was, all day i've been thinking... thinking isn't generally considered a bad thing..... generally... but when it's all really depressing stuff, it just makes your mood worse, and tints all the stuff that goes on in the day with a not so flattering light.... and.... arg...
one thing today brought up was the age old question that inevitably gets brought up... why in the world am i teaching? it seems like i'm always questioning my choice to be a teacher... if this is where i'm supposed to be, why do i question it so much? why do i come out of children's church every month drained and discouraged? sure, once or twice a year, there might be a good Sunday, but the rest of the time... no matter how much effort i do or don't put into it, it's a mess... so why am i still an elementary ed major?
i know a lot of the problems are my fault. i know sometimes, i could be more organized, have activites better suited for the age group (although, with the ages being so spread out, it's a little hard to do so), and be prepared for various numbers of people. part of me wants to blame it on the fact that i never have help in there, that it's just me. but then again, i'm going to be a teacher with, more than likely, far more than a handful of kids to keep track of. so why is this so difficult? why do i always come out of there discouraged?
sometimes i wish i could take a break, but that wouldn't really do any good. i only teach once a month anyway, and when i take a break from doing something, it doesn't generally help anything in the long run. i took a break from stain glass, never went back. i took a break from actively working w/ calligraphy, and i rarely go back and when i do it's harder. of no choice of mine, i "took a break" from band after graduation. i could've gone somewhere else, where i could've played. i could've joined the band that my band director told me about - although i would've killed myself trying to fit that into my schedule as well... so now, my tone gets worse everyday, my fingers don't move as fast as they used to, and i just get all around worse. yes, i play twice a week at church, but it's the same songs time after time, with no challenge generally at all... i took a break from drafting, and never did go back and take my second year of it... there are countless unfinished pieces of writing all over the place... sigh... okay, that was a really depressing rabbit trail.... but it's true.. if i "take a break" from anything, more than likely i'm never likely to finish it. somehow that fit into my current rant...
sometimes i wonder why the education classes that i should be enjoying and learning so much from, i brush off as unimportant and not challenging, which means i could care less about the assignements. i'll do them. i wouldn't dream of not doing them - being "responsible" is engrained too deeply in me, but i find myself over and over again, turning in projects and assignments that are far below my standards of acceptable. i get good gades on them, but i don't like them. when i look at them, not only do i see the careless work, but i see the careless attitude that created them. and i don't like that.
i don't know if it's the fact that i'm a perfectionist or if it would help if i changed majors or what... i don't like what i'm becoming... this is not acceptable.
............................................................................
ok, so i've just destroyed a perfectly good confused, ranting mood....
i made the mistake of laying down, b/c i didn't have the energy to sit up and try to put my thoughts down in writing anymore... and then i looked out the window... the sky's a flat blue. it's a pretty blue. but it's nothing more, nothing less. it could be the sky above the beach in destin that reaches down to the stormy waves that beat against the sand and stole the sand out from under our feet as we stood on the shore... it could be the sky in west texas a decade ago that watched as we played in a field full of blue bonnets... it could be the cold unfogiving sky in santa fe where we went skiing... it could be the sky that radiated heat every august while we stood at attnetion during band camp..... it could be... anything... it is neither hot nor cold, welcoming nor forbidding, neither here nor there... it carries no characteristics that make it unique to this place... there's nothing to love, or to hate really. depending on your mood, it could be soothing or infuriating.. it's just a flat, blue sky.
what keeps a sky from being flat and lifeless? what gives it defining characteristics that seperate it from all the other skies? what makes it worth remembering? what gives it personalitiy?
clouds.
whether they're feathered accross the sky like sand under the surface of a clear stream or piled up a mile high like an unstable child's statue, they define the sky. they make it what it is. which in a way means that they define your memories and your mood.
without clouds, it's flat. uncomplicated, but flat. lifeless. dull.
clouds are like events in our life. they always offer the possibility of good. there's always something beneficial that can be found in them.
they can be slight wisps that add colorful shading to our peronality, maybe a strange quirk here or there that we picked up through the years.
they can be long drawn out events in our life that never seem to end, and are so complicated and dense that we can't find our way in the dark. so forbidding looking that others are scared off and we often find ourselves seemingly alone in the face of the storm. but in the end, they bring rain which allows us to grow (of course, along those same lines, if you don't grow, you're in danger of being swept away in the torrents and of drowning beneath the restless waters).
there are various other clouds: clouds that provide shade, rest from life's daily troubles; clouds in various shapes to provide hours of relaxing amusement, clouds that make you think and use the imagination that God gave you; clouds that hide the sky and sometimes imitate it, causing you to doubt and wonder, and in the end hold fast to the hope that God grants abundantly; clouds that seem like all the other clouds, like the mundane day to day activites in our lives that we pay little attention to, although if you looked close enough, you could find the differences and see each one as a special masterpiece of the Creator......
but without clouds, the sky is flat. clouds are necessary, just as various events in our lives are necessary.. if you had an uneventful life, a life offering no challenges, a flat, boring escalator, or even moving sidewalk kind of life, i think i called it once, then, what would be the purpose? what would be the fun in that? if you've never experienced sorrow or despair or frustration, could you truly appreciate what it is to be joyful or hopeful? i mean, truly appreciate it?
of course, you could add in the fact that the sky is also defined by its surroundings: trees, water, birds. you could mention the fact that a sky holding a flock of birds is different than one w/o any, that the people we let into our lives change it... you could mention the fact that some sunsets in all their radiance were made to be displayed against a mountain, that some people were created to and are such that they thrive in certain environments.... that your environment effects who you are.... but i don't feel like getting into that too much...
one last thing, before i finish my former rant, now just another of the many posts about clouds....
some of the most beautiful and breathtaking sunsets that i have ever seen played off of countless numbers of clouds in different forms and sizes... the wisps, and the towering giants, and everything in between, all came together at the end of the day so that the colors of the sun could be displayed in creative and unique work of art that couldn't ever be duplicated and was both timeless and memorable...
