we fear the slightest unknown. or maybe that fear camps on to the larger one of the big unknown (whatever that is; it’s unknown.) here i am trying to cobble together an acceptable life, seeming to make something work and yet doubting it, prematurely. how will this all work? why am i doing this? how can they be letting me do this?
today i drive to Wimauma to meet a woman at the rec department there. I’m to be her new art teacher and offer an hour of crafts beginning sometime in the next week or two, twice a month. I haven’t done “crafts”, of course, since i was the children’s age, although i remember doing them in elementary school. I have no idea what to do, but I am reminding myself that i will figure it out. The other art teachers seem to be college kids who are quite adept at this. I, on the other hand, am an artist who has no clue. my stomach hurts. one step at a time.
they haven’t paid me yet at NOLA. They must owe me a couple hundred bucks by now, for my little shifts here and there. Yesterday i did a double shift during the lunch rush. I wasn’t supposed to, but Tom didn’t show up until I was leaving, with no explanation. It wasn’t even very busy, but it was just awful, i made lousy tips for it because i just couldn’t handle all the tables, with Carmelo snarling “don’t write crab, write corn,” where Tom had insisted “It’s not corn, it’s crab.” I won’t be going anywhere near lunch again, it’s 7-11 for me if they ever schedule me again, that’s for sure. which they will, but will they ever pay me? all the time I’m there, I’m thinking what the hell am i doing? Oh yeah, i’m filling in while i study for the english teaching certificate. i ended unemployment last saturday with this new schedule in place.
what is this English teaching certificate, again? oh yeah, it’s the “mid"-career change that will give me something employable. I got the list of resources from the program yesterday, although i haven’t had a chance to look at it yet--after working 16hours straight and then a double today, i fell asleep. when i glanced at it yesterday afternoon it seemed a bibliography; is there no curriculum? no, no, don’t worry about that, you’ll figure it out. why did you want to do this anyway, because Rhonda said you should be an art teacher like her and they don’t have an “art” certification track? oh, yeah, that career change thing for the next dozen years or so.
i called charles washington last night. we hadn’t talked for over a month, when he said he’d call me back on thursday with info from the woman he needed to talk with about me, but not to freak if it wasn’t exactly thursday. i never heard from him again. I called last night because i had some progress to report (the rec job beginning and the certification program starting.) he wasn’t there, of course; i left a message. he had been talking about getting me “on board” maybe as early as this spring sometime, and i had been thinking “whoa”!
Whoa! no, wait, not whoa, i need the work! do i want the work, i’m working toward this, what is it? oh don’t think about any of that, just do. but if I just do for some months and THEN realize I hate it, I will have run through my “seed” savings (which i borrowed from most of my suspended retirement) and won’t have any resources at all with which to change. oh, don’t worry about that. you’ve decided to do this, whatever “this” is. It’s unknown. it must needs doing. it just feels like too much all at once, aren’t i too old for too much? no, breathe. calm. you can do this. next year you can stop to decide if you like it.
now to find those three additional realtors to start thinking (breathe) about selling my land to pay off bills.