The other part of me

I have been blogging about my teaching experience this year, but find I need to balance my life a bit more and I need to rant in a comfortable environment. And so, here I am with an entry to just send "into the atmosphere."

I find lately I am incredibly sensitive to a few things. The economy, healthcare, racism and dealing with all of those things. 

I come from parents who lived through the depression and WWII. This, it seems, does have something to do with who I am as a person. I have a crazy work ethic. I don't understand the idea of a job being beneath me and I hate those who don't deal with their "stuff." I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I have no patience for adults not taking care of stuff.

I spent a summer searching searching searching for a job. I felt no peace until one week before school started I found a job. I am still dealing with the repercussions of living off of unemployment and savings. Today I will get my first paycheck. I was not out of work for long and I am so grateful. I have had times in my life where finances were out of control. In the worst of those instances I was married. I did whatever I had to to make ends meet. 

That included working at Montgomery Ward over the holidays. My parents commented about this situation and how I had a degree and yet found myself working part time retail. I reminded them they had raised me to work and if this was the only job available at that moment, then I had to do it.

My current situation is not quite the same and I want to feel grateful to have a job and I am grateful. But, Watts is far from my house and getting up at 5:00 a.m. each day is exhausting and the drive home is not good. I wonder if it really has to be this way. The answer is yes, it does. This is the reality. I have a job. An actual teaching job and that is what I need to focus on each day. 

So, you can imagine how little patience I have for people who do nothing because they can't be inconvenienced in any way. I say to you, "get over it. Do Something!" Please do something, anything. Take one step forward and be grateful you can take a step. It is unconscionable at this time in history to sit back and think things will change without every single one of us doing something to improve the situation.