Whining and Projecting Myself Onto Others

Sometimes I can’t tell if things are coming together or falling apart. Or maybe it’s all in some eternal holding pattern. Hanging on by a thread at school with no guarantee for employment next year, confusion with the girlfriend and I’m not sure what I can do to strengthen our relationship, constant mental anguish of living at (and consequently, being shackled to) home and, to top it off, the basketball team is 0-5. 0-5!!! And it feels like I’m pulled in several other directions and that I’m neglecting so many people and that I’m letting time and opportunities slip by, but then again…what do I actually do? Teach, coach, sleep, repeat! Well, really, teach, “coach”, surf the web, sleep, repeat. I feel like I’m not being creative or having fun or traveling or enriching myself and I feel like I haven’t done so in years. All of the confidence I have becomes increasingly hollow as I fail to prove it to myself with actions. Even typing this is whiny and self-serving(?) because the word I is repeated a million times and there’s so much pity involved.

But you know what? It’s not pity. It’s simply analysis. It’s just a status report. $ynchronizer’s Log, Stardate 5313.08, to completely geek myself out. There’s this and this and that and that which need adjustment/improvement/addition/cancellation in my life and now they are identified and now they are on the agenda

In other news, I think about some of the eighth graders that I’m teaching and I wish I could follow them all the way through high school.  I can feel it in my bones…that several of them could go to college but they won’t and it would just be so disappointing.  If only I could contact schools today to make them aware:  “There’s this young student, very bright with a fantastic attitude toward his work, his teachers and his classmates and he would be a wonderful addition to your campus and/or research community…in 5 years.  Please be on the lookout for him (or her).”  But how do you even approach a kid about that?  Some of the students I have in mind, when I ask if they’re going, reply with maybes and have never set foot on a campus and can’t distinguish one school from another.  Not that it matters where they go, but I feel that the students must have some opinion on these topics if they are gonna make a realistic attempt to apply (and enroll and finish).  So, I’ll see what I can do.  I’ll give them advice now, but I want to follow up because of my own curiosity…to see how the stories end.