Life, or something like it…

I think I will take some minutes to procrastinate away from packing to write…I feel the urge to write, but I’m not sure what will come out.

Work has still kept me pretty busy. Friday was the end of my first quarter at my new job. I have now taught Computer and Windows Basics, PowerPoint Basics, and GroupWise Basics, in addition to the Excel and Word classes that I had taught before. For the most part, all five classes went very well. There was one participant in a couple of my classes that was highly disruptive – not to mention incompetent to boot. Out of all the people that really needed to have that class, she did little to make use of my time, and instead took away from the other participant’s enjoyment. She had the audacity to stroll into my eight hour Computer and Windows Basics class after three hours had gone by, and acted like I should have restarted for her benefit. In fact, I had other people come up to me expressing their wishes that this person wasn’t in my classes, but unfortunately, there isn’t much I can do about it. She’s actually an elected official, and the beauty of government is that we are always kissing the asses of elected officials. Joy…

Anyway, today my boss sat down with me and gave me an informal, mini “quarter year” Performance Appraisal. For the most part, I am doing very well. My class reviews are top-notch, including lots of excellent ratings and people classifying me as a very patient instructor (ha, that gets a good laugh out of me). He is pleased with my work developing and expanding the classes to suit my needs/abilities/interests/talents, and in fact, I was told that I taught the Computer and Windows Basics class better than the previouos Training Specialist had! That made me feel proud, because I knew I had big shoes to fill from the last two specialists, but I am making my own path. It feels real good too. It’s still a big adjustment, and there are days where I am super beat after work, but things are getting better every day. The worst days are when I facilitate New Employee Orientation, because aside from learning about benefits, the material can be presented in handout form – plus no one wants to be there, least of all me. But that’s usually going to happen no more than once a month, so I can deal with that. My next goals for this job are redesigning and teaching the Business Writing Skills, Access Basics and Intermediate PowerPoint courses, expanding an Excel Formula Workshop into a truer Intermediate Excel Class, and eventually putting on Spanish workshops. I also have a lot of demand for my existing classes, so we will see how well I do with added pressure.

Recently my life has been filled with just about nothing but pressure. There are several things going on, including the fact that in the past couple months or so, fighting with Travis has become more frequent and more intense. Downright ugly would be a good way to decribe it, actually. There was a stretch where we had three nasty fights three days in a row, and it took a lot out of me. A lot of nasty things have been said and more nasty things have happened. These fights were over a lot of things that I choose not to go into detail about here, but one that really stood out to me was that once again I was accused of “pining away over someone who has been dead”, once again in reference to Jordan (I had forgotten that this had happened almost around this same time last year, and remembered it the other day reading back old diary entries. Huh). For me, it has been a long and painful process to let the past be the past, and aside from the occasional dream, it is the past. It is about who is here today, and not the past. That said, I know lately I have been feeling like just about everything I say and do is wrong, and it really is an off-putting feeling. I’m not sure what this all means in the grand scheme of things, but I know fighting sucks and takes so much out of me. It makes me want to retreat within myself more and more, or pull away.

Saturday was the March/April Birthday Bone-anza, and of course being an April birthday, my presence was required 🙂 For good measure, the drink highlight of the evening was a giant cooler mixed hurricane – can we say, weakness? – made just about as close to Sandbar goodness possible. Yummy. I know I drank heartily from there! There were many aspects of the night that were absolutely wonderful and fun, spent with some great people. And then there were some ugly ones. One bad was that at one point, I was laying on a futon, asleep/groggy and there was one unwelcome guy kinda all over me, and it caused another massive fight between Travis and me. I even had to find another way home from the party, because I was left there; thanks to a good new friend, I was able to make it home okay. That issue has now been resolved though. And the good outweighed all the bad at the party, so in the end there is plenty of balance.

Let’s see, what else is new? Lately I have also been re-evaluating the big picture in my life, and the biggest aspect of this is grad school. I am seriously, seriously looking at getting started on my MBA as soon as possible. I know I have talked about this before, but recently there has been a greater fire within me to get this accomplished. I am more determined than ever to have this piece of paper. I know it will be very difficult to find a balance for school within all the other aspects of my life, but it will need to be done.

In the meantime, this Wednesday it is finally time to go back to Miami, yay! There are plans to visit my mom, for a Panthers/Thrashers game (center ice baby, like the old days at Miami Arena!), a Heat/Pistons game, three Miami Hurricanes/North Carolina baseball games, hopefully a Marlins game, visits to Sandbar and the Tavern, and of course, tons of beach and sun. Beach and sun are of course my two favorite drugs, and I plan on taking them in large doses. And of course any vacation is greatly welcomed!