Heading for the great ramble in the sky

So, where from here?

I have a plan.

So far, the plan is on track – it has optimism-bias (pessimism) and R&R built in.

But the emotional bit can’t be planned for – only dealt with.

It’s over two months since I last did any work, and that was a course.  The plan says: R&R; socialising; birthdays; improving Spanish to a point where I can understand colleagues, students and speak to them; develop a working knowledge of English grammar (thanks, education system, for making the assumption that as factory-fodder I’d never need it); and brush up on English teaching to fill some gaps.  Oh, and look for work.

Most of that is on schedule.  With the help of a lovely generous friend, my cv and covering letter are ready to hawk around the schools this week.  R&R, socialising, birthdays – yep, I’m on top of that one.  Spanish. 

I don’t know why, but I never thought it would be so hard.  Or maybe I did. 

I can recall thinking that I wouldn’t be happy living somewhere where I didn’t understand what was being said or what was going on.  I also remember telling myself (credit, of course, to everyone who’s said it to me first) that it would be a year before I began to understand.  But there’s thinking it, and there’s doing it.

Sometimes things get me down.  As with anyone.  I know that, and I’ve managed my expectations.  But that takes energy and I was exhausted by the time I moved here and finished the CELTA course.   I’ve told that story already.  The R&R has helped.  No doubt about it.  If I’d carried on, I’d have hit the wall by now.  You have to listen to your body, as the cliché goes.  You have to listen to your mind and your emotions, too.

The weariness I have now is creeping lethargy from a number of things: a lack of adrenaline-situations – I lived on that for quite a while in my old job; the effort of trying to learn this language – I can’t thank my lovely friends and supporters enough for pushing me, and they have turned the screws in the last few weeks; and from the fear and, let’s face it, I’m shitting myself, at the thought of walking into a class and starting to teach (me? teach English?).

I’m putting effort in with the Spanish – reading, listening, taking advantage of the generous efforts of my friends.  I’m reading English teaching aids and books that I should have started weeks ago – watching videos of classroom techniques (when I finish writing this), and organising plans from the lessons I taught on the course.  I hope it’s enough.  It’s really about giving me some confidence for when I take my cv into the academies later this week.  I’m naturally self-critical, which can be a fatal self-inflicted wound in these situations.

Then there’s the environment.  Politics.  War.  Does it depress you?  It depresses the hell out of me.  I read celticman’s brilliant blog this morning.  True, true, true.  All of it, from what I can see – his research and his memory are better than mine.  But, yes, I concur.  I also yearn for those days, for that mentality, set of values, where the greater good wasn’t a term that applied only to a handful of school-chums. 

You could argue that a lot of the social security (let's rehabilitate that term, celt) that is being dismantled right now originated under the Roosevelt administration and became oh, so dull under Eisenhower and perhaps Macmillan.  The Sixties Revolution (Fifties, too, maybe, including my hallowed Beats) was also largely responsible for undermining the cosy, comfortable “We’re all in this together” arrangement, within which the British Welfare State was born.  The Sixties movement for change championed the rise of the individual.  It may have clenched its fist and waved a red banner in the streets, but it planted the seed for naked individualism, selfishness and greed.  What we're witnessing now is a continuing process carried forward by successive Conservative governments since 1979 and prosecuted with some zeal under Blair.

I commented on celticman’s blog that what worries me is he could storm the studios of Strictly Come Dancing and X-Factor and deliver his findings and his manifesto (although he would've had to have done it in the summer and survived the cutting-room floor), but the viewers would simply switch to another entertainment channel until he had finished or been shot “to death” by the rapid-response unit.  The viewers are not interested in being saved.  You could argue that, apart from the weary troops returning from WWII, they never were.  It’s why socialism is characterised by the liberal middle-class riding in to save the suffering working-class – many of whom hadn’t worked out that they were suffering.  Agh!

So here I am in a noticeably more passionate Spain, watching all this happening in Britain – the country that is home to family, friends and loved ones, many of whom depend, or soon will,  on the kind of services that are being eroded, as set out in celticman’s blog, to fund the return to wealth and splendour – a temple of individual ambition (read greed).

No wonder I’m so f-ing tired.

Anyway, Just Parson Thru Volume 2 is available on Amazon for Kindle (£0.99 – I couldn’t make it free) or I can send you a PDF if you prefer.