an intensely personal, sometimes whiny post follows. i'm just warning you.

i was offered a teaching position today. i accepted the offer. i'm going to be an 8th grade english teacher for the remainder of the current school year. a job. a real job. a real fucking job. a real fucking teacher. with my own classroom. suddenly i got dealt the most baffling curveballs in my life. this isn't totally unexpected. the interview didn't go all that wonderfully in my opinion, but i knew there was a good chance of getting this job. every one i know has advised me to take this job. so why i am sitting here with such trepidation after already accepting it?

i can answer that. i'm scared of this job. i'm scared of failing for one thing. i've never really failed at anything big in my life. i never came close to failing a class. i excelled at student teaching, at college academically. i made great friends. i didn' make bad decisions. yet here i am terrified of this job. i've gotten use to not having any responsibility, to sort of meandering through life. these past two months and been the about the best i've had in some time. for the first time in a long time i didn't feel lonely or that i didn't have a life ALL the time. of course with denise gone that warm cozy friend feeling goes away. not that i still don't have great friends around. its just that with her around everyone made an effort to hang out and see each other. it felt very "90210-y".

i have to remember how to teach now. holy crap. how do you teach? i have to come up with classroom rules, have to type them out and get them ready for students. i have to plan how i want to structure the discipline in my classroom, how i want to decorate my classroom, let alone all the stuff i'll be teaching. i'm at that scary point now where i'm finally leaving the comfortable nest of college to fly away to the real world and a real job. i guess the big difference is that i don't have room for failures because i have to start performing from day one. that's what teaching is, its a vegas show each and every period.

so do i move home right away and commute from there? so i stay here in my apartment until my lease ends in a month and then move home? decisions, decisions. i like the substitute teaching job where i can have no extra work, just put in my 8 hour day and leave, not work whenever i want. no strings attatched. man, cutting the cord is harder than i thought it would be. i find myself all emotional and terribly sentimental. lucky for denise she has practice at leaving people and places.

i think i need to do a lot of things. i think i should be packing like crazy. i should be calling a few people to see them one last time. if i move home i won't have a single friend there. i won't have anything to distract me from teaching besides the construction on the house and the television. and my dog. i won't have jeff to call up and hang out with way too late on a weekday night. i won't have friday night movies at jeff's. i won't have giles to stop by and see at his apartment. living at home is a very lonely, solitary life. and it looks more and more like that is what i have to do.

there are worse paths to travel in life, much, much worse. this is what i get for being a hyper-sensitive person.