Tired

I don't even know where to begin. I guess by saying I've had a rough week. Besides being sick work has been emotionally and physically hard. Having to restraint a first grader who has a nose bleed and is spraying blood everywhere (including all over me, and ruining my sweater) is not my idea of a good day. Having to take care of sick students while you aren't feeling well yourself is never fun. But today, today did it for me.

I was actually having a really good day, and the students were having a good day too. Until I got a call from the principal at the middle school where I was supposed to be coaching. He basically said that because I am paid hourly I am not able to coach. Coaches get paid a lump sum for the season, and an aide gets paid hourly. As I type this I am still trying to wrap my head around this concept, it doesn't even make sense. Why does it matter if I get paid hourly for one job and a lump sum for another? I just don't get it. The thing that really makes me upset is he is telling me this 3 days before the season is suppose to start. 3 days. Really. I have already volunteered with the dance put on by the athletic department to raise money for sports teams, attended the coach's clinic and gone by the school to pick up the rules book and other things. And that doesn't even include all the time I've spent putting things together for tryouts and practices. Oh yeah, they hired me 3 months ago!

The thing that really makes me upset, and if I'm brutally honest, truly tired is when the principal said

"It's because your not a teacher. "

I'm soooo tired of hearing that, not actually spoken by others all the time, but in my mind. "No I don't get paid for snow days." "No I don't have health insurance through my work." "No I don't get a summer break, I don't get paid in the summer!" I'm not a teacher.

It's been 3 years now. 3 years since I started this journey. And honestly, if I would have known all the crap I would have had to deal with I wouldn't have chosen this path. Maybe I should have just stayed in a job that pays well even though I was so unhappy. I don't know, I honestly believe that God has called me to this profession, but right now I am seriously doubting it.

I was starting to feel like finally things were falling into place. I finally had a job in my field, and was hopeful that it might lead to an art teaching position somehow, somewhere. I finally got a coaching position, something I was really looking forward to, another job in my field. And despite what things looked like at times I believed that God was working it all out and bringing it together somehow.

Part of the reason I started this blog was because I wanted a place to document this journey. The journey towards obtaining my goal. So I am going to publish this post, in hopes of one day looking back and seeing how far I have come. Seeing how I overcame obstacles (and believe me I have had plenty when it comes to finding a teaching position). But, right now I honestly don't believe it anymore. I don't see how this is going to work out. And I hate that. But I'm being real.

 I got a crappy student teaching placement. I have had the hardest time finding a teaching position. And now I have been offered a job and then had it taken away, for some rule that doesn't even make sense. And I'm tired. I'm tired of making the sacrifices. I'm tired of making nothing. I see on my tax forms how much money I made in 2010 and it's depressing. I'm tired of being around teachers all the time, and not being one. I'm tired of getting so upset because I'm passionate about something and it just doesn't seem to be working out. I'm tired of always being the volunteer, the substitute, the aide. I always try to see the silver lining, the upside of things.

But right now I am tired of that too.