you are me. Just saying. Because I got my meds doubled today - the NP noted I am still depressed, low motivation, all that junk. Agreed. Migraines may be unrelated to the Prozac, since those side effects usually crop up during the initial build-up phase. Suggested I go see my regular doctor. Yay. I will have to take a day off next Friday for my follow-up, which is OK since I can also schedule my pre-diabetes thing that day, too. Got to use up personal days since they don't roll over or anything, and no sense working myself into the ground any more than I am already doing.
Plenty of free floating anxiety, and most of it I am creating myself and magnifying for no good reason. I will do fine teaching, and once I am in the classroom it always (ok, usually) goes well. Yes, I haven't blocked out the five hours for the first session of my grad school prep class - that should take at most one evening, but I am still stressing. I am jumpy, nervous, twitchy inside where it doesn't show to the world, but I can feel it and I can't stop it. Why now? The NP asked this, too, and I couldn't answer it. By all measures I should be fine - I have a stable job that I am good at, financially we are doing OK on my salary plus the extras like selling blood, teaching a class here and there, plus wife's hours at the yarn store, teaching knitting, and working on a couple of publishing projects. So why the hell am I constantly freaked out?
And as a bonus, last night we got prank calls every 30 minutes or so starting at 10:30 from some former students (catholic school) who are now in 9th grade. Sounded like a sleepover and prank call dare, but it opened old wounds because of the accusations these children made at the time that resulted in my not returning. Yes, probably all for the best - I just wish I could rub their actions in the face of the decision maker at the time and show him that these kids saw what they fabricated as a prank, and the adults in the situation didn't bother to address it, but swept me away.
I keep thinking that what I really want is to be able to live by working at a job that I don't take home with me, so when I am away, I am away and I don't think about it, don't work on it. I will still be a responsible, yankee-minded employee, and do my best all the time, but I don't want the specter of responsibility for the bigger picture looming over me. I like teaching, but the burden of forcing learning on an unwilling and unprepared audience so they can be measured by a single test is crushing me. Just let me do what I know, in my own way, at my own pace and I will deliver the kids ready when you want them. But instead there are pacing charts, performance indicators, evaluations to show that we are crossing every "t" and dotting every "i" - and then, even when it fails despite doing everything possible, it is STILL the teacher's fault. Let me out - I think I am done.
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