Sunday 23 May 2010

Steps

So this week has been a busy one. I have been scurrying around trying to arrange everything I need for September. I am surprised by how much I'm getting done. I am usually from the school of procrastination (why do anything today when it can be put off until tomorrow!), but without prompting or prodding I have pushed on through the 'to do' list.

The main practical hurdles I have to jump before I head to Wales are to spend some time observing in a Secondary School and learning to drive. The first easier than the second but both fairly time consuming.
I have filled in lots of forms, applied for student finance, organized some school observation, renewed my provisional driving license and sent off for my Criminal Records Bureau check.

All in all a very productive week and a positive step.

Friday 14 May 2010

The things not said

This is a long one so please stick with it. At the end of this week I sit in a very different place to where I started it. At the beginning of the week I was at the stage where I was living just in the present. This may sound like an easy task, but for me it was a huge step forward.

My entire life I've spent living many lives simultaneously. My brain would race on ahead planning out every eventuality to a decision before it was made, whilst also playing through how they would be different if I had made a different choice before that. On the plane of my life there were so many hypothetical scenarios that I felt immobilized by them. I know from talking to others that this is linked to my ME. Quite how I'm unsure, but it is something every ME sufferer I've spoken to deals with. I have conversations that happen with people in my head that are so accurate I have trouble remembering if they really happened. I think through problems so thoroughly that by the time I voice my answers they sound like fact, when I have in fact made them up. I create whole worlds in my head where I can lose myself for hours at a time (sometimes whilst actually going about daily activities, including conversations with people!).

These are kinks in my brain that I have long since recognized as unchangeable parts of myself. Some of these I would not give up for anything as they are the source of my creativity and because I feel lonely without that constant companion in my mind. Others I have wished I could rid myself of.

Finally I achieved this. I have spent the last 3 weeks living in the now, making decisions as they arose and then moving on without any analysis. I have not obsessed about anything. This is huge progress. My not blogging for a while has helped with this. The temptation is always too strong not to dissect everything here, so I haven't.

The trouble came this week because I have news I want to share here. I have not talked about a decision I made 6 weeks ago or the events that followed because I did not want to think about it. I have waxed lyrical here about every move I've made in the last year and every time I have had to come back here and explain that it had not worked out. I didn't want to do that this time so I kept it to myself. I guess I will be telling the whole story in one go, so please bare with me on this mammoth sized posting.

At Easter I re-evaluated what I wanted and how I could get it and still enjoy myself. I knew wanted to get out of Norfolk, I wanted to teach and that one day I would like to be in a position to do my MA. I decided that I might have chosen the wrong age group to teach (there are reasons for this I may go into another time).

I applied for a teacher training course in Secondary level English in Aberystwyth (Wales). I viewed this as a long shot, thinking realistically I had no experience in that age group, and that I would need to re-apply next year.

3 weeks ago they asked me to go for an interview. It was a 6 hour drive each way. I thought the journey would be hell but it was easy compared to the interview. I left the interview feeling like I had been run over. I was not hopeful, but as soon as I left the interview I forgot about it. I figured there was nothing I could do from that point so I got on with my life.

Wednesday They offered me a place on the course. I was stunned. There are some hoops they want me to jump through before I arrive but none that are insurmountable. I have gone from not thinking ahead to having to as there is so much to do. Now though I get to concentrate on practical things not hypothetical scenarios that will never happen.