Honestly

I have a tendency to be overly optimistic. I don't like to dwell on the negative. I look on the bright side. I don't really know why I do this. I'm going to give it to you straight here. It's not that I don't want people to feel sorry for me because sometimes I do. (It's no secret that I enjoy the attention.) I really don't want people to think that I am looking for sympathy because really I'm not. I'll take it, but I'm not asking for it. Anyway, I'm not feeling particularly sunny today so I'm telling you like it is. I've fallen on hard times. That's my line at least, but it's not so far from the truth. In the last two weeks, I have lost two things that were very important to me: my grandmother and my job. I don't particularly like clumping them together like that because my grandmother was far more important to me than my job, but the fact that I lost them both at the same time puts them in the same sentence.

Sidenote: I was a psychology major in college. The day I learned about repression, it was like a light bulb went off. Repressing things is my coping mechanism. (If you google this, I am talking about memory repression not Freud's creepier pleasure repression.) I didn't know what it was until then, and I literally remember the classroom I was in when I first heard the term. That is something I did not repress. At that point in life, I was thinking of childhood memories I'd repressed for who knows why. But generally in my life I have found that I ignore all the bad things going on...like just pretend they don't exist. That's how I maintain my sunny disposition, but unfortunately, that's not real and eventually the bad stuff creeps up. Anyway...

I have nothing bad to say about my grandmother. She was a saint. We will all miss her, but I know that she is in a better place. I have strong faith in God and heaven and am at peace with her passing, but it is still sad. It all happened really fast so it was hard to process. There was a really nice article in The Star Press.

The main source of my edginess is my current state of semi-unemployment. I don't like to think about this, let alone talk or write about it so I am just going to write really fast and not worry too much about how it sounds. Cool? Cool. So most of you know that I was in the Indianapolis Teaching Fellows which is a transition to teaching program that puts you through six weeks of training in the summer then throws you in the classroom in the fall. It is a good program designed to get good people in high needs schools in a hurry. It's honestly not designed to create amazing teachers in six weeks, but give good people the tools they need in six weeks so they can figure it out in the following two years and eventually become amazing teachers. Since most people are placed in inner city schools where they are thrilled to have somebody who cares. The teaching fellows have programs in a lot of cities in greater need than Indianapolis as well. Well, IPS didn't have enough jobs for all of the people in my cohort so we applied at charters and township schools. I was lucky enough to get a job in Wayne Township. I was thrilled, and still feel fortunate to have been given that opportunity. I quickly found out that teaching was a lot harder than it looks. My parents were both teachers (my mom still teaches) and I had no idea how hard it was. So right away it was a shock and an incredible amount of work. On top of that, I did coach the volleyball team, which a lot of people like to put a lot of blame on for my current situation - I'm not sure how much of that blame it deserves, but it is certainly worth mentioning. I am not going to tell the whole story (If you want to hear it, give me a call. I don't feel like I was given a fair shot, but I really don't want to get into it here.) By the end of my first semester, my administration didn't feel like I had made enough progress to allow me in the classroom a second semester. In order to avoid a long drawn out ordeal, I resigned. So I will not be a teacher. That's the abbreviated version, but you get the idea and honestly I'm relieved to have it out there. The worst part of losing my job, for me, right now, is the embarrassment. It's humiliating. I am not really used to failing at things. I'm sure we could argue that as well. So here I am 28 1/2 years old with no clue as to what I'm going to do with my life. That's the other worst part. I suppose there are a few.

So while I've been pretending that everything is fine and enjoying the holiday with my family, the truth is that I'm freaking out. Honestly, I have no clue what's next for Karli and I feel like a complete failure. Honestly, I'm sick of watching good things happen to people all around me while bad things are happening to me. Honestly, I thought I'd be a lot better off at this point in my life and I honestly don't know what to do about it. I know I sound whiny and I hate that (and my mom will really hate it if she reads this), and I'm sorry. But honestly, throw me a bone. I will try and elaborate on some of the things mentioned here in coming blog posts, but I had to get this one out of the way before I could say anything else. That's all for now.

Shondell Out.