Hide and Peace

There is peace missing from my life. I didn't realise how much I valued peace until it went missing. Last year, when I was writing, I had peace. Little pockets of it, punctuating my day. Little drifts of quiet when there was me and calm, and calm and me. And a cat maybe, passing through on their way to partake of the food bowl, or to bring me an offering of a half-chewed cat toy, or a scrunched up paper ball.

And now, peace has gone.

Sometimes I try and find it. I get up with the sun, but this is mostly to let the chickens out of their pod before their clucking reaches a dawn crescendo greater than that provided by the garden birds and the neighbours start huffin' and puffin' about 'er next door with 'er bloomin' Good Life ways.' But even then the early morning peace is tainted with the anticipation of the day of teaching that lies ahead of me. Fretting about my horrendous Year 8 group, who form part of the Headteachers 'innovative teaching plan,' but which leaves me drained, exhausted, often tearful and frustrated, because the psychological and physical effort of teaching a class of 29 children, 25 of whom have emotional, behavioural and learning difficulties, each and every day is too much for me. They defeat me, these children. They are driving me from the job.

'Take one day at a time,' senior management tell me.
'What, until I have a nervous breakdown?' I say.
'Ahahahahahaha!' they say.

They don't realise I am serious. I think they do not care, as long as they have a baby sitter for their innovative experiment.

So it's goodbye to teaching, I'm afraid. An inauspicious end to an inauspicious career.

Which leaves me job hunting again.

Is it possible to find a way of work that incorporates peace?

We're going bee-keeping at the weekend. You have to be peaceful to be a bee-keeper. Baking is a peaceful activity. So is gardening.

But it's oh so frustrating, being middle-aged, half way through one's life, and STILL not knowing where you are supposed to be going with your life. I can find peace in writing, but I've learnt that writing won't pay the bills.

Shall I consult my Tarot cards? Have I told you I used to read Tarot? I even earned some money through this during my early post-divorce years when I was a single parent. But it's not a peaceful job. People can be very demanding, especially when you fail to predict the next day delivery of their Prince Charming or the imminent arrival of a massive Lottery win. I haven't read for myself for a long while now. If I can find a quiet and peaceful hour or so, I'll give it a go and maybe some divine inspiration will come my way.

Today's blog was brought to you by Comfort Eaters R Me, fuelled by junk food purchased on way home because I was too tired to cook properly, having spent 2 hours after school today trying to catch up with my marking.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as I get my sense of humour back.

Sometime around the Easter holidays...