Updates about life

Oh yeah..  new job..  since May.

Working on writing lesson plans for writing classes.  (Funny since I think I completely suck at writing, but here I am learning as I go.)  I really have learned a lot.  I'm currently editing first and second grade lesson plans, but I'm learning about narrative, persuasive, and informative writing.  I'm even learning how to structure paragraphs.  It's really amazing how all of this is new to me, and yet elementary schoolers are learning it.  I've consistently failed at nearly all of my English classes since I entered high school.  I realized that it's because I've never really learned how to write.  I remember my 8th grade English class.  I don't think I wrote a single essay in that class.  I'm pretty sure I started writing essays in 9th grade.  All of my knowledge on how to write was just from context, and now I'm actually learning the foundations of writing.  It's pretty neat.  All my years as a teacher has given me the skill to verbalize my thought process, and now I'm learning the correct structure of how to put that down on a page.  Yay.

I'm also working on a middle school math curriculum.  Yay!!  It's not official but I'm more or less in charge of it.  Pretty much everyone in the office has accepted it.  In fact in the first two weeks of launching the project we made so much progress on it that they had to pause it.  Mostly because there's a bigger priority (writing lessons).  But once all of the edits for the writing lessons are in, the math curriculum project is back on.

New motivational tool!!  It's called Habitica.  It's pretty much a to-do list, but slightly different.  You have an avatar you control (with pets!) and every time you complete something you gain experience and coins.  You can level up, join a party, go on quests, defeat monsters, etc.  It's a real-life rpg.  So awesome.  There's even a daily section, where you put things you want to finish daily.  Some of the things I include are flossing, praying, reading the Bible, exercising.  You can even change the difficulties so that some give you more experience and others give you less.  If you miss the daily for the day you take damage, and if you die...  well your character dies.  It's really motivating for me personally because I've always been into rpg's and now I'm an rpg character myself.  I'm on level 4.  Yay~

Dear Sister

Dear youngest sister,

It's been nearly a week since I talked to you last.  You're off on a mission trip, and I'm hoping you're having a really great time.  I've been super proud of everything you're doing and where your heart is right now.  You've grown so much in just a year, and I'm amazed every time I see you.  Last we talked, we talked about how to love people.  I admitted to you that I'm scared of what responsibilities loving people accompanies.  You said that you prayed for the heart to pray for loving people at first.  I couldn't even muster up that courage.  But I'm not sure if it's because you prayed for me, but I've been able to pray for the courage and energy that it takes to love people.  I've realized that I've been lacking the courage and the energy it requires to love people.  The courage to face complete rejection and isolation from those people I love, and the energy and perseverance it takes to continue loving them and giving my all.  So pray for me for this.  Maybe I can grow as much as you have in the next year.

Love,

Jeen

It Comes and Goes

How can I explain depression?  I feel like no one really understands unless they've had depression themselves.

Let me try:

There's a sad, depressed Jeen, and then there's me.  Normal, usually happy Jeen.  Sad Jeen is always lonely.  She needs company, and because happy Jeen is right there, she takes up happy Jeen's attention, so that happy Jeen doesn't have time to be happy.  Happy Jeen watches a lot of shows and stuff when I'm alone because it keeps sad Jeen distracted making me overall less sad.  But when the show ends, sad Jeen is back in full swing.  When I'm about to sleep, sad Jeen is urging me go to the kitchen and take a knife and stab myself.  If happy Jeen were completely unconscious, I might have done just that.  But happy Jeen is aware of what is going on, and uses up all her energy fighting sad Jeen just to keep me in bed and not bleeding all over the floor.  This is a constant daily struggle for me.  So much so that I don't have enough energy to do anything else.  I'm spending all my energy keeping sad Jeen still, spending all my attention entertaining sad Jeen.  So much energy and attention that I don't have time to eat, time to exercise, time to work on any of my hobbies.

Exercising helps release dopamine into your system so that you feel better.  But have you every tried exercising when you just want to pass out because of how tired you are?  It's impossible.  Parents with newborns or young toddlers may understand.  You're spending all of your free time and energy focused on your kids you forget about proper diets and exercise.  Keeping a blog or any other thing to keep you happy?  Forget all of that.  It's not that I don't want to.  I just don't have the resources to do so.

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This was written around two months ago.

It's been about two weeks since sad Jeen went on a vacation.  She'll be back someday, probably, since she always comes back.  But in the meantime I'm exercising, enjoying myself, staying relaxed and happy.  I've been able to read the Bible more, pray more, actually cook, etc.  Yay...  Not really looking forward to sad Jeen coming back, but it's not like I can do anything about it.  I've actually been considering antidepressants for when she does come back.  I'm worried though that I'll get hooked on it or that it will change me in a way I don't like.  Hmmm...  thoughts to think about.