Change and the world laughs with you. No, wait…

“We must become the change we want to see”. Gandhi. I like him.

I used to fear change, now I seem to embrace it. The past two years, for me, have been all about change. Change of address, change of marital status, change of pants size, yep a whole mess of change. In fact, if I had a nickel for all of the change that has occurred in the past two years, I would have a whole piggy bank full of change.

I have approximately 30 or so hours of vacation left. 5am Monday morning is looming over me like a gigantic gargoyle. I love teaching, don’t get me wrong, but hanging with my boys and making cool things out of legos while still in our jammies, is such a nice change from hearing, “was anything due today, Ms Levine?” Again, if annoying questions from my students were nickels…just sayin’.

Since it is New Years Day, I have some intentions for this upcoming year. I like to call these silly bets I have with myself INTENTIONS instead of RESOLUTIONS. Anything I tend to RESOLVE to do, ends up not being resolved or resolute in any fashion. This then makes me feel like a total failure and not very pretty. However, if I INTEND to do something, then it kinda sorta takes the pressure off of me and I can focus on what I intend to do and in the end, actually accomplish them. You see, good intentions are the hobgoblins of little minds. No, wait. Good intentions pave the path to the devil’s playground. No, wait. Crap, now I have confused myself. Anyway, the point is, is that I have gotten very good at my New Year’s Intentions.

Take graduate school. Three years ago I INTENDED to get into the master’s program for teaching at USC. I began that January 2008, filled with fabulous intentions, objectives and purpose. I studied diligently for the GRE’s, learning algebra again, for the first time. I studied 3 hours a day for that mind numbing test along with all of the other fun California teacher tests. Seriously, my head just hurts when I think about the Pythagorean theorem and parallelograms and anything that had letters instead of numbers. That is one thing my right brain could just never understand. How the hell can you add two letters? Is their amount based on where they fall in the line in the alphabet? And why is always x and y? Why not k or j? Why is there letter discrimination? Seriously, I just don’t get it and please don’t try to explain it to me or I will start to cry or start throwing things at you or both.

But I digress. Long story short, I got in.

So, the MAT (Masters of Arts of Teaching) program began in June of 2008. My son, Max, liked to call it the Jedi Masters program. The summer session was nine weeks long and in the seventh week of it, I left my husband. Yep, took the kids, hopped into the flaming minivan and scooted. Then this bizarre thing happened. Yes, more bizarre than having a flaming mini-van or my need to make three types of cupcakes for my New Year’s Eve party last night. One day I was having a small anxiety attack while contemplating my primary language literacy paper. I thought to myself, “Can I do this? Seriously, can I really do this?” Then I heard this voice. It sort of sounded like Kathleen Turner because I like to have my inner guide be a sexy woman’s voice. No idea why. The voice said, “You have no choice BUT to do this. It is not a question of how you will do this; it is only a question of when you will finish this.” You are totally hearing Kathleen Turner’s voice right now, aren’t you? I know! She is like the best inner spirit voice ever!

So, yep, I realized I had no choice but to finish it because I had these two very cute boys who depended on me. I was totally responsible for them. And even worse, I was totally responsible for me as well. So I sucked it up, stopped sleeping so much and bang! Fourteen months and seventy pounds later, I was divorced, a teacher and a Master Jedi.

Wait a second. Ok, I have totally lost my train of thought and have no idea what I originally wanted this blog to be about anymore. I really have to pay more attention to myself when I am writing. I started with a Gandhi quote…hmm…something about intentions? Or change?

Oh, yeah, I remember now. Change is good.
Oh whatever. Happy New Year. Seriously.