Sink or swim...returning to work.

As I travelled that familiar route on the first day of the new term, I found myself filled with elation.  Positive thoughts emanated from me; ideas for new lessons fought for space in my mind. 

I truly believed returning would be easier, less traumatic.  I'd spent a year preparing to start where I had left off .  Instead I found myself cringing from the sheer noise of it all.  Not just the physical slamming of doors and shouting of boys but the mental noise; that inner voice reeling off to-do lists, responsibilities, demands and urgencies.

And it seemed everything was urgent.  My ability to prioitise was flabby, under-worked for months.  For a year my biggest chore had been supermarket shopping.  Now it was to fill out current grades; target grades; plan lessons; attend meetings and somewhere in that overgrown space, teach.  I had to desperately weed out the creeping ivy of unnecessary tasks that from day one, began to choke me.  I had to fight to clear a gap for each real focus.  I began to flail in panic, drowning.

My place of work hasn't exactly made it easy for me.  If anything, their endless demands have escalated the trauma of my return.  I've almost buckled under their 'innovative' yet crippling plan to complete a GCSE in a month.  I've been counting down the days until the exam (tomorrow!) Thick black crosses cover the calendar, marking my path to freedom. 

I've been hunted down for current grades for children I've known for a mere two hours; children whose names alone escape me.  11 hour days have eaten my soul and left me asleep on top of the sheets, fully clothed.  My first observation in two years took hours to prepare and hovered over me like a black cloud.  I didn't even have time to celebrate the 'good-with-outstanding-features' result before I was catapulted back into the heaving tide of purposeless administration, pupil admonishment, barely-there progress and under-achievement.

I've shocked even myself at the slow loss of my can-do attitude, my sudden slide into nervousness. I've become one of the self-loathing whingers I despise.  The days have swirled past in a furious tsnaumi of panic, the occasional tear and the constant shedding of confidence.

It's been devastating. 

Teaching has been my greatest love.  The moment I stepped in a class-room during my GTP in 2009 I knew it was meant to be.  An innate ability to teach resided within me, needing to be nurtured into a full skillset.  I was thrilled and relieved to find my calling.  I lived and breathed teaching.  I planned activities as I washed my hair, I visualised lessons behind closed eyes on the train, I pondered ways to engage my pupils and created new interventions to implement.

This has been ripped from me, torn away like a conjoined twin.  I feel like less of a person without that necessity to teach.  A passion shaped hole weeps inside me.  Instead of a positive rebounding spirit, I shudder at the thought of being too challenged.  I fear failure. 

My confidence lays shattered.

The silhouette of my body outlined on the pine-needled floor of the courtyard haunts me, whispers ugly memories.  It has faded for everyone else but it taps me on the shoulder at every turn, beckons a blistered finger towards the window, forcing me to look across that landscape of horror.  Not only has this school taken a year from me, they have twisted teaching into something that is no longer enjoyable.

I am trying to recall the joy of this job.  Accepting that life will not remain untainted by this episode does help.  I comfort myself that the problem isn't me.  I am still a teacher, it is the school that changes everything.  Already I am seeing fleeting glimpses of before.  That dawning light in a pupil's eye as 'metaphor' sinks in...those fragments of progress...it's all a step closer to where I was before my career was rudely interrupted.

Yet already the mornings are punctuated less with panic, more with the pleasant acceptance of the day's events unfolding.  Each morning, as the alarm chirps into the breaking darkness, the sense of disaster becomes fainter.  The doom-and-gloom teeters on a precipice instead of always pushing me over the edge. 

It's not my duty to continously remind people what has happened.  It's only been 7 weeks since I returned to my job and the site of my burns.  I am feeling my way fearfully, desperate to reach the day when I wake up with my pre-accident sunny disposition and look forward to my working day. 

I know that in years to come I will stand in a classroom and feel that sense of self-worth and satisfaction blossom again.

Photo 'drowning woman' http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/underwater-room    http://briannapancakes.tumblr.com/

The Black Swan - a lesson in randomness

The Black Swan didn't exist until it was discovered at random in Australia.  Just because something has never happened before doesn't mean it won't.

An accident is a 'black swan,' a random event that could not be anticipated.  It's an unexpected, rare occurrence with massive after-effects.  According to 'The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable,' these events lie outside 'the tunnel of possibilities.'  They are entirely unpredictable, random and unlikely to ever happen.  Yet they do.

According to Psychologies Magazine, (November) the concept of randomness makes people uncomfortable.  Human brains are designed to create connections and to utilize past experiences.  When something out of the ordinary happens humans strive to explain it, quantify it, analyse it.  We look for certainty in an uncertain world: predicting the weather; forecasting economics and planning ahead.  We forget that we are not in control and that every day we live we are drifting this way and that, under the influence of larger factors at work.  Take the Butterfly Effect, for example, a theory beautifully explored in Micheal Cricthron's Jurassic Park and the 2004 Aston Kutcher film of the same title.  

The Butterfly Effect, another term for Chaos Theory states that the sensitive dependence on initial conditions means a tiny change in circumstances or influences can result in a large difference to a later state. A theoretical example of this is the musing that a hurricane's formation could result from whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before.

An accident is too often caused by a series of unfortunate events, an inexplicable combination of factors that when written on paper could be the premise of a terrible Soap Opera episode.  Life is often stranger than fiction.  According to philosophers, the key to the Black Swan is being able to take from this sudden, highly impactful occurrence.  How can we take from the negative and turn it into a positive outcome?

Many success stories in history are due to an individual being able to view a seemingly negative event as an opportunity and turn it into something else.  People assume it is hard work or persistence that turns people into 'greats' but it is often resilience in the face of adversity as well as luck.  These people have the ability to turn an highly improbable and unpredictable occurrence to their advantage.

Crucially, it's these 'Black Swans' that have the biggest impact on history.  The biggest changes often happen in times of uncertainty and instability when increasing numbers of unusual opportunities open.   Examples include companies like Facebook and Apple who have seized the market through their ability to optimize today's culture.  Starbucks came along when Howard Schultz attended a homeware conference in Milan and was struck by the city's coffee bar culture. Katie Piper had a life-changing experience and decided to open a charity in order to support others, changing the course of her life.  Pasteur discovered penicillin when he forgot to wash up some petri dishes and because he had a naturally curious nature.  Many notable inventions in history have occurred because something happened by chance and someone took the opportunity to pursue it.  In Bill Bryson's novels 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' and 'At Home: A Short History of Private Life,' we are shown time and time again how our history is made up of layers of serendipity, luck and chance.  Hard work and persistence do pay off but it seems they only have an impact if the stars are aligned!

So how does this affect you or me?  It's important to embrace randomness and to try to not to be affronted when things don't go to plan.  It's about seeing your accident or life-changing circumstance as a door to something new and not being afraid to open it.  We must stop predicting how life will turn out and instead, try to be prepared for it.  I can't predict whether or not my scarring will fade to a level I can accept but I can prepare for life if it doesn't.

I would not be the person today without my accident.  However much I accept this, at just over a year later, I can still safely say if I had known that someone would throw a flammable on a BBQ I would have gone home early.  I'm not at that stage where I can fully accept my fate.  Yet I can see how the path of my life has changed because of the experience and where I have utilised opportunities that would never have presented themselves otherwise.  My identity has developed, my outlook has altered;  I imagine in the future I will be more content with my lot.  My relationships have strengthened and I've met many people from all walks of life which can only expand my mind.  I've found solace in writing and fortitude in knowing that people read my words.  In the future I know I will choose a different route because my priorities have been influenced by Friday 22nd July 2011 - my very own Black Swan.





References:

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Seize the Day, Psychologies, November Issue

A Short History of Nearly Everything and At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

Wikipedia 

FAT CHANCE

Here's a short story I wrote for anyone who has put on weight due to accident, illness, babies or just because Mother Nature can be damn harsh on us women!

****

As she got thinner, she only felt more invisible.  Three months of calorie-counting and taking the stairs had shorn the flesh from her hide quicker than a souffle rises. 

'Results!'  Screamed her Weightwatcher mentor with hysterical envy.  'Look at those results!'

Yet, Beau felt no elation.  She went home and choked down strips of beef jerky, visualising her fat cells spontaneously combusting with each salty chew.  Her shoulders slumped, her lungs deflated and her face sagged.

Her face.  Her once cherubic cheeks had lost their youthful plump.  Now her reflection contained traces of Roxy, the exercise-pumped PA at work.  Roxy was mean-looking and mean-spirited.  Beau knew the men at work liked that lean, hungry look.  They wanted Roxy to consume them with ravenous gusto.  Beau knew this would never happen; Roxy was preoccupied with the backs of packets and protein shakes.  And as for Beau...she had been contented up until now.  She'd savoured the way her thighs had that closeness, her stomach that womanliness.  Three months on and she was filled with air instead of life.

It wasn't Beau's idea to go on a diet and lose precious parts of herself.  It was Gerard's.

'It's unhealthy Beau,' he reprimanded her, prising the Pinot from her clenched fingers.  'And you said so yourself, you don't want to be a fat bride.'

It was the way he held 'fat' in his mouth like an unpleasant oyster that ruffled her feathers.  She began to waver over that extra slice of pizza, hesitating over the chocolate box.  Then one day she decided to just get it over with.  She signed up to losing Wednesday evenings and a portion of her dignity.  Weekly weigh-ins vanished any last vestige of sexy that Beau had. 

Now as she sized up her diminishing bottom and surveyed her once-luscious breasts, she reconsidered her options.  Gerard was no God, that was certain.  He drank beer on Fridays and Saturdays and it had accumulated centrally.  His hair had taken a step back.  As she looked slimmer, he looked comparatively worse.  'A bulbous toad!'  She thought defiantly, swigging straight out of the bottle-neck.  While she was at it she turned on the hob and voila!  The new meal plans fluttered to the tiles in a flambé of charcoal.  'Cooked!'  She giggled, appreciating how her tummy jiggled with mirth.

Grabbing the Dairy Milk and a magazine she sacked off the gym for her comfortable chair, tucking the blanket around herself, neatly.  She flicked fabulously through the glossy pages.  Let Gerard come home and find her in a chocolate coma with nutty evidence in her creases!  She'd find herself a new man, she mused.  An Italian!  Someone who appreciated real women.  And as for ever returning to that counting, nibbling, jogging way of life?  'Fat chance!'  Beau thought.

A poisonous witch

Sometimes you come across someone masquerading as one of the good guys.  You haven't seen them for ages so you invite them in.  You welcome them with a smile.  And then BAM!  The clouds gather, the lightening splits the sky in half and they open their mouth and say...

'You look alright.  I heard your face had melted.'  Cue melting face hand gestures and pointing.  Then, as if I hadn't heard the poisoned barb the first time, 'you look fine.  I heard you'd...you know.  Melted.  Your face.'

At this point most people met with stony silence would realise the faux pas and back slowly out the door.  They'd plead for forgiveness.  Make some effort to retract such a statement.  Instead the poisonous witch looked at me quizzically, as if perhaps it was I who had some social problem.

My mind filled the silence that followed with a montage of images: having my face debrided (scraped;) the white V for Vendetta burn mask; the mirrors being taped up; trauma counseling to quell the dreams of melted, blurry faces and no reflections; not to mention the hours and hours and hours of 'face-care;' careful massaging and creaming.

I healed well.  I know I'm lucky.  I only have a couple of faint scars under my chin, on my lip and forehead.  Yet I still fear the loss of my face; it very nearly happened.  I don't need to be reminded of that ever, ever again, thank you. 

That witch has flown (off on her broomstick) and left behind only a trace of bitter spell. She probably hasn't given our encounter a second thought.  But...I won't be forgetting in a hurry and I won't be welcoming her again.  Life is too short to fill it with poison.