Anyone else have a shit February? It's definitely taken over as shittest month of the year for me. Last year January held that title, but this year I kept a really positive outlook in January. I managed to do a complete edit of my - as yet untitled - novel that I wrote last year; I produced another personal best over ten kilometres; my other half completed his law studies; and I read twelve books towards this year's tally. Not too shabby.
Then February reared its spiteful head, shedding doubt on every project I had going. Somehow it had the ability to drain me of every ounce of energy, whilst making me pissed off and angry, which takes even more energy. I think it must have made a secret pact with the large negative portion of my brain, that sabotage was the way forward. I didn't want to go out for training runs. I wasn't writing much or editing. Novels were taking me days and days to get through. It was like the whole month was me wading through knee high thick sludge, and getting nowhere fast.
And then as I approached the end of the month, I had another charity ten kilometre race, which should have been fun but was actually a hellish sixty one and a half minutes (over five minutes slower than January's PB) that I had no joy from at all. Which was followed by a night of babysitting, which should have ended at 11.30pm and instead had me there until 01.30am, with no contact from the parents after 11.50pm, leaving me worried sick and so close to calling the Police. I couldn't get hold of either of them by mobile. My phone had suddenly decided to revolt and wasn't going to send messages, and I had this overwhelming panic in my stomach. Turns out, they were fine, just drunk and 'lost track of time'. I was worried sick and exhausted. And I found out the next day that my Dad had been in an accident whilst night orienteering and had to go to A & E.
I've never been more thankful for a short month.
Then completely unrelated: Last night in Italian class I was so close to losing my shit. I was sat with two women who are actually teachers of other subjects at the same college, and they both speak loads of languages and are language teachers. I know, bad move. So we were doing some group work and I was enjoying it because it was a spoken exercise that allowed us to talk about our past using various past tenses and I needed some practise with this. So we started off well, and I could do it, and my answer was longer than one sentence and I felt good about it. And then, the teacher comes over and gives us a different thing to do that no other group in the class is doing and it's a written exercise. I can write. I don't need writing practise, I need to feckin' speak the language.
But we were the chosen ones and so, give up on the useful activity we did. Have you ever been put in a group with one person that is so dominating and controlling? I can relate.
So, basically we had to come up with a story, and then we all had to tell the same story, changing a few details, and the rest of the class had to guess which of us was telling the truth. Or, we could have carried on doing the useful exercise that I actually needed and wanted to do. Urgh! Why did I sit there? So, this woman completely took over, racing ahead at breakneck speed, and I let her. But she just kept on adding and adding to the story, saying it wasn't long enough. Now I'm not exactly Miss Brevity, but come on, this was just an anecdote that had to be told three times in the class, she didn't need the next War and bloody Peace.
I was already ticked off at this point, because she wouldn't listen to me about anything, but I kept it together. But then later, in pair work - which most of the time I wish didn't exist - she completely took over, barely giving me enough time to read the pissin' questions, let alone fill in the blanks. And then she was so condescending. 'Are you okay? Do you get it?' Fuck off, I'm not a moron. Just because I questioned a couple of your answers - which it turns out I was right to - doesn't mean I'm an idiot. Maybe if you slowed down a bit, I might be able to partake in the exercise. I mean, come on, I already feel like an idiot most days in class, but to have a woman who speaks five other languages sat there, telling me to think of the French......... At this point I actually broke. I said something along the lines of: I'm an ignorant Brit who doesn't speak seventeen other languages, so telling me how it is in the French is really not helping. Of course I said it with a smile on my face, we wouldn't want her to think I was an angry, pissed off northerner.
I did take a little pleasure in the ones she got wrong. Of course it meant I had gotten them wrong too, but at least I'd questioned them. I hate that most of the time I give in to the louder, more dominant voices and hide mine. I'm not some scared little sheep, so why do I act that way in the presence of adults? Why are adults so scary to me? Why do I always feel inferior? Okay, this is starting to sound like some sort of therapy session. Sorry Rants readers.
It's also half an hour until I have to leave to teach, and these Ariel pyjamas won't exactly cut it as outfit of the day. I needed to get that out about last night's lesson as I could feel myself still angry about it this morning. Thank you for listening.
Rants
