Yesterday was a nice day. I read, wrote in my journal, played the piano, made art, listened to music, played games, spent relatively little time on the internet, and felt overall rather good. But, in spite of all the niceness going on around me, I couldn't shake off that feeling that I should be doing something more "productive." I check my bank account again and feel the anxiousness for fiscal stability creeping up and suffocating my ability to relax and enjoy life. I express these concerns to a family member and they reply, "Then get a job." They make it sound so easy. In the past, it always was.
There are a few books I've been reading lately that have been helping me through this particularly discombobulating state of being. The first of those is Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water, which I had to read once in college and was recently recommended to me as a valuable re-read. L'Engle, who passed away last September and was most famous for her "children's" novel A Wrinkle in Time, which I read several times and deeply adored as a child, uses the 240 pages of Walking on Water to explore the tenacious question of what it means to be a Christian artist. Though I don't always agree with everything L'Engle says in this book, and though I find some of her many digressions to be rather confusing, distracting, or simply unnecessary, I'm reassured and chastened by her reminder that taking time to "be" is not only admissible, it's strongly advisable, and should certainly not be regarded as a waste of time. She states,
A more subtle time waster is being bored. Jesus was never bored. If we allow our "high creativity" to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in line at the supermarket. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people around us, their lives full of glory and tragedy, and suddenly we will have the beginnings of a painting, a story, a song (108).
Along the same lines I found personal reassurance in Gabrielle Bell's graphic novel, Lucky. Bell recounts the tedium of unemployment, the torment of taking jobs modeling for art classes in order to make some quick, easy cash, and the accompanying feelings of uselessness and degradation. She then demonstrates how she uses the memory of these unpleasant emotions to cheer herself up later on. In one panel, she stands in an unmoving line, thinking, "I hate this! Wait a minute, I'm not modeling. Hey, this is kind of fun!" (9).
Again with the example of standing in line. I guess the image appeals to me because it's an effective microcosm of my situation in life right now. Somewhere up ahead in the future I see Japan and an exciting new life there. In the meantime, I'm waiting. And the more I focus on the wait, the slower it seems to go by.
Madeleine L'Engle says a lot about time: about the difference between twenty-four-hour-a-day chronos-time and the measureless kairos-time in which God dwells and in which we, as poets and saints, are called to dwell as well. I'm learning to focus more on the kairos, to pray and play the piano more often, to write stories and teach myself to juggle (seriously, I'm starting to get pretty good at it, too).
Having a job is important. I can't deny this much. We live on a physical planet that rotates around the sun and is therefor governed by time. And time is money, no? Nothing has ever made that particular cliché more resonantly true than having a tedious eight-to-five job. And I'm sure I'll have many more tedious eight-to-five jobs before I reach the age of retirement. But before and when that comes, I hope to continuously look to Jesus for direction in most effectively filling the hours I am given; to put more effort into serving him and the creative passions God has given me than into serving my bank account; and to watch in awe as he miraculously provides.
Tonight I did something I had imagined I wouldn't be able to do until ten years from now: I finished paying off my student loans. Entirely thanks to a wholly unanticipated and incredibly generous gift, the burden of debt was prematurely lifted from my shoulders and I found myself confronted with a staggering sensation of freedom.
But wait. It gets better.
On Thursday evening, May 8, I received a phone call from Mr. Steve Bishop of Glendora, California's Sister-City Program informing me of my acceptance for the position of Assistant English Teacher (AET) in Moka City, Japan. The program sends six Americans overseas each year to teach English in one of six junior high schools in Moka, providing the AETs with housing, airfare to and from the country, a generous salary, medical and dental benefits...even a bicycle to ride to school in the morning. On top of all this, my dear friend Josiah was also accepted for the program, meaning that I will not only have the opportunity to live in an exciting new place and experience another culture for a year (at least), but that I will be able to share these things with someone whom I'm already close to.
So there you have it: in four months I will be living in Japan, working at the job of my dreams and encountering people, things, ideas, and places that I now can't even begin to anticipate. Until then, I'll enjoy the freedom of not having to worry about student loans. To boot, I also happen to be single, childless, lacking of any major investments, real estate, or basically anything that requires dramatic overseeing or concern on my part. My oh my. What a place to be.
The purpose of this blog then, I suppose, is not just to reflect gratuitously on the amazingness of my current situation, but also to posit this little question: when given three and a half solid months of absolute uninhibited freedom, but also very little money with which to explore it, what should one do? Find a crummy summer job so as to save up a little pocket change for that first month abroad? Say to hell with it and move to Monterrey, CA or some other not-very-exotic-but-still-interesting place to spend the time writing and working at some crummy job that pays the rent but allows no pocket change for the first month in Japan? Or something else that I haven't even considered?
I don't think anyone ever reads this blog whom I don't love. The very fact that you do read it, despite the fact that I seldom have anything interesting in insightful to say, makes you all the dearer to me. And so your input is valuable to me here. Or lack of input, even. I just love you so gosh darn much.
This morning the vice principle at the San Diego Academy called to ask if I could sub for the same second grade class I subbed for on Friday. I told her I didn't feel well.
Tonight she called me again, explaining that their second grade teacher was very ill and out with the flu. Could I possibly sub for her tomorrow?
A little girl named Cielo sits on a chair in the front of a classroom, explaining to twenty-one of her peers that the little stuffed teddy bear on her lap is her fourteenth favorite toy. Though my mind is fettered with the anxiety of a long, miserable day in the clutches of an unruly, disobedient, and disrespectful room of second graders, I allow myself to appreciate, briefly, that in this moment they are cute. Though difficult, they are not evil. This day has probably been the most miserable working day of my life to date, but if nothing else, it has provided me with this: the reconfirmation that I just don’t really like being around little kids very much. And I sure as hell never want to teach them.
With my interview for an English teaching job in Moka City, Japan coming up on Friday, I lament that my first experience as a substitute teacher provided only prolonged torture, rather than any recognizable insights on classroom management or pedagogical theory. All I did, it seems, was stand in front of a classroom for five hours and yell at children to be quiet, stay in their seats, stop calling each other names, and use their markers to color on paper, not on each other’s faces. Certainly, this one disastrous day does not compel me to toss out all at once my ambitions of being a teacher. But I wish there had been something—anything—positive about it.
If I ever sub for early elementary school again, it will only be out of extreme benevolence or else financial desperation. Fortunately, the program in Moka involves teaching at the junior high level. Preteens, I can relate to. Seven-year-olds who scrupulously serialize their favorite toys and run to me every five minutes to tell on each other, not so much.
THE END
P.S.: I hope that this blog post will not leave me misunderstood in terms of my feelings towards kids. It’s not that I dislike young children or that I don’t believe they can do or say adorable things from time to time. I also think that polar bears are cute. But I don’t want to be trapped in a classroom with twenty-two of them for five hours. Yes, it's the same thing.
It quickly closes in on three months since I packed up my life in Azusa and moved down to my city of origin--San Diego--and the search for secure employment has begun to look, admittedly, rather bleak. Each week I send out perhaps five or so résumés to prospective employers and each week I receive this many calls in response: zero. Miraculously, I manage to ward off depression most of the time by surrounding myself with books and the eager self-reminder that, surely, international employers will not be nearly as choosey and I'll almost certainly nail an overseas teaching job before the summer wears through.
Sigh.
Then today, at last, the moment I've been waiting for finally arrived: the principal at a local private Christian school called me up to see if I could substitute for a second grade class on Friday. Well, it's a start. I happily agreed. And, although, to be honest, the idea of being stuck in a room for five hours (it's a half-day [thank God]) with twenty-two seven- and eight-year-olds completely terrifies me, I'm looking forward to the change of scenery. Not that I don't cherish the warm glow of my laptop screen against my retinas for hours upon hours, day after day; but my fish, Bludough, and I have simply run out of things to say to each other.
This afternoon, in an unceremonious act of celebration for myself, I assembled a delectably rich peanut butter cream pie. The recipe came from Vegan with a Vengeance, which is still easily my favorite cookbook ever. I swear, it tasted as good as it looks. If not better.
In conclusion, I like this band. I just bought their new album and it is good.
