My Bliss is Calling, Part 2
I am no longer unemployed. I was hired for a part-time position, doing essentially the same job at a newer a bigger facility in April. (sigh). It was my hope to find something different to do but bills do need to be paid and it is a change!
In the back of my mind, for several years now, I have thought how nice it would be to move back to my hometown, Sault Ste. Marie, ON. It never happened because it would be hard to give up a full-time job with seniority, benefits and 6 weeks vacation. That is no longer a stumbling block. I have been actively looking and applying for jobs (yes the same kind of job) online and dropped my resume off at a few places while visiting family this July. So far, I haven’t gotten a nibble but I remain hopeful. We need to make a quick trip there next month to bring back my mother’s buffet and it is my intention to drop in and speak to people, if I haven’t yet arranged for an interview. I believe that if I introduce myself, my application will feel more legitimate, not just a resume from far away.
I am still wondering what my bliss is but perhaps I am heading in the right direction.
Tic Toc, Your Bliss is Calling!
I have decided to document and post my experience of being unemployed. While this may not be something of consequence to a lot of people, this is a new experience for me.
Up until last week I was employed for 30 years by the same employer, doing the same job full-time. This was not how I planned it. I took this job, because at the time, I needed a paycheque and an excuse to get out of the house. I had been a stay at home mom for 1 1/2 years and my husband and I had started our own business of which I did the books and he did the labour. A “no hassle, no stress” job is what I wanted and what I got. I planned to move on within 5 years. That did not happen for a variety of reasons but the crux of it was my marriage deteriorated and so did my self esteem.
Life goes on and I raise my daughter on my own, without child support. Sometimes I would get the itch to look for something different but I had no direction, no idea what I was good at or what I would enjoy doing. The years pass by and I settled with familiarity and increased holidays and benefits. My life was not my job, I told myself. I have hobbies, volunteer work and I sat on a board at the Co-op we lived in and represented it at the national level, which gave my the opportunity to travel. Not a bad life! But still, I was not being fulfilled by my job. To be truthful, it embarrassed me, not because it is not an honourable profession, it is. Housekeeping is a necessary evil, and a job I tried to escape from a young age.
Am I Preaching to the Choir?
When I was taking my ESL Part One course this fall, one of the questions we were asked to consider was, “Are students who may be reluctant to talk in class in front of others more comfortable engaging in electronic “conversations”?”
As the Technical Resource Teacher in our school, my answer is a resounding, “Yes”. Computers do assist with learning on many levels, from delivering a variety of content, to practicing skills, to enabling communication, to teaching responsibility. Computers do not teach, nor do they solve all problems, but they can help us to look at curriculum in a different way; they also encourage us to create a layered way of thinking.
Computers, on a very basic and practical level, force us to think sequentially. Just think about all of the steps you go through to find that file you need to upload to your blog. For ELL’s and every…
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Divorce Up, Marriages Down?
In 1966, I was in grade 4 and I was at the front of the class, telling them that divorce is OK because I couldn’t see how anyone could stay married to the same person their entire life.
My parents had a good marriage that lasted just shy of 50 years when my dad passed. Perhaps it was my mother’s cousin that influenced that idea. She was the first one in the family to get a divorce and it was spoke about in hushed tones. I was the second, over 30 years later.
The sexual revolution evolved with baby-boomers in the sixties which in turn changed people’s expectations of marriage. It started, I believe, with women becoming more financially independent as they replaced men at their jobs during the wars.
The vast majority marry without considering how each others opinions and beliefs will affect the other down the road, even if they have discussed money and children. Perhaps mandatory marriage counselling before marriage could help in this respect. Changing people’s expectations of marriage would surely help, even if it reduced the number of marriages.
Being divorced once and remarried to someone else, living together first, made sense to me both times, although not backed up statistically.
cswinnduench 