Cow turds.
For the first time yesterday I admitted something out loud. I was tired, I had a headache, and I was ready to go home. This, unfortunately, seems to be the norm with my job lately. It started in the midst of the chaos that was a pandemic two years ago, and then carried on with the rapid fire and more chaos of trying to make up for that and accommodating all options of last school year. And now we are here again.
Tired. Tired of feeling unappreciated. Feeling like no matter what I do I am not caught up and will definitely never be ahead. Feeling like the inmates are running the asylum. Feeling like my job is 90% conflict resolution and 10% what it should be, and that's on a good day. Feeling like I am fighting an uphill battle and losing miserably. But mostly, I'm just tired. A kind of weary like there's always a weight on my shoulders or another dragon to slay around the corner.
Yesterday, out loud, I said "I could..." and then paused. On most days that phrase is completed with things like "go home...sleep for two days...go off on someone..." the normal responses I suppose. But yesterday, I just said what was on my mind.
"Quit."
"I could quit." It was weird to hear myself actually say it. I have thought it, yes, on some of the darkest days. But I had not dared to say it until then. It was like admitting to myself that there was possibly a point where I would not be able to stand it anymore. There might be a point when I throw it all down and walk away.
But the questions remains...what would I do? I will let you in on what I have done so far...a little bit of research and a lot of praying already. The career road ahead of me seems to be filled with potholes and I do not know where it leads. There are so many questions...and I am the type that likes to have answers. I came here because I needed a new path and this fell in my lap, like a message that this was the next step to take. A message in a bottle with a map that now feels incomplete.
When I was younger, I loved the movie Holes. I watched it all the time, and it came on TV a lot. There is a scene when Sigourney Weaver delivers the line "I'm surrounded by cow turds." I have been pondering this line while writing this post. To me, being surrounded by literal cow turds is preferable to the mine field of metaphorical cow turds I find myself in.
