Just when I thought life couldn’t get any more interesting. Woke up on Tuesday feeling decidedly rough. Decided to ignore it and get on with my day, which turned out to be a very bad decision.

Around lunchtime I was violently sick, so I put myself to bed. Got steadily worse through the course of the afternoon so asked Sef to stick his nose in on the way home to check I was still okay. At 8 o’clock I was violently sick again, having not been able to keep down anything including water. At his point I decided hosptial was a good idea and so an ambulance was summoned. After being rushed into hosptial I was put onto a drip as I was severely dehydrated and had a temperature.

Wednesday was completely lost to a mixture of sleep and dozing and I was eventually allowed to leave around 2 this afternoon.

Still feeling a little fragile but recovering…

So…

Show week was fun (what was left of it after teaching traumas were done with). It was so refreshing being able to adopt the student approach of “I can stay out till 3 cos I don’t have to up tomorrow” again. I actually didn’t at any point see the show the whole way through but I have heard great things.

Otherwise my life is about to take a somewhat interesting turn I feel. While I will certainly be enjoying my month of paid holiday, I have to use the time to work out what the next plan for my life is.

Also I may have just been given a quest to complete of a spiritual nature. As many of you know I have fairly particular views on religion and this has resulted in an opportunity which I am pretty much obliged to take up (although it is an entirely free choice). With luck it will keep me nice and busy through december and be sorted by the time I have to find paid employment again.

Watch this space as now that I am not teaching I should be updating more regularly.

Went into school and explained the situation. They were really good about it and said that really they were expecting it to happen sooner or later (in a “we’re sorry to see you go” rather than a “good riddance” sense).

The upshot of that meeting is that I will not now be going back into school, although due to notice requirements they will continue to pay me until 31st December.

Am feeling a sense of relief and exhaustion now. Am not happy that I had to give up teaching as it looked for a while like I could actually do it and be quite good, but am glad that my departure could be sorted with minimal bad feeling on anyone’s part - indeed it was commented on the profesionality with which I dealt with the situation and they appreciated my honesty in dealing with it now rather than trying to be a hero.

So… two months to get myself better and find something else to do with my life…

So the cheerful thing didn’t last. The meeting went as well as such a meeting could be expected to and I thought I could come back and do it.

Tuesday I only taught two hours and they should have been easy lesons to teach, but no. I came away from them feeling like I’d just run a marathon and wanting to cry. And I had a massive acute relapse of vasculitis all afternoon and couldn’t work.

The result of this is that I have decided to quit teaching - I was struggling too much and although I could potentially have struggled through the return of the vasculitis has pretty much eliminated that. I’m stuck in a vicious cycle where I can either work hard enough to pass the programme or I can relax enough to keep the vasculitis under control.

At the momnt I’m somewhat aprehensive as I have a meeting in an hour and a half in which I shall be letting the school know that this is my intention. I have already informed TeachFirst that I am leaving and have taken some advice from them on the best way to proceed.

While this is obviously not the outcome that anyone wanted I am at least feeling slightly relieved that I have actually managed to get up the courage to make the decision and not to simply ignore it until I get sacked.

Well. Have not been in school all this week following a flare-up of vasculitis. This has allowed me a somewhat objective week of deciding that I want to keep going and that teaching is the way forward at the moment.

However I have a somewhat interesting meeting with lots of important people both at the school and teachfirst to decide the best way to proceed to ensure I can keep going as a teacher, and undoubtedly some reference will be made to my being ill, by me if no-one else as I’ve been under too much pressure of late leading to collapse.

The flipside of being ill is that I’ve had a bit more time to help out getting the show ready. Is all looking really pretty good and should be a good laugh. I won’t be contributing much during the week as I’ll be trying to get back into school and planning routine asap but I’ll be around some evenings to say hello to people.

As a direct result of being helpful I do now have a large bruise on my chest after a run-in with a difficult music stand (don’t ask) and damaged my shoulder trying to move the mugss toolbox (which currently weighs about the same as a small car).

Am feeling generally more cheerful at the moment and am looking forward to seeing where I end up next…

I am at the moment. I should be working to get myself out of a very large hole but can’t bring myself to do it. Trouble sooner or later someone is going to notice that I haven’t done the work.

Had something of a min-breakdown on Weds morning and couldn’t go into school. Ended up taking Thursday off as well in an attempt to get back on track. I also reckon I have about another 6 hours worth of work to do today and then I’m nearly back to not far behind where I should be.

Really not enjoying it at the moment. And although I know that this is to be expected at this stage of the term I can’t really see myself surviving to Christmas unless there is a major change in my outlook and organisation.

We shall see…

So…

Um…

I haven’t written on here in ages about me. I’ve been rather too busy to engage my brain long enough and I doubt that I’ll be able to satisfactorily cover everything since the last time I posted. Suffice to say that it has mostly revolved around the teaching.

The teaching is going not well at the moment, although I am assured that this would be normal if I’d done twelve months training beforehand and so to only be in the “not well” category after six weeks training and six weeks teaching is pretty impressive. I’ve not, however, been enjoying it much and gave some serious thought over half-term to giving it up as too difficult. However an hour chat with my parents talked me down from that and so I found myself back in school on Monday. It is strange that I now feel I can actually talk to my parents again without feeling that I am somehow a chronic dissappointment to them. The teaching has allowed me to demonstrate that I’m actually doing something with my life and actually phoning my parents to say that I was seriously considering giving up represents a major shift in our relationship. Is also nice to see the slightly awe tinged reaction of my elder brother (genius that he is) at the idea that I have been brave enough to go into a classroom and try to teach kids.

This week has been really hard as the kids have been uber-hyper having come back from half-term. I also had a fight in my class on Wednesday which didn’t help matters as it happened halfway through a two hour lesson.

Other than that life is continuing. I made a promise to myself that the teaching would not eat my entire life and so I am still MUGSSing (although less than previously) and keeping up with other friends. Have also met a couple of very interesting new people over half-term and reinforced a couple of friendships. This in itself has created a couple of opportunities which I need to think on carefully but at the moment the focus remains teaching.

Having hit an emotional low in a big way over half-term I am now feeling significantly more positive. I reckon that with a big push I can make the teaching work without being too much of a chore, although this week I could end up killing myself to make the deadlines I have been set in various quarters. By the end of this week I have to submit a piece of coursework to TeachFirst and have planned two weeks worth of lessons for the school (and of course teach one week’s worth of those lessons).

I decided that I could not afford the time to go down to London with TeachFirst for their conference yesterday and although I didn’t actually get a huge amount of school work done I had a very relaxing day and got some stuff organised which I had been putting off for ages. The main reason, as I explained to Matt at the TeachFirst office was aside from ending up being really tired I would have spent the whole day fretting about the work I had left to do and would not have enjoyed or got any great benefit from the trip.

Further to this (and probably a blessing in disguise) the inaurgural night of the new rebellious jukebox residency has been postponed from tonight to the first Sunday in December as everyone feels a little underprepared for it to start now. This means I might actually be in a position to really enjoy it rather than feeling obliged to go but really wishing I was planning.

So life is good at the moment. I’m fine. I’m just really busy at the moment and having no internet at home means that this has been a little neglected of late. I won’t promise to post again soon as this will most likely be a lie……