Self-doubt. I has it.

I’ve also been tinkering with some poetry, trying to write something decent. Tom took me along to The Moon yesterday afternoon, where he was doing a spoken word performance, which was pretty interesting. There was open mic and some other feature performers. They didn’t have much to offer in the way of actually decent verse, and you get the feeling that the people at those things are just waiting for their own turn to speak, but the atmosphere was good and a couple of people read out some really neat material. Anyway, I’m sending a few things out for potential publication. Not really because I want people to read them, but because I want to see if they’re good enough to be accepted.

Wait. Are we back to self-doubt again?

Yeah, I’ve been pretty tired lately, on account of it has been a shitty week. This time last week I thought I had a nice teaching job lined up, within driving distance to home, and everything was looking OK. I quit my job at the liquor store so I could start on Tuesday. Then, on Monday morning, I actually went down there to look at the school. That’s when things started to turn shitty.

When I talked to the people there, everyone kept telling me over and over how hard the school was. How the students had no social skills and how I couldn’t teach the way I usually did because they would find the work too hard. They warned me, and they warned me again. Then they warned me some more. It seemed like the worst school in the history of anything. As I drove home to get ready for my last shift at the bottle shop, I was freaking out.

But eventually I coaxed myself into a state of cautious optimism, so I rang up the education department that afternoon and said I’d take the job.

That night, I couldn’t sleep because I had started to freak out all over again. After watching dvd nature documentaries until four AM, I decided that I would turn down the job. There was no way I could turn up in the morning all jittery and white as a sheet and expect to be taken seriously by the students.

After that I got about an hour’s worth of crappy, crappy sleep. I showed up in Mandurah at seven AM and waited for the school to open, then told them that I couldn’t do the job. They seemed OK with that, and the secretary even gave me the number of the RAC when I realised that I’d locked my keys in my car.

So, that was shitty. I did some relief on Wednesday and Thursday at a really good school, and that was fun but it just brought home to me how hard it is to get into a place like that. All the dudes there had been on the job for twenty years and could do it in their sleep.

Anyway, with no job - not even my old casual job - it’s time for me to find something asap. Maybe I’ll forget teaching for a while and do something simpler. With bits of paper and a computer. Less pay in it, but I might enjoy it.

Pro: MONEYZ; it’s a small school so it should be easy to get to know the kids and develop a reputation as a tough teacher; it’s in the metro area; jobs are rare this year.

Cons: it’s still 50min by car which will suck; it’s a poor area so the kids will be difficult to work with; I have no idea about the programs that I’m supposed to be teaching; it’s a junior high so I’ll have to move again in one or two years in order to teach senior school.

But obviously, the moneyz is the important thing here. I’ll let you know how it goes!