Happy Post

Have just scrolled through my (very) long list of other bloggers and revisited all of them to catch up on what they are doing (twas like catching up with old friends...even tho most of them don't even know who I am!). Also to get a wee bit more inspiration for my own blog...just like getting out of bed, it's been a little hard lately to keep motivated. The whole reason for starting the wretched thing was to share our travel stories with the world but alas, we are still sitting HERE so it's just not that exciting.

But...happy thoughts!

One blog of which I am particularly fond is silversprite. I guess because they pretty much embody my Ideal Life: living on a remote Hebridean island, working as a librarian as well as having a web based consultancy business...>sigh<>

All this is rather fitting as I am trying, desperately trying to apply for a teacher-librarian position down south (actually not that far...and not on the coast, which I am craving, but still - it's part-time and at this point in the quest for employment, why the hell not??)

I am the original bookworm. Bugger teaching, I should've studied to be a librarian in the first place. The only part I'm not sure I'll like is the cataloguing, but I did realise tonight whilst walking (first time in MONTHS but more on that another time) that the school librarian does not have to do school reports, they have very few classes for which they have to prepare (and even then the lessons are mostly the same thing "How To Use The Library") and discipline is not such a big deal because they don't see the students that often, the work is usually assignment based (at least in secondary) or fun (primary) and they get to choose new books to buy...

Not that I'm trying to be lazy and get out of the hard work of teaching...I just don't have the heart for it ... I hesitate to say "anymore". It might come back, but at present I do not have the zest required to teach full-time. The silliest things completely debilitate me. Plus I don't look into the future and see myself marking reports and sitting up stressing over difficult classes, rushing to staff meetings, coaching a sporting team, none of these things feature...

The Dream :) Haha...reality!

Random Scottish band has the answer

Alright, so I don't know why but somehow I expected finding a job in Asia was going to be fairly straightforward. Sure - there were extra issues such as making sure schools were not dodgy and trying not to head into locations with significant malaria risks or active civil war, but everything I read pointed to the plethora of jobs available, that someone with a B. Ed would be able to pick and choose, that I'd be fighting them off...

Well, in that sense I am fighting them off a wee bit, but that's because none of the jobs I'm being offered seem to FIT.

I don't know why I am surprised. This is the story of my life. Nothing goes according to plan. Nothing fits. Nothing that I actually, specifically HOPE or PLAN for ever seems to come to fruition. Remember that Midas story? Yeah, well at least he had things around him turning to gold. Everything I touch seems to turn to shit. Not that I want that to be my mantra or the motto over my life. Oh no. I don't ACCEPT that everything I start will fail - hell no! It makes me even more determined to succeed! So out I go, again and again, doing the same bloody...

Hang on a minute. Maybe it's BECAUSE I'm doing the same bloody thing?

No, no I'm not. At first I tried to go to Scotland. Then I tried to go to England. I tried every other country in Europe. I investigated Canada. Finally I started looking into the rest of Australia - I tried WA, Tasmania, even went to the NT. New Zealand cropped up from time to time (and again recently) and if I am honest, Scotland has been a constant throughout but has simply faded into the background at times. I started looking at ELT in Europe and now it is Asia.

Okay, so I am trying to do the same thing - get out of this arse of a town, but at least my method is changing! I've looked at studying, I've looked at teaching, I've tried other jobs, I've looked at running a business...Every river I try to cross, every hill I try to climb, every ocean I try to swim, every road I try to find...

Dammit just lost half an hour watching Runrig on youtube! >sigh<> I can't help it. I try not to listen to them, try to avoid any reference to the place because each time I think about it, it breaks my heart again. It kills me not to be there, missing day after day, year after year, the people going about their business, the weather changing...

This is definitely the long way round. I do wonder if I am crazy, thinking that I could possibly be so bold as to believe there was a place for me over there. Miss M is sorted - she's half Scottish so technically has rights. I just have a bunch of ancestors who turned their backs on the place and came...HERE.

Nice move, guys.

Sometimes I do start wondering why I don't give up. Forget about it. The place ain't that great anyway. It rains all the time. Sometimes it's grey for months at a time. There are more wankers per head of population than possibly anywhere, immigration don't want me, Miss M's dad lives there (this is probably the biggest deterrent, damn him) ... and it is just so bloody DIFFICULT to get there. All the hours of my life I have wasted and we are still no closer. And now we are going to go and spend 2 or 3 years traipsing around the earth to try in a sense to come in the back door - and who's to say we won't face a big boot for all our trouble?

It doesn't matter how I reason with myself. The hope won't let go.

Runrig ... again:

like shadows on the wall

you come and you go

through the streets

and the rain that falls down

on our sin

no more good-byes

forever this way

whenever the greatest flame in the world

starts burning

this is our life, and our time

and nothing, is ever going to break us

now we're on our own

always in your eyes

a waking of souls

we gaze out on the road

that brought us up

to this place

the signposts never change

we'll go where they lead

whenever the day to break us comes

we'll not give in

this is our life, and our time

and nothing, is ever going to break us

now we're on our own

this is our place

in our lives

and no one

can ever change this moment

or pull this mountain to the ground

Departure blues

Perhaps it is the literature I am reading but I was dreaming last night that we were living in a different place.

My heart and mind are definitely on the move out of here. I am finding it harder and harder to feign interest in what is going on around me. My sister and her partner are planning to build a house (a mansion, really. Not bad for 2 non-professionals still under 30, but what do I know?) I do know that it strikes me as very Marie Antoinette - there are people in the world who are starving, who can't get a house, who can't read or write...anyway.

I have even started to take down my postcard wall (a staple in every house, hovel or cell-sized room I have lived in since I was 21). I wander round the house every so often and daydream about the garage sale I will have. I am even thinking about having a garage sale right now, just to get rid of the clutter.

Perhaps it is a good thing. I know it won't be easy to leave here, despite my boredom and frustration with the place. But unfortunately we have stayed here too long, tentacles of habit have wound their way into our hearts and lifestyle.

My daughter is also a lot older than I thought she would be when we left, and certainly older than she was at the start of last year when we moved to Alice Springs. She noticed the sudden disappearance of family then (her father also chose that moment to return to Scotland, so that added to her distress), I'm sure she'll notice it more this time.

Fortunately we will be going somewhere completely new that will fill up her senses and distract her. I think it will be best if I get a job quite suddenly and the departure process is fairly quick. Just like removing a Band-Aid - it seemed to work when we left for Alice Springs (I was phoned and offered the job on Saturday and we arrived by the following Tuesday).

Of course, it will not be the glorious departure back to Scotland that I have pictured in my mind over the past 3 and a half years, but it will be the beginning of that journey - with our final destination:

Deireadh, deireadh an Turas

The end, the end of the journey.

I suppose it's a good thing to start out with the final destination in mind.

This is it:

I can't sit around waiting anymore - it is driving me batty and making me bitter and cynical before my time.