In which I cast Rant with my Blog of Writing +5.
Prayer conference ended just as well as it started. It was a very refreshing 48 hours.
Then it was back to reality. Lately I’ve been feeling extraordinarily stressed. Thursday was a perfect example. Three and a half hours straight of kids English, then a quick dinner (typically it’s curry at the Kirin-Do establishment across the street from the family center) before a private class at 7:00. I feel drained after just doing the kindergarten class, and I’m not even the primary teacher there. So through the two hours of elementary I’m mostly trying to hang on until 6:00 rolls around and everyone mercifully goes home.
Today was particularly busy. We lost one Tuesday and one Thursday to holidays this month, and instead of allowing our students to take one less class at 75% tuition, we charge them full tuition and tell them to show up on a different day. Bad policy, I think (and I’m not afraid of blogging this opinion). Bad for the teachers, especially, because the last week of the month is always the week when the students have to catch up. This week being the last week of classes, our normally tolerable set of three Thursday students was joined by four from Tuesday. We don’t have enough desks or teachers to accommodate that many students at one time.
Plus I was kind of disappointed today because it was Kaori’s last day. We had cake for everyone as a sort of goodbye thing, but ultimately I was so busy attending to other students that I never really got to say a proper goodbye. Kaori was one of my favorite students, too—she didn’t really learn that much over the year that she attended, but class was always more fun when she was there.
So by the time classes ended today at 8:00 all I wanted to do was go home and crash. Except I had arranged a Bible study with Chie at 8:30 at Mister Donut. It’s hard to concentrate on Japanese after four hours of classes. Fortunately Chie is patient with my clumsy explanations.
Yich. I can’t find any off time. At least when I had a 9 to 5 I could erase everything related to work from my mind when the clock hit five. Now there’s always something to think about, always some event coming up on the calendar that I have to spend mental energy on. And there are plenty of things on the side that need to be done but aren’t getting done. It’s not an organizational problem, because I have everything in a list. I know precisely what I have to do. I just can’t find the time and energy to do it.
I’d love to just escape somewhere where I don’t have to think about anything. I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
This kind of situation is something I’ll have to remember if I want to come back to Japan.