Voices in my Head

After about one month in Baoding, something marvelous happened:

I started talking to myself again.

I mean... non-stop. Like, eh - in a good way. I've never really thought about how often I talk to myself. I just do it. It's kinda like how you (if you're normal and healthy and sane) don't normally think about breathing.

You just do it.

And then, when it's gone, you're dead, so you don't actually know that it's gone.. except for those initial few minutes when you're suffocating and...

Well. This metaphor failed.
Let's forget the metaphor then.

In August of 2010, when I started teaching in Memphis, Tennessee, that little continuous conversation with myself stopped. I just... pretty much stopped talking to myself.

I hope I'm not giving Memphis a bad rep. I don't mean to, if I am. I love Memphis. It's a great city - and, once I stopped teaching there, I fell in love with it. The usually sarcastic "Welcome to Memphis" greeting that people gave me last year.. I would say sincerely. It's completely different from the north, and it's my first experience with the "real world" after college.

Teaching there was really very very very hard.
Yes, some of it had to do with the hard work - but I can work hard. I woke up at 4:00am to get ready for class, I crashed at 8:00pm - exhausted - and I spent my weekends lesson planning.

And while most of my colleagues' problems were with the administration and the school itself (And I agree with them because those problems were... unspeakable), I had another little problem to deal with: I just honestly didn't think very much of myself as a teacher.

I said to a colleague of mine: "I know it's a lot of work, but... I think it'd be a lot easier if I thought my students were actually learning something."

A lot of it was lack of training, yes. Lack of experience. Lack of.. guidance, maybe. But I spent time in the classroom trying very hard to do something that I didn't think I was very good at.

That was hard.
All of that combined together made the voice in my head go... quiet.
And I didn't even realize that it was gone. I was too busy and too tired to notice its absence.

Then BOOM! WHAM! Half a year later, halfway around the world - while I was riding my bike through campus in China - that voice just popped right back in! And I wanted to write again and think and talk to myself.

It was only then that I realized what I had lost, and it was only then that I got excited that I at last had it back.

Part of it's just time. I had time to recover. My life here is pretty relaxed. I can do what I want to do when I want to do it. I've been keeping myself busy, but it's all stuff that I enjoy doing.

Most of it, though, is confidence I think. I actually think I'm... a good teacher here.

And I have my classroom.. wall mate.. in Memphis, who taught me a lot (sometimes overtly, but mostly by example) to thank for that.

So, um... yes. The latest update:
The running conversation in my head has returned!
Huzzah!
If, er, you care. Yep. I'll try and post something more substantial next time.

Until then - Happy Thanksgiving!