Heeeeerrrrrrrreeeeee's Jen!!!

Welcome back as I have taken an extended break from blogging... not writing... just blogging. I have to take a moment and catch you up on a few things: I'm no longer employed by the big, evil health insurance corporation (yay!!!!), I spent a couple of months on unemployment... which was pretty cool, I am now in grad school working on my master's in teaching, and I am coming to the close of my first year of teaching. Oh! And I fell in love with a poet and now we're engaged...

Ok, I think that's it. I'll discuss my recent injury and all that entails in just a sec... I've missed you. I've missed your comments and encouragement and since I have found a couple of friends who also blog, I have come back to my blog like I've been away from home and have now returned. Hi...

I think the last time I wrote, I was miserable and in a job that I hated and that was going nowhere. Talk about a hostile work environment... I lived it. But as it is said, there's always a silver lining to a cloud and I met a good friend there, with whom I still communicate. During my stint of unemployment, I met a wonderful woman, who is now my writing mentor. I got back into school and I'm doing something that matters. I am more exhaused than I've ever been in my life and for someone who doesn't like to make decisions sometimes, I make more in a day in a classroom setting than most people make in a day. As a teacher, I have to be hyper aware of everything going on in my classroom, no matter if I have 16 or 29 kids in the classroom. I prioritize instantly and I can do it in my sleep and I am grateful for silence now. Very grateful...

This particular first year of teaching has been made extraordinary by the fact that I fell and broke my hip the day before Halloween 2008. Now... before you ask, yes... I am still in my twenties (27 in fact) and no, I do not a bone deficiency or disease. I happen to be the chick that likes to do things the extraordinary way and make a very rare break in a very awkward way at a very rare age... No wonder I had to get a lawyer for my worker's comp claim.

Everything's cool now... I'm walking (with a cane) and I have been released back to full duty. I was teaching in a wheelchair and that is a very difficult thing to do. Especially when you teach 11 and 12 year olds in middle school. And you're on narcotic pain pills... (I quit those because you CANNOT have a slow reaction time when you're in a classroom setting). Anyway, I came through all of that, and I'm still here? I just signed my contract for next year?

I think in the years that we have been away, I have found the purpose of the twenties... it is to see what you're made out of and what it is you can accomplish. A couple of years ago, I would have told you that you were crazy if you said I'd be on a cane and teaching... in middle school and still loving the experience. I would have thought that I would've been curled up in a ball in Atlanta, bawling my eyes out. But to the contrary, I have come to embody the idea that "failure is not an option."

And if failure is not an option, then that means that I can only be successful which means... watch me. I've got quite a few tricks up my sleeve.