Annual Birthday Recap

Posted by beth on March 6, 2011

IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whew, y’all. This year’s been a doozy. Let’s take a look back at what happened when I was 30.

Census2010

Remember when I worked for the Census? Having just done my taxes, I can tell you that that job served a few purposes, but none of them was “to bring home the big bucks.” It did, however, give me plenty of time to earn tiny bits of other money writing, and in all fairness, it paid my rent for two months. Plus I got to meet those cute little girls who were baffled as to how my hair was curled each day, and I wrote Rae’s favorite poem, “Ode to a Government Pen.”

And thus was spent the spring of 2010.

Teaching (aka Driving) in the Mountains

Because the community college that is actually located in Asheville was not hiring ESL teachers until about a month after I moved back to Raleigh, I taught at a different college – one that served two neighboring counties. Therefore, I drove to those two neighboring counties every Monday-Thursday night for six months. And once again, having just done my taxes, I can tell you that those teaching hours paid for exactly three things: rent (barely), food (barely) and the gas to drive to and from work every night.

Freelancing

Is it worth it? I wonder sometimes, but I do kind of love it. Work from home in your jabambas, get paid to write about ridiculous things like who Dolly Parton’s husband is and why a toilet is called a “John” – these are things I like. But having just done my taxes, I can tell you that the money I earned from freelance work last year paid for exactly one thing and one thing only: health insurance. I mean thank GOD for freelancing because I’m extremely glad I have health insurance, but it’s a hard life when you are a procrastinator like me.

Moving…Again

I’m tired just thinking about it. Seriously. Sometimes those months I spent in Asheville feel like a dream – like they didn’t really happen at all, like I moved from Italy back to Raleigh, went to sleep for a long time, had a really nice-yet-stressful dream about being somewhere else, and then woke up and had to go to work. I miss that dream.

Writing Group

Man, those people really were my people. I miss them. I miss the accountability and feedback they provided me with. I miss everyone being afraid of Jay, who was always either very kind to me or just insulting me in ways I didn’t understand. I miss Lisa’s subversive literary wit. I miss my morning “writing” dates with Rae and Erin. I miss Andrea’s futuristic teen romance. I miss Tiffany’s schizophrenic boyfriend.

I tried another writing group when I got back to Raleigh, and it just didn’t work out. Part of it was that I had to work registration for several weeks and missed it, part of it was that the group went until like 9:30 every time, and that was just too much for me, and part of it was that they all already knew each other, and it was hard for me to jump in.

It’s sad, really. When I moved back to Raleigh, I said I wanted to do things differently. I didn’t want to just slide back into my old life, but it seems like that’s what I’m doing. I wanted to be in a writing group, and that’s not happening. I wanted to join other community activities (a choir, a sports team, a hide-and-seek league, something), but that’s not happening either. It appears as though my Raleigh life will always consist of work, church, community group, movies and Wii games – all fine things, just not quite the life I want. Perhaps I want too much.

New Community Group

If I left one group of my people writing in Asheville, I found another group of them here at church. The community group I belong to is just that – a community where I belong. It’s one of the most eclectic groups I’ve ever seen, and I love them. If only they’d critique my writing…

New Class

This one really surprised me. I moved back to take a job teaching a class I’d never taught before. And it scared me a lot in the beginning. I had no idea what I was doing, I was pulling lessons out of my butt, and I was absolutely astounded that people kept coming to class. Then they started taking post-tests, and very few of them were improving. And THEN I found out that that’s totally normal. It’s a different test than the one they take in ESL, see, so it works differently, and outcomes may vary.

However. Toward the middle of the semester, I guess, something clicked, and I really started to get the hang of it. I started having a lot of fun with it. I started to really like it. And this semester has been even better so far. It’s still a LOT of work, I still don’t do a lot of things perfectly, and I’m still trying to make improvements to my curriculum, but I’m a lot more comfortable with it, and the students are enjoying it and improving. And that’s a very good feeling.

Holidays

They happened.

New Orleans

I’d like you to note that is is the ONLY trip I took outside of NC, SC and VA when I was 30. It was, in fact, the only time I’ve left those three states since DECEMBER 2009. That means I went ALL OF 2010 without going ANYWHERE I don’t go with some regularity. Y’all, that is huge. And kind of depressing. I need travel in my life. I feel boring without it. I feel bored for sure, but I also seriously feel uninteresting to myself. I need stories to tell. Perhaps I should save my money and work on my fiction writing, but it’s so much more fun to fly somewhere, navigate the city, find things you’re looking for, find things you weren’t looking for, try to translate the menu, butcher a foreign language, and marvel at life as you know it and as you don’t in a new place.

But I digress.

Have I mentioned that Amaris and I did a 1/2 marathon? Did y’all know that? Because we did. We didn’t train very well for it, and we finished anyway. We stayed in a SWEET hotel with a hot tub on the roof and free nightly PB&Js, and we had the best cheerleaders a gal could ask for. We got t-shirts and medals, and I just got a $10 gift card from PF Chang’s in the mail!! Definitely a worthwhile trip.

I won’t lie to y’all. I have had very mixed feelings about this year. I did some things I really loved, and I did some things I really hated but knew I had to do. It’s been a pretty hard year, honestly, but it’s also had its high points. I feel like I should form an action plan for making this year more awesome, more of the time. If you have any suggestions as to how to go about it, let me know. In the meantime, here’s what I’d like to see happen when I’m 31:

1. Leave the country
2. Love lavishly
3. Run at least one of each of the following: 5k, 10k, 1/2 marathon
4. Be a better listener
5. Be a better teacher
6. Save money
7. Write more fiction
8. Exercise reasonably and regularly
9. Slow dance. With a boy.
10. Take awesome pictures