Hiatus over, along with my holiday plans

So my excuse for such a long break, which I can partly blame for such a long break between posts, is that my keyboard decided to stop working and has crippled my blogging. Yet here I sit on my bed typing with an on screen keyboard all the same. In reality I am forced to admit I have been procrastinating writing this blog because the topic involves a little more thought and care than usually required for the simple recall of events.

Epiphany is defined as "an experience of a sudden and striking realization" (thanks Wikipedia). Epiphany is the only word I could use to accurately describe the moment I asked myself what this was all for. And by this I mean my walk to school every day to spend the day pretending to enjoy myself, to scold children whose goal of the lesson was to see who could get me wound up first, to justify to parents and my employer why the little darlings were below their targets, and to spend hours and hours marking assessments and homework, writing out meaningful feedback I knew would never be read. 

My epiphany was not the answer to the question, rather that the answer I would have given did not ring true. The obvious answer was my desire to travel, to see the world, my weekend breaks, my end of term holidays. My problem was that I'd decided it wasn't worth it. And I don't mean to come across as ungrateful in any way, because I am truly grateful for the moments I've had, the places I've been able to go, friendships I've been able to form and many, many positive experiences I had within my work environment. I met people who inspired me, who looked out for me, who embraced me despite my differences and the challenges I needed help through. The problem was an intrinsic one, one I'm sure anyone who works in a people intensive environment but particularly with teenagers has to work through, which was that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't set myself emotional boundaries. I couldn't stop the digs and comments from getting to me, I couldn't stop striving to earn the respect of people who intended to give none out, and at the point when my integrity, the thing I value most, came into doubt, I was so overwhelmed my travels became more about ticking boxes than actually having meaningful experiences.

Anyway, back to the epiphany. Through a series of events I will spare the details of, work was becoming untenable for me, while at the same time there were family things happening which were hard to be so far away from. And I was just in the middle of telling some church friends how I'd just recently realised I wasn't meant to come when I did but had really wanted to so chose to anyway, when said epiphany hit me, Why not go home? And the more I thought about it over the next couple of days, the more sense it made.

And there is the story of how I quit my job with seven weeks of the school year left, abandoning my month of summer in Europe to come home, feed babies, and change nappies. Congratulations teaching profession, you can add me to the half of teachers who quit in their first five years. Job well done. But in all seriousness, the last two months have been an amazing opportunity for me to reignite my passions, connect with family, and get my heart and mind ready for my next exciting adventure.

So that's it for now from me, just over a week until I head off to America for Bible College. I have a couple more posts to do from my incredible trip to Turkey, which I'll do soon, promise.