I promised something more exciting than hang-out escapades at the end of my post yesterday, but let’s just say I never got around to doing anything more exciting.
To be fair I made “more exciting” impossible by staying up until 1:30 a.m. playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice with my boys, finally learning why people love From Software games.
I seriously went from this:
To absolutely exploding with hype as soon as we began picking off mini-bosses with Sly Cooper levels of stealth.
But I also didn’t come up with something more exciting to talk about today because I spent most of it working.
I’ve hit that point (as always) where thinking about the things I have to do before summer turns me into a quivering mess of stress and food wrappers.
Except this semester has the added benefit of stress about graduation too!
My goal was to use Spring Break to catch up on homework. Namely my internship hours and Senior Honors Project.
Most of it has been spent throwing myself against those internship hours, much to the detriment of progress on my novel.
For now I’m hoping to hit my 120-hour mark so I don’t have to worry about that ever again, since I have a bit more time to finish my novel on the backend.
I have made decent progress (approaching 90 hours), and there are enough other things coming for Gladeo that I think I’ll be fine.
In fact, tonight I finished transcribing my interview with Dr. Nicole Wesley, the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources for the Redondo Beach Unified School District.
Also my ex-Principal at both Adams Middle School and Redondo Union High School. We’ve stayed in touch.
I transcribed almost 7,500 words for a good couple hours and still have to put the piece together, so she’s been a godsend. Alongside other stories in the works.
I probably won’t talk about her again until stuff gets published, so I figured I would leave y’all a nice teaser from the end of my transcript:
“I think that before you become a teacher, you don’t realize the level of difficulty and complexity that comes with the job. But as complex and frustrating as it can be, it is equally if not more rewarding in every other sense. Even on the worst day, you will experience a situation that brings joy and hope in a way that is inexplainable.
I think that may be the case with a lot of jobs. There are no perfect jobs and you’re going to work really hard, even beyond the seven hours you’re paid. But the memories and relationships and the impact you make are second to none.”
— Nicole Wesley
Great stuff. Can’t wait to pull the Profile and Spotlight together.
That was about the most exciting part of my day. Unless you want to get into my orthodontic adventure.
… Actually, I did talk about this problems, so it might be worth writing closure.
Toward the end of 2018 I broke my permanent retainer at a celebratory end-of-semester dinner with my friend Mimi. The cherry on top of an already relentless day.
I took a little too long getting to the Orthodontist after that, so my teeth had moved out of alignment. They told me to wear my plastic retainers 24/7 for a few weeks and come back.
School got busy. So I wore these bad boys all day, everyday for probably a good month or two.
Spring Break offered the rest I finally needed to make a new appointment, so $250 later I am back at full capacity.
Only having to wear these at night again is a true blessing that I will never take for granted.
… Until probably half a year from now when I stop bothering.
But I’m hoping to be better about that this time around!
And that, ladies and germs, sums up my day. Lots of work and orthodontic care.
I’ll try to stop promising cool things on specific time frames because I seem to keep failing to keep my word.
At this point Shantae will be taunting me for the rest of my life.
All I’ll say is, don’t be surprised if I come out with a few more silly posts or life dump posts for a while as I attempt to keep writing through my imminent semester-end burnout.
God knows graduation will be the death of me.
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 