Right. So.

I'm going to try to get back over here a little more often. Despite a good run for a few years on Tumblr, and despite the many excellent bloggers who remain there, it has taken a dire turn toward a pretty pink princesses who love K-boys and rainbows theme, and I'm just really not feeling that. I'm getting close to thirty and possibly too old for Tumblr. Not that I imagine sixteen year old I'm No Picasso would have taken too kindly to it either. Who knows?

Dear Diary. Today I peed into a Dixie cup over a squat toilet and had what seemed to be an excessive amount of blood drawn from my arm, all for the low, low price of 30,000 won more than I paid for it last year. Which was 30,000 won more than I paid for it the year before that. Later on, I get to go to the police station. I also passive aggressively ignored my co-teacher's text asking me to come in for not the first, but the second day of my vacation (actually getting seven out of nine of your vacation days ain't too bad, is it? Is it?), because it's my vacation.

But that's all behind us now.

What I really want to say is that I think I may also be getting too old to be a foreign public school teacher in Korea. I still love teaching. I still love the kids. But the pedantic, bizarre and at times very invasive behavior from a fraction of the revolving cast of coworkers is really starting to wear on me. I'm getting bored of the office politics and the incoming newbies, to whom I have to prove my human adultness at least every year, if not semester, before I can get back to be treated like a competent person. I'm getting tired of being pushed into doing things because words have been twisted and creative misleading has been done, because I'm not fully in the know here, and probably never will be.

It's not that I hate my job. It's just that, as with all jobs, it begins to wear on you after a time. It used to be challenging and new and hard, with a lot to learn. Now it's sort of just a record on repeat, and I'm not quite sure I'm really in the mood to listen to it anymore.

More importantly than that (and here is the key, as I have learned many times over by now), not only am I doing something that I don't necessarily want to do anymore, but there is also something that I want to do more.

You should always wait until you have something you want to do more. And, once there is something that you want to do more, you can be sure the something you don't want to do anymore will steadily get worse and worse before your very eyes, which have been charmed and distracted by an imaginary image of the thing that you want to do more, which you are now comparing, daily, to the thing you don't want to do anymore.

Are you following this?

Well, the long and short of it is, originally I was being a bit of a sissy and planning on hunkering down for another two years at PS, because, you know, I just don't really know, and what about savings? Better to be safe than sorry. And deadlines are so soon, and scholarships, and what about my crappy Korean? I really can't try to do anything with my crappy Korean. And I don't really mind my job. I still enjoy it. And am I really sure that this is what I want? I mean, it could be a passing whim....

A lot of bullshit excuses round about like that. But I don't really want to wait. Whatever the circumstances, unless they start to seem very dire, I think I just want to sort myself out and do what I can to get started on school next year. Even if it means taking a few months off to fill the gap between contract ending and semester starting. That's what language school is for, right?

Right.

So things should be taking a weird turn around here very soon. Rest assured, if there is anything I despise more than having Head Teacher come round and drop her troll bombs while I'm in the middle of lesson planning, it's definitely filling out applications and dealing with various "institutions" or whatever the horrible people who make you fill out applications are called. So, there should be no shortage of bitch-blogging until my face turns purple. I've got a few good people on whom I can rely to make this go a little smoother for me, at least in the realm of advice and support, so I'm grateful for that.

We'll see?