Life has a way...

When I started updating this blog on my life back in February, I really just had one thing on my mind, but I felt like I couldn't let it out until I had thoroughly caught up on everything else. So here's the last of my catching up: My first year as a teacher came and went, I met many very talented kids, several who made my life misery, and worked with very friendly and supportive colleagues and administrators. I did a lot of things right, but I also made some mistakes and learned from them. I survived teaching 7th and 8th grade band, as well as a show choir - two things I never thought I'd ever have to do when I graduated from NAU. On the whole, I ended the year on a positive note, and with excitement for my upcoming 2nd year and the opportunity to get started off on more solid footing. I could go into more detail about the year's happenings, but you always hear stories about teachers getting in trouble because they let something slip that they shouldn't have, and I mostly just don't want to take the time that would require, so this description will have to suffice!

Okay, now on to what I have been trying to say since February. . . .

But wait...

It's not even really an issue anymore! Imagine a young 23-year-old college graduate and middle school teacher. Everyone tells her she's cute, talented, smart, successful, and funny, but all of this just sounds to her like empty, sycophantic reassurance. If all of this were true, then why haven't any men expressed any romantic interest in her entire life? How is it possible that she's lived this long without a single kiss or a hand to hold? "Everyone" says it will come when you least expect it, and it will be worth the wait, but that's easy for them to say.

Let me go back just a little bit further. In late 2010, I began to shift focus in my personal prayer. I don't remember actually praying for a man to come into my life before this, but I just wasn't even really praying for anything, just familiar overused phrases every night before bed because that's what you're supposed to do, right? Meanwhile I'd live my life feeling sorry for myself and feeling defective. It was then that I decided to make my prayers mean something again, and I think this is what made the biggest difference in my life: I prayed that I would be able to take the steps to become who I needed to be, and be where I needed to be, to someday meet my eternal companion. I knew that I needed to make changes in my life, because obviously what I had been doing wasn't getting me anywhere, and I wasn't happy.

I didn't realize until just recently, but about that time, little things started changing in my life in very subtle ways:

On October 5th, a hailstorm ripped through Phoenix and banged up my Saturn, and I got a new car a couple weeks later. Why does that have anything to do with this? Well, partially because I had to be a big girl and do grown-up things like file an insurance claim all by myself, and there's something very symbolic about making confidence-boosting changes in your life, like putting the 12-year-old $4,000 car that took you through the worst period in your adult life behind you, and having the freedom to start fresh and move forward with something brand new.

I remember specifically right around Halloween I began to make conscious decisions about food. I hated the idea of dieting, and I loathed the idea of exercise. I didn't want to weigh myself, because I was afraid what the numbers would tell me, but I knew that I didn't like what I saw in the mirror, and I was in the biggest-sized pants I'd been in my entire life. First thing I did? I walked past the bowl of Halloween candy in the kitchen. Ordinarily I would have picked through it over the following week until it was all gone, but I thought to myself, "I don't need that." Such a subtle little thought, but it was the first one that made all the difference. I still didn't want to exercise, but over the next couple of months I figured out what worked for me. I restricted my calorie intake, and found that I was able to do it successfully without feeling like I was starving myself, which was my biggest fear. I made sure to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, and not to eat after 8:00 PM. I also cut out all snacks. By Christmas I'd gone down a pant size, and I was even more motivated. I had started at a size 18, and made it my goal to reach 12 by my 24th birthday in June. I made it there by the end of May, and am currently sitting in a pair of size 13 (juniors) capris. The first time I actually got the nerve to weigh myself was in December or January, and I was at 195 lbs. I got all the way down to 158 purely on dieting, and I've maintained around 160 all summer. Once school starts again next month I hope to buckle down again and hopefully lose another 20-30 lbs by next summer. People tell you that "if he really loves you, he won't care about the weight," but really, how can he love you if you don't love yourself? Besides, it's not so much about the weight as the confidence that I've gained in myself that I was able to gain control of my own body, and I was able to do it without anybody else's help, and in spite of temptation.

I had been a floating unpaid member of an LDS dating website called ldsmingle.com for a couple of years, actually, but I wasn't incredibly active, and I didn't even tell anybody I was going for it. So many people have a stigma against online dating, and I was afraid of appearing desperate. In December I finally took the dive and paid for a year's membership. I figured I wasn't in school anymore, and I had a stable job in my chosen career - I'm finally ready to give it a try. Obviously the singles ward isn't getting me anywhere, and I've always been more comfortable meeting new people online than in person, so who's to say it's not the right path for me? It's all about being in the right place at the right time, and maybe, just maybe, this is both. I scanned profiles regularly, but mostly stuck to guys who lived in the Phoenix area. I talked to a few a couple times, then never heard from them again. A couple guys from out of state seemed mildly persistent, but I didn't feel like we clicked.

This was where my last entries here came in. I was making all the right decisions, figuring out who I really am, making these changes in my lifestyle, but why was everything taking so long? I was just in one of those down-in-the-dumps moods that everyone gets into now and again, and all I wanted to do was vent about how frustrated I was, but I just couldn't verbalize what I was feeling without sounding like another jaded-and-unlucky-in-love 20-something. I'm glad now that I didn't post anything about it back then, in the heat of the moment. Those times are always when I say things I regret.

Anyhow, where was I? Just living my life in my second semester of teaching, getting thinner, and staying active on ldsmingle. It was only a matter of time before I finally started making some friends on Mingle, and come April, I got my first date in about 5 or 6 years. We hit it off online and texted for a little while, but when we finally met in person he was distracted, and texted. the. whole. time. He said for about a week afterward that he wanted to "hang out" again, but things kept coming up, and that line fizzled. Another guy lives right by my school, and took me to dinner one night, and things seemed to go well, but I wasn't sure if I felt anything. I would have gone on a second date, had he asked, but for reasons I don't quite understand, that never happened and we didn't talk for a while, but there weren't any hurt feelings. Another guy took me out the very next day, but he talked the whole time and barely let me get a word in edge-wise. He said he had a good time, but I had no interest after our date, so I ended that one. There was one other guy from AZ who was about to graduate from BYU and move back to Tucson, and I feel a little bad about him, because I think I led him on a little bit longer than I should have. We talked for a while, but he was in Utah, and when he moved back to Tucson, a weekend trip to Phoenix kept getting delayed for one reason or another. I have a feeling I broke his heart when... other circumstances... caused our first meeting to never come to fruition. Oh well, life goes on.

And then there's Dustin. One day in April, a chat request popped up on Mingle. Whenever I got one of those, I first did a quick check of the guy's profile to see how old he was, where he lives, whether or not he's divorced and has kids, looked at a couple of his photos, etc. If he wasn't more than a decade older than I was, and wasn't divorced or had kids (the way I saw it, I was a 23-year-old girl, and therefore still had the luxury of time. I wasn't ready to be a stepmother) I usually gave him a shot and chatted for a little bit. 29 years old was pushing it, but Las Vegas wasn't too far away to be implausible. His picture didn't remind me of the type of guy I'm usually attracted to, but there was something in his smile. Then I read his short profile bio, which broke my heart - he had recently lost his wife, and was very lonely.

I still wasn't sure if it would go anywhere, what with living in different states, but figured at the very least, I could chat with him, and be a friend. I accepted the chat request, and we had a perfectly pleasant conversation about time zones and other silly things, and I went to bed feeling happy to be able to bring a little bit of sunshine to someone who truly needed it. It was Easter the next time he requested to chat, I wanted to, but it was already late (9:00... I wake up at 5:30 to get ready for school) and I was heading to bed. He claims I shut him down (sarcastically, of course), but I just wished him Happy Easter, but I needed to get some sleep. Over the next few weeks he'd regularly, almost daily, pop up on my screen and we'd chat until 9:00 rolled around. I began to look forward to our talks, and logged on as soon as I could when I got home from school in hopes that we could talk again. We had so much in common, understood each other's nerdy comedy references, developed inside jokes, and frequently typed the same thing at the same time. I didn't realize I was slowly falling for him, because I definitely didn't plan to. Perhaps it's better that it happened that way, because I didn't feel the pressure of evaluating him for time and all eternity, I was just making friends.

One day while we were chatting like usual, he mentioned that he would be coming out to Phoenix in a couple of weeks, but nothing more. Over those weeks Phoenix didn't really come up again, and I kept trying to muster up the courage to ask if he wanted to meet when he was in town, but I was too nervous. Finally when I was about to bring it up, HE asked if I'd like to meet for lunch that Saturday, and I knew I had to make it happen, even if that meant ditching out on my sister's birthday BBQ. This might have been my only chance to meet this guy, and Whitney will have more birthdays. :) We met at a central location in Phoenix, had a tasty lunch, walked around the same square block about a dozen times while talking, sat on a shady bench and talked, got Jamba Juice, talked some more... Before we knew it, five hours had passed and he had to get going to meet his sister-in-law and cousins for dinner. I know I had a good time, and felt perfectly comfortable in his company, and enjoyed every single nudge and side hug. It wasn't until that night that he requested to chat again that I had a feeling that this wasn't just any date. When we left that afternoon, I wasn't sure when we'd ever see each other again, but we couldn't wait to talk to each other next, and over the next few days it became obvious that we had to figure out a way to make "us" work. I still had a couple weeks left of school, so traveling was out of the question. He came down the very next weekend, we spent all of Saturday together, and church on Sunday before he had to drive back to Vegas. He was a perfect gentleman, and I finally got my first kiss. It was worth the wait. :)

Before I knew it, I was getting in touch with people from church in Vegas who I could stay with for 8 weeks during the summer, I made a short, yet memorable, trip up with Hannah and Zak the first week of June, and the next week I was up to stay. I'm now five days away from leaving for the school year, and it's been a bittersweet week so far. This summer has been the best time of my life and the long-distance relationship is going to suck, but it's the best decision in the long run - I still have one more school year to teach in Arizona before my teaching certificate is fully valid and accepted by Nevada, and if I were him, I wouldn't want to think about having to take the Arizona Bar just to practice law in Phoenix. The singles' ward bishopric and my host parents think we're not being as romantic as they were in their day, that I should just move out here and substitute teach, throw caution to the wind, etc... While I wish that this wasn't a decision we had to make, ten months isn't going to seem like such a long time in the grand scheme of things, if everything works out like we believe it will.

Life has a way of working things out, as I've noticed. Why did I have to wait almost 24 years to find someone? In hindsight, it's because the right guy for me wasn't ready yet, and nor was I ready for him. These changes I started making in my life began at the same time Dustin's world was turned upside-down, though I wouldn't find this out for months. No one ever wants to have to think about the death of a spouse whom they love so dearly, but had I not been at the right place at the right time, with the right frame of mind, I wouldn't have been there when he needed someone most. I'm not at all jealous of Marina for coming first. I know she will always be a part of him, and I am extremely grateful for her presence in his life that shaped him into the man he is today. I am proud of him for being willing to let someone else in, and I am proud to have been just the right person to bring sunshine back into his life, just by being little old me.

I could never have imagined how things would turn out, and I wouldn't have done a single thing differently, pity parties and all. It's all a part of the journey, and has made me appreciate what I have all the more.

I'd better wrap this up before I cry anymore. Hopefully I'll get around to writing more often. It's good for me. Thanks for reading!

. . . :-)

Readying My First Classrooms!

So I believe I left off talking about my new job, yes?

Well after a long time searching, applying, and interviewing, I was finally offered my first teaching job. The school is great, and relatively new. The facilities that I get to work in are very nice. The band room is huge, and the choir room has a baby grand piano. Most of my equipment is in good condition, I have an office for each of my classrooms, a good band library, and a decent choir library (though I was very disappointed by the ratio of pop/show music to music of educational value. I was able to make enough good repertoire choices for the year with what I have, but it's going to be harder next year unless I buy a few new pieces). My administrators are very supportive, which is a lot more than many of my friends in the arts can say, and being willing to teach both band and choir has made it so that I don't have to travel between schools to work full-time.

I spent a couple full weeks during the summer coming in to get both of my classrooms ready for the new year. Apparently my predecessor didn't know she was going to be leaving until after school got out in May, so everything was kind of left as it was. Both offices were a mess, as it seems that the only time that was taken to clean them was to remove all of her personal belongings on her way out. Both offices had the furniture just completely backwards to how they should have been - in both, the desk was on the opposite wall of the phone outlet, and in the band office, the phone was sitting on the back of the couch... Really??? I can see why she would have the desk on the opposite wall - so that her back wouldn't be facing the classroom, but honestly, how often would you be sitting at your desk in the office when there are kids in the room? The inside of the desk in the band office was just a huge cluttered mess. You wouldn't believe how many drum keys I found in there. I spent a few days alone just organizing all of the file cabinets.

Then the choir room... Well, it was made pretty obvious which class she preferred, seeing the differences between the rooms. I already knew that she was primarily a band person. The choir room had horribly cheesy borders around every door frame, and no two doors had the same border, so it was just gross. Right by the door into the classroom there were four empty filing cabinets, a large shelf unit, and a music folder cubby system all crunched into a corner... Oh yeah, and the whole room smelled like urine. The shelf had cobwebs on it, had the dirty side exposed to the room, and had trash on and around it. The choir office had a broken light, had a desk and three filing cabinets lining one wall, and a long table, filthy couch, and another filing cabinet lining the opposite wall. The table, filing cabinets, and desk were all topped with clutter, mostly accompaniment track CDs (gross), and sheet music that was never put away. The entire effect gave off the feel of a depressing cave. But don't take my word for it... I have pictures on my Facebook. I had the light fixed, took the table out, reversed the desk and the couch (because of the phone outlet) and put all of the filing cabinets on the side wall (even moved in two of the four that were out in the room to fill up the wall), brought in one of two unused keyboards I found in the band storage hall (for potential use as a practice room), cleaned what I could of the couch cushions and bought a few cute throw pillows from Goodwill, and now the office looks bright and open. I took down all of the horrid borders in the room, and rearranged the cluttered storage furniture from that corner so that it didn't make me feel so claustrophobic. I also created my own colorful solfege chart, and painted a large music logo with the school mascot to go on the very blank far wall to add some personality. Now the room looks like somebody actually cares about it! The band room didn't really need a whole lot of love except for giving all of the lockers number cards and just setting it up again after the carpets were cleaned.

Probably what took the longest was organizing the music libraries. I spent a few days on each of them, and my mom even came in to help, because she really wanted to be able to help, and that was one of the few things that didn't require my personal opinion on everything. The music was all generally in alphabetical order, like all of the A's were in the same drawer, but beyond that, it was pretty bad. There would frequently be pieces that were not even under the right letter, and the labels on the drawers weren't precise. We made sure to touch every single piece, make sure it was in perfect alphabetical order, and discarded as many photocopies as we found. Seriously, there was a stack at least two feet tall of photocopied music that I got out of those drawers. That's just ridiculous, when you need all of the space you can get... In the choir room I especially wanted to get the music separated into different voicings, not just all bunched together alphabetically. After sorting out those beasts, I then went through every drawer and entered every piece into a spreadsheet with the title, composer/arranger, genre, voicing (for choir), date last performed, and any personal comments I could think of to describe the sound or feel of the piece, to make music selection quicker in the future. The time put into that was definitely worth it, and I may not know right now how long I'll be staying at the school (but probably at least another year or two), but I hope that whomever takes the position next will appreciate the attention to detail.

Alrighty, it's about lunch time on Saturday, I haven't done anything but chew gum all morning, and I'm hungry. I think I'll leave the recounting here for now, and leave the thrilling tale of my first year of teaching for a later date. At least now I'm only... six months behind, instead of a full year. :) This is seeming much less daunting than when I started out earlier this week. Next time!

My 2010 in a Nutshell

Well, of course I let myself go over a year before updating my "journal" again. My problem is that the longer I let it go, the increasingly more daunting it seems to get back to it, knowing all of the stuff that I need to fill in. It's already an hour past when I should have gone to bed, but I've hit a wall with nobody to talk to, so I might as well vent here. But first, to catch up.

So the first few days after finishing student teaching I was really down. I really felt as though leaving Marcos and all of the teachers, students, and parents I'd grown to love was like what I imagine a really hard breakup would be like. I say imagine, because, of course, I've never been in that actual situation before. There was a scramble to get all of my teaching certification done, and a near fiasco with having the wrong kind of fingerprint clearance card. Even after getting all of that taken care of, there was not a choir teaching job to be had, mid-school year, and thus began the grueling weeks of constant Craigslist job scanning and online application filing. By the end of January I got a job helping teach an after school song/dance program a couple afternoons a week, and at the beginning of February I began doing personal assistant work a couple hours a day for a lady in Scottsdale, whom I would love to forget... Even though I did leave with many amusing stories. For a little while on the side I did a couple voice lessons for Marcos students (and I quickly determined that private voice lessons are not within my realm of comfort), sat in on the MdN musical audition process (never having been through it before), helped kids work on Regional solos for a week, etc. It was hard knowing that I wasn't spending my days doing much, and it would be oh so easy to go back and visit, but there's a time and a place, and frankly, it's just as sad to hold on as it is to let go... Though arguably I guess you could say that it's sadder to hold on, because you just prolong the agony, and watch all of the relationships go sour as you overstay your welcome. Well, anyhow, I digress.

Now how about the bright spots in the otherwise dismal time? I participated in, and saw come to fruition, the Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir "Lux Aurumque" video. You can check it out on YouTube. It got quite a bit of press, and Dr. Holder even called me a couple days after it went live and asked if that was me. :) I guess I didn't really think of it as that big of a deal when I entered my video, but everybody seemed really awed that I was a part of it, so I guess that was cool.

I got back to arranging and composition. Sometime between spring and summer I arranged another Sondre Lerche song, "Words & Music", and composed a new piece called "Underwater," the text for which I found on an online poetry website by a young artist who lives in the UK. Neither of these has been performed, but I hope to hear them someday outside of midi form. It was cool, one day I was walking through the grocery store with my mom, and I could hear a choir in my head singing "Underwater," and I hope that it sounds nearly as cool in person.

My brother Casey and his wife Christi had their first baby that March, a beautiful baby boy named Finnegan. The Grays were all taken aback by his blond hair (What? A blond Gray?), but we love him all the same. His hair grows straight up, and Casey likes to give him a fauxhawk. Silly boy.

Can't think of a whole lot else that happened during that time. It was a lot of scrimping and saving my pittance to make payments on my Saturn, credit card, and insurance... And the Saturn I only used to get to my jobs and church. Spent quite a bit of time with the parents just hanging out around the house, getting lunch at Costco... you know the drill. Not a whole lot going on socially, because everyone else was still in school. There was a period of time when the old game night group would get together on Sunday nights to watch movies, TV, or internet videos... May have been over the summer. That kind of fell out after a while, though.

I guess that brings me up to the beginning of summer, when I continued applying for ever music teaching job I caught a whiff of (You should see my "favorites" tab and the list of school districts I checked multiple times daily for new job postings since the spring time), and feverishly crammed an 8-week online US/AZ Constitution course into 8 days so that I could finally get that stupid deficiency off of my teaching certificate. I was incredibly depressed after not even getting an interview for one job that I really wanted, and all of my friends who applied did. The only thing I could think of to set me apart was that I had that deficiency at the time I applied. I did have an interview for a middle school job in a nearby district, and for three elementary schools (in the same interview) in my home district. Didn't get the elementary job, but they did call back to let me know that I interviewed very well and was barely beaten out. The middle school job didn't even call me back for a couple of months to let me know that I wasn't selected... Good thing I'm good friends with the person they DID select, so I knew that it was taken already, and didn't stress over it.

Then I applied for a middle school job in Paradise Valley... a good hour's drive during rush hour.... The listing was for a half-time choir teacher, but I figured I should apply, because a job's a job. Then I get called for an interview, and I get asked on the phone if I'd be interested in interviewing for the half-time band position as well. I'd be a fool to say no (unless I had absolutely NO band experience... at least I can say that I've had 7 years experience being in band). So I interviewed, I was offered the job, I accepted the job, and the rest is history! Yes, the drive is far, and no, I didn't move closer to the school, even though I had originally planned to. I quickly discovered that I'm a pretty patient driver, and if I leave 2 hours before school starts I have plenty of time to prepare for my day, and if there's horrendously bad traffic, I can still be at school before 1st period starts (and twice I have cut it really close). The cost of gas per month is way cheaper than rent would be, and this way I was able to get a new car (bye bye '98 Saturn SL1! You were a good little car, I decorated your headliner with thumb tacks and adorned your dashboard with origami cranes made from candy wrappers... Alas, the hail storm that tore through Phoenix in October pummeled you, broke your driver's side mirror and left rear tail light, and the insurance money I got from you was enough to make a decent down payment on a 2011 Ford Fiesta), pay off my credit card (which just happened a couple of days ago, actually), and start a savings account to build up funds for what I hope to be the down payment for my first house. I tell you what, it's nice for the first time in my life to have a salary, and not have to constantly be counting my sheckles for every single purchase I make. I love that I'm able to have a savings account now. Love it. I love that for Christmas I was actually able to buy gifts for my family, instead of crocheting scarves and hats that they never use.

Alrighty, I think I've reached an okay stopping point, and all that took me an hour. Time to get some sleep, and I hope I'll be able to get myself back to this before the week is up.

Good night!