Talent

When I was young I believed that my intelligence and talent were all I needed to be successful. I believed that my intelligence and talent mean the world OWED me recognition. I was so vain and so foolish.

As an educator I have found that those with the most intelligence or talent take it for granted. They dont learn to work hard. They dont learn to dig deep and push themselves for personal excellence. They just expect it all. These kids arent very happy. They spend most of their time being judgemental and looking at themselves in comparision to others and finding themselves superior. It must be lonely there in their world of exclusion, they dont have the world of people and experiences to enjoy because they are too locked into their own limited vision.

Then there are the kids who work for everything. These kids become talented. They find true joy in what they do. They dont exclude, they include. They work and work and work....and strive to be better with each task. They are friendly, pleasant, engaging and I would take a kid like this over the 'talented' any day of the week.

I wish that each of us had the possibility to see one day of the future...sort of like Dickens Christmas Carol...to see where we could go if we strived to be the best we could be. If we could see where our actions would lead. It would have saved me lots of years of mediocrity. Why was I mediocre? Because I thought my talent and intelligence meant i should get my 'due' instead of working for it. I wish i could give this knowledge to the best and brightest so they do not have to have that mammoth crash to earth that comes when they figure out that intelligence and talent are no substitute for character.

The Grind

As life gets back into the routine...or 'the grind' I find myself resisting. I enjoyed this past summer, and actually letting go of work and just LIVING with my family as a priority and work on the backburner. I am struggling to feel the drive to spend every waking moment working. I am frustrated by changes that feel like re-inventing the educational wheel yet again. I feel like I am on a treadmill, going nowhere.

I need to find some balance or I will be miserable this year.

All I know is....I miss my babies
I miss the beach
I miss my Daddy
I ache for my Mom
and I want my life to slow down :(

in sickness and in health...

This has been a year for both.....

through sickness and health my husband is always there.

I will never stop being grateful.

Thank you honey for taking care of me this weekend when i was sick, and all of the times I have been sick over the past 25 years.

I hope more 'health' is to follow...
Love,
your merrie

The Quest for Excellence...

My mother and father always demanded that I do my best. When I was younger I resented it. I didnt understand why other kids could slack off, and enjoy more of their free time when I always had to work so hard and was held to a higher standard. It frustrated me. They never backed down, so I was forced, coerced through a series of consequences that it would be better do work hard and have happy times at home. Life was simply not pleasant if my parents were not getting good reports from my teachers. I will never forget my freshman year of HS, before I transferred to St. Marks, I had a B+ in biology, not on a report card, not on a progress report...somewhere in the middle. A B+ because I had not turned in a homework assignment or two. The teacher, knowing my parents because they both worked in the system, informed them that I was missing assignments. This missing work was unacceptable to my parents, and as a result I was forced to give up my lead in the school play in order to focus on my schoolwork. Can you tell there is still a twinge of resentment there?

I do have a point. I resented how hard they pushed but somewhere along the way their demands for excellence became part of my make up, and I resolved to never expect less than the best from myself. This drives people in my life crazy at times. It means I work too many hours, and that I bring my work home during the times I am not just staying endlessly at work to get things done to my satisfaction. But I am intrinsically motivated. I look around, listen to television, the news, the younger generation and all I see are a bunch of people who expect to get something for everything they do. They are not satisfied with just the 'good feeling' that comes from doing something excellently..they want a reward. They want a banner, or a pat on the back...no..they dont WANT that..they EXPECT it.

We no longer seem to be a society who is on a quest for excellence. We are on a quest for what we can get...constantly asking "what have you done for me lately."

I hope this trend turns around...there arent enough rewards to go around, and the apathy that will follow is incomprehensible to me.

Missing.....

I spend a lot of my life missing people. I miss Meme, I miss my Mom, I miss my daughters, I miss my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my Dad , my brother, my niece and nephew, I miss my friends from high school, college....heck I miss my friends here because my life is so busy I dont have time for them. Now...for the next few days I am adding someone else to miss with Rich out of town until Sunday I will miss him as well.

You never realize how much someone means until there is a space in your life they filled. The little things - like...Rich gets up in the morning to make me coffee and breakfast before I go to work, or.... the days he works all night and gets home and makes coffee and when my alarm goes off and I get up to go into the bathroom, he has sat a cup of hot coffee on the counter so I can have a sip before I even get my eyes adjusted to light. His hug when I come in the door in the afternoon that says without a word that all is well with the world...I am home..and I am loved.
Monday we went to the movies....and my romantic and wonderful husband held my hand through the movie (he always does that) but he would bring my hand to his lips during the movie, and kiss the palm of my hand. Not a word, but a gesture of caring that made me feel like the most important person in the world to him. He does things like that all the time. Quiet acts of kindness and love ..they arent full of bravado, they arent for show..they are just simple loving gestures that mean the world to me. I will miss them with him gone.

I miss meme and mom. I miss that secure feeling...the guiding hand that I always knew was just a phone call away. I miss being able to have somebody to talk to about my girls, about my husband, about my work.....about my thoughts and feelings. Somebody objective who would love me no matter what I shared. I took for granted how much that meant to me. I didnt ever show either of them how much I cared while I could show them. I will always regret that. I have a hole in my life that they used to occupy and that noone else could possibly fill.

I miss my daughters. I miss the ease of just being able to hug them to let them know I loved them. I miss knowing everything about their day. I am so glad they are one another's best friend...but it leaves me out of the equation a bit, and sometimes I just want to cry from missing those precious girls. I sure do wish they would e-mail or call more. I do much better with e-mail!

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I am not sure my heart has room to get any fonder of the wonderful man I married 24 years ago. He has his faults, but we love each other, and that is all that matters.

I guess the point of this missive is to appreciate the moments you have with the people you love. Dont let irritation, or complacence cause you to miss the importance of those moments. You never know when you wont get any more of them. Love long, Love lots...and tell the people you love how much you appreciate them every day.

Theatre.....what it means to me....

Theatre ....... just saying that word gives me a soaring boost of adrenaline. I love everything about it. I love watching it, I love thinking about it, I love planning for it, I love acting, designing, directing, producing.....I love the collaborative nature of the art that brings people together with a sharing of talents and gifts and makes the most of each - raising each participant up. I love theatre people - they are the most creative, feeling, wide open people on the planet. They are just not afraid to play around in the feelings and thoughts inside of themselves that other people repress and suppress. They also tend to be insecure people who crave validation and are not particicularly intrinsically motivated. That insecurity is what lets them move so freely into the role of another...there is security in that, the script is constant and the outcome certain. The emotional journey is identified so there is no personal risk.

I love teaching theatre. I love opening the eyes and minds of young people to a medium they havent really encountered. I love catching them before their creativity is closed off, and opening them up to always thinking and experiencing things freely.

Being Grateful

I have so much to be grateful for. A wonderful family. A job I love and that never stops being full of the good kind of challenges that inspire me to do better. A principal who supports and believes in what I do with children. Students who are willing to commit to excellence. A wonderful house. Dogs who make me smile every day. Relatively good health. Friends. Talents.

So often we take everything for granted. I just wanted to stop for a moment today to say how grateful I am for all of the blessings of my life. I need to remember every day to stop and take time to smell the flowers...appreciate everything beautiful....and breathe it in. That is what joy is about.