Lucky, this point in time and space

Some days, I really want to scream with frustration. Other days I just want to stay in bed and do nothing, because it feels like that's all the universe is telling me I'm capable of doing anyway.

I know how lucky I am in so many ways; I know that leaving my previous job was my choice. Maybe I don't have any right to complain.

It is just demoralizing to go to interview after interview for jobs that I am more than capable of doing well - nail salons and diamond merchants and accountants who need someone to answer the phone, essentially - and be told, "Don't call us, we'll call you," and know that I won't be hearing anything.

It is incredibly frustrating to hear a nannying agency tell me that I don't have the experience that they look for because I haven't been a babysitter before. Never mind that I've spent the last two and a half years essentially living with children, taking care of them, and helping them learn - that's just not good enough.


During the last few years working with kids, I've done so many things I would not have thought I was capable of until I did them. I climbed atop a lamppost in a crowd of millions to keep track of my kids and stole bottles of soda out of a hotel ballroom to carry to them on a bus that was stuck and had no water. I've had students come out of the closet to me. I've been privy to the incredible trust of teenagers, have had them tell me things that were incredibly difficult to hear. I've sat beside students in the hospital. I've advocated for them when they were being sexually harassed. I've been scared and intimidated. I've also felt the flush of success when they tell me "Thank you so much." I've caught vomit and mopped up wounds and burned the crap out of my hand trying to make a wax seal for a kid who really wanted one on her friend's birthday card. I've consoled and laughed and worried and disciplined and talked to kids, and their parents, day in day out, for a very long time now.

So yeah, I get irrationally upset to hear someone tell me that my experience with children is "piecemeal." It sure as hell doesn't feel like that to me.