House pride. Or lack thereof.

Sure as I am that I've mentioned this before, I absolutely despise the notion of packing up one's belongings, only for them to have to be unpacked a mere couple of hours later at their destination.

Except my most recent case of gathering together my worldly possessions and relocating them involved many hours packing boxes, transporting them a mere 6 miles, and stacking them in an organised pile against a wall ready to be unpacked. Unpacking should be complete in around 6 months, if my record is anything to go by.


In case you aren't aware, I spent my first term at university living out of my suitcase, utterly convinced that the dons were soon to realise their mistake at offering me a place and send me packing. Naturally, I wanted to be in a position to just get the hell out of there as soon as that happened. Luckily for me (in more ways than one) that didn't happen and I did indeed unpack fully at the beginning of each term after that. Unsurprisingly, it took a while to master getting it all done in one fell swoop. 2nd term of first year, I was unpacked by around 5th week. Summer term, managed to do it before my first lecture.

Alas, you get the picture. I'm rubbish at packing and unpacking above a speed of one box per day. And as is the norm, blog posts, facebook and unnecessarily long emails take precedence over emptying that box that I keep stepping over en route to the kettle.

Life. Existence. Never the twain shall meet.

My my my. I'd almost forgotten the existence of this page until a dear friend told me he'd read my archive as a direct result of his own boredom. It's been longer than a while, so much has been and gone in my life since April 2009 that I don't know how best to summarise it. But here goes:

I passed my teacher training course. I got a job. I moved to be able to do the job. I started the job. I now have a monthly salary amount. I completed my NQT year. It was a rollercoaster of emotions and events. I've committed to staying in the job for the foreseeable future. Oh, and I'm moving again. Except not because of the job, but because of me.

What a wonderful level 5 piece of work (if it were written in a foreign language, of course). A short text using 2 tenses and a description/opinion.

You see, this is my life now. Levels and sublevels; grades and grade boundaries. It saddens me that I have nothing to speak to friends about any more. Except for times past. Speaking about my present depresses me somewhat: partly because I am the only teacher in my friendship group (making it hard not to bore them brainless), partly because it's so damn hard to remember the good things about my career when so many negative things happen that put a real dampener on the whole shebang.

Nonetheless, I am alive - in medical terms. I prefer to regard myself as breathing and existing. When I come back alive in it's real (read: my preferred) sense, I'll be back to let you know.