Different Sources of Inspiration

I promise today is not a teen drama on mTV inspiration day. I woke up to the Sunday coming through my window and it made me happy. I do love rain. It reminds me of Oregon. However, while I was driving to a meeting today, I noticed that everything was turning green and flowers (and weeds) are starting to bloom. I was excited! Spring is around the corner. Now, this raises the question...is the snow gone for good? Probably not but I can hope right?

So, while driving I turned off the music and just watched my surroundings. I felt as though Spring is one of those renewal seasons. Everything is new and fresh. I feel as though that is where my life is going. I am going into the end of term, I have a job, I have many plans for life and many goals that I have set within the last few days.

I have had issues with how I look for a while. I recently put on a bit more weight than I would like and have decided, with the recent shift in weather, I may start to go running. I am lucky that my iPod has a mile tracker! I just updated all my music and plan to start an exercise program. In fact tomorrow I will start tracking everything on my blog too! I have a pretty big goal in mind, but I don't want to say anything about it yet...some of you may guess it relatively quickly but for those who don't I will let you in on the secret tomorrow, if all goes well.

I will keep things simple for now and just say that this is the first goal I am working on. Until tomorrow, I bid you all a good night!

MTV inspriation?

Yes, you read the title correctly. I was recently watching a show that was hosted by the MTV network. Nope, it is not the old MTV with just music videos. The current, teenage t.v. drama that airs every season. It is about a girl that blogs daily about her musings and we, the audience gets to see how her thoughts play out. It seems odd and boring or just uninteresting, but just hear out my thoughts. I will continue with the synopsis of the said show...

It starts with the social outcast acknowledging she, in fact, is the social outcast of not just her school, but her community. She ends up receiving a nasty letter telling her she should disappear because she is that much of a nobody. What the villain did not anticipate was taking the advice that followed after such a nasty statement. The letter told her if she disappeared no one would notice and that she should follow the list given to her in the letter. Now, the main character is taking charge of her life and blogging about it. But it sorts out her thoughts and she explains why she hates high school but not herself (necessarily). Again, I know it is a stupid teen drama but it made me think of something that has inspired me a bit.

In one episode, she figured out that a popular guy liked her because she decided to be herself and act least act like she didn't care (even though through all her musings, she very much did). It made me think about a lot of things. My ramblings don't ever really make sense...at least not to anyone else. But I am pretty sure that I don't care anymore.

I want to write blogs just to sort out my thoughts and figure out life. It has been super confusing recently and I know how I want to approach it. However, I feel it is far too complicated to try and explain what is going through my mind at the moment. Although that does contradict my goal. All I am going to divulge for now is that there is a big chance that you will see a new blog post everyday this week.

Things Are Looking Up?

I know that Friday's blog was kind of depressing. I think things are going to get better though. I have been working on my resume and caught a huge mistake on it! Hopefully, this will help me set things right by getting a job! I know that there are a few grocery stores hiring and (hopefully) with my previous experience in a grocery store I can find a steady job. Jamie says BlueHost is hiring for part-time positions too! I will be speaking with her tomorrow! I am actually rather excited to start working again. No I am not giving up Springville yet. I am trying to sort through some of thoughts about Springville which I will address in a different blog.

I am so close to getting my room in order and potentially having the storage area in the house close to being free of my stuff (well, most of my stuff). I get some distractions, such as homework (okay so it is not a distraction) and the prospect of a new job but other than that I feel I am just plugging away.

I hope to have my Summer schedule and Fall schedule planned out soon too! I plan on posting a lot in the next few days! I feel okay at the moment.

How to Discipline Me

I will not go into the details about everything that happened, but I did do something very wrong that hurt a lot of people in recent times. Now, most people would think that the best way to discipline me is to have me go through a consequences. I have interesting information...I will take my consequence but I am so hard on myself when I make a mistake.

When I was in drum corp, there were a lot of rules. Leave your dot book on the field and you have to run five laps around the field. Leave your equipment at a show and it goes everywhere with you...literally (you have to sleep with it too). If you leave pages of your dot book on your field and don't replace or update it then you do kitchen duty. I am pretty sure me and a few other rookies at the time broke every single rule (unintentionally, of course). Whenever, we broke these rules the other rookies would get extremely angry saying that they thought the punishments were unfair. Not me. I take my punishment, but it is the feeling that I disappointed someone that makes me upset. I had a staff member tell me for 10 minutes how much he was disappointment in me because he was always fighting for me to have a solo or be in a certain part of the show. I carried that around with me for a long time.

Needless, to say, I am a weird child. About 90% of the time, I will take my punishment and spend quite a long time wallowing in the fact that I disappointed someone. That is what I feel like right now...a disappointment to a lot of people. I am trying to do what I can to fix this, including a contract that I hope and pray a few people accept.

So, to those I have recently, or ever, hurt I really do apologize even if it doesn't seem like I was sorry at the time. I am trying to fix what I did and am hoping and praying that the people involved will accept my apology and accept my way of fixing things.

My Daylight Savings Story

Last night, my students had a competition. I didn't get home until late because it was not in Utah County. After making sure all of the kids had a ride home, I headed home. My car clock and cell phone were telling me it was 12:40am. When I did get home, I went upstairs to inform my mother that I was finally home. I looked at her clock and noticed it read as being 1:40am. This confused me quite a bit and I wanted to double check my cell phone clock and it still read as 12:40am so I thought the clock was incorrect. I went downstairs and went to bed. I woke up and noticed my phone flashing as 9:40am. Thinking I slept until almost 10am I went upstairs to eat some breakfast and noticed the stove clock read as 8:42am. I was extremely confused and couldn't figure out what was going on. 10 minutes later when I opened up the refrigerator to get some milk, I noticed the calendar on the refrigerator had said "March 11th-Day Light Savings Begins." Needless to say, I was thoroughly confused for quite a while and forgot it was Daylight Savings.

Going against my better judgement

I found out today that the band teacher is expecting me to re-gain her trust and the trust of the parents, not the students. But that goes against my better judgement. I have been taught to try and please the parents as much as I can while allowing the students to have fun and if they have fun but a parent is angry then that is their deal.

But I am being against to go against my better judgment. Okay. I just hope people know what they are asking for.

What None of Them Realize

What none of my students realize is how much I love and care about them. I cried quite a bit yesterday when a student accused me of not caring about my kids. Then when my student this morning threw her stuff down and walked out swearing while doing so. This mornings schedule including getting new work to the end of the show. When I went to set everyone up, one of my former captain's threw her equipment down and said (note there is swearing coming) "this is complete and total bull shit. When you and your lazy ass want to present a show that I am not embarrassed to perform you call me and tell me. Until then I am gone. I practiced and we were still messy. Thanks for making ME look ridiculous. If we weren't ready why did you put us out there. Call me when you have stuff for me to work on." I told her she has no idea what we are doing next and that in fact we were re-working the show today. She looked at me and said "Stop lying to me and tell me the truth. The music skipping was your irresponsible excuse to not have us be together and to throw us off. It is not MY fault or anyone else's fault we were messy on Saturday. Just yours. BYE NOW."

I had decided that I had had it with her attitude and told her the following "Fine. Leave and when your are ready to apologize for acting out of line, yelling and screaming and for disrespect to the team, you may come back. Until then, there is the door. You are excused!" She picked up her stuff and stomped out only to turn around and tell her best friend "You better pick the right side or we are not talking anymore." Her best friend followed her out. But that was not the end of it. I was staging the end of the show when some parents came up. No warning. Just a simple surrounding and a "we are not leaving until you talk to us." One of them is upset her daughter was cut as a captain for her attitude. Another was angry that the show was a mess on Saturday. A third did not say anything but rather was there because these parents were trying to have a strength in numbers situation. I finally told them the following "Look, you can make an appointment to talk with me after rehearsal. If you want Ms. Teot present you can make the appointment with her as well. I will not tolerate an interruption of rehearsal because you are upset. Either meet me downstairs or send me an email. I have work to do."

I think my favorite part is when Jamie Teot, the band teacher came up to me to have a chat with me. She noted the parents were angry and gave me suggestions on how to work with them. I was about to cry from stress so I instructed the rest of my kids to go over the flag feature phrase. That is when the trouble really began. My former captain came back and said she was going to be helping. From what I have gathered from the kids, they were yelled at by her and told to do what SHE said and not what I said because Jamie is my boss and if Jamie tells her (former captain) to run rehearsal then Jamie trumps Kristen and she (former captain) is allowed to do what she wants. Apparently afterwards, everyone got into it with each other.

Now, I have been receiving text messages non-stop about how the band teacher has decided to re-instate captains and how the students are not happy that the band director is making decisions for me.

I don't think any of them realize how much I love each and everyone of them, how much I want the best for them and if I had known they were not ready, I wouldn't have had them perform. They were clean in warm-up and in our Thursday rehearsal. They gave me every reason to believe they were prepared. I apologize if they felt I was the reason for them being so messy (sometimes apologizing for something you didn't do goes a long way). None of the kids had any resentment (aside from the usual two). They said they froze but that they were just not expecting so many people to watch them. They trust my judgement and plan to continue moving forward.

They don't realize that I care so much more about them then they know. I spend many nights laying in bed thinking how I can help them get better and how I can do my best for them. I have had times when I would wake up at three in the morning and choreography in my room a certain section and then write out how to help them achieve it!

I just wish they would realize that!