Monday, November 08, 2010

One Year Later...

Obviously this blog is pretty much on life support. It has been over a year since I have posted here and I have serious doubts that anyone even knows it still exists. So I figured making a new post would at least serve as a nice bookend to a blog that had a pretty good run with all sorts of plot twists and crazy events to keep things occasionally interesting.

When we last left our protagonist, he was working as a PSR working in an elementary school in Caldwell, ID and preparing to be interviewed by the Meridian school district for a possible job. Things were looking pretty good and they were. Unfortunately, neither the job he was working at or the interviews with the Meridian school district panned out. I quit the PSR job because I got a flood of interviews as soon as I got my special education certificate. It would have seriously been hard to keep my job for as often as I would have had to call in sick in order to go on an interview for a while. There was also some odd stuff happening at the place I worked for that placed me in Caldwell. So one day I just quit.

Then came more than a handful of interviews and assurances from higher ups in the Meridian district that I would land a full-time teacher job with them. In the end, I was told not to take any part-time or temporary jobs because I would "definitely" be in the Meridian district by the end of October. This was last year. I ended up turning down two jobs that were not full time and by the time I realized I wasn't getting a full-time job, I had missed my chance on the two part-time jobs. This led to a three month stint in which extreme frugality, photography jobs, and patience kept me afloat without an actual factual job.

Then one day a person I had gone to school with called me and asked if I had a job yet. Nope. So I was told to go interview at this one charter school who was in desperate need of a special ed teacher. I went into the office and had a 45 minute chat with the director of special ed and a couple days later I had a job. It was 1/4 time and that sucked but it eventually became 1/2 time and now, I teach here full-time and am chilling in a rather spacious office that I occupy forty hours a week. It is a virtual high school which means everything is online. This means I almost never see kids and just do paperwork. For a job in Special Education, this is pretty much the most pimped out gig I could have. Oh yeah, it also pays better than any district in Idaho by a long shot.

So that is how things have turned out on the job front. Am I staying at this school for the rest of my life? Doubt it, but it will do for now and for the next few years while I get my Masters which I am starting in the next year or so. Don't ask what I am getting a Masters in because I am not quite sure. Boise State has basically rolled out the red carpet in terms of degrees in Education based on how I did during my Special Ed credentialing but I am also considering Mastering in a particular History field too. Maybe I will just end up with two Masters so I don't have to decide. Who knows?

My photography stuff is doing well despite me. I basically make no attempts to market myself but have shot weddings, senior portraits, kids portraits, family portraits, Christmas cards, and soon, two graduations ceremonies and two proms. Weird. I am basically to the point where my pics bring in a few extra bucks on a fairly consistent basis. I need to get my more professional site up and running but I will be damned if I have had the time to do that. It is nice though to be able to plan on making a few hundred extra every month for basically going out an playing for a couple of hours. I bought a new camera a few months ago and am trying to get the lenses I need in order to round out my kit but I have already dropped $6000 on stuff and need to recoup a little more before dropping a couple thousand more. I picked a spendy hobby.

Lastly, I have a girlfriend and that is going super well. I don't know what else to say there other than I really dig her and that she probably is one of the few people on this earth who get me. It is creepy how similar we are sometimes. Which is good, its cool.

Lots of other stuff has happened in the past year too! I have a nephew, his name is Broxton. He is basically a carbon copy of my brother in almost every way. Hanging out with Broxton is kind of like going back in a time machine and playing with my brother at that age; you just replace Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Toy Story and that is pretty much it. I will also be an uncle times two in the Spring so that is super cool too. I like being an uncle.

So that is it. I am thirty now and I am finally starting to feel kind of like a grown up. I still play more video games than a cracked out Japanese kid and I have more Legos than any man my age should ever be allowed but hey, life is pretty damned good at the moment and that doesn't look to be changing any time soon. Will I write in this blog again...maybe. I am not promising anything. After all, I can't make more than one post a year it seems and I don't really care anymore. This blog started over five years ago and it has had a good run, we'll see. I would be a shame to let it die...though I kind of already have.

Later.