The New Year

It's almost three weeks into the new year of 2008. For me, not much has changed in the past few months. I'm still teaching. I'm still struggling to find joy in the work I'm doing, but honestly by the end of most days I'm so wiped out that joy doesn't seem to exist. Our educational system is FUBAR.

I've gotten most of my tax returns. I've been teaching full time since the middle of October. Looking over the W-2s I have and keeping in mind the one or two I haven't received yet, I've figured out that last year I still didn't earn enough money to be earning above the poverty range. I realize that's relative because anyone in the U.S. is rich compared to most places in the world. But, I don't live in other places of the world.

I've been trying to do a little writing. It hasn't been much, but I am starting to brush up a short story I started last year.

I've still decided that I just want to do something creative for the rest of my life: write, act, make movies. I don't know how that's going to work out because I have a lot of debts I have to take care of, but in my heart-of-hearts I don't think I'll ever be happy in this life until I'm working at something creative.

I've been talking to God a lot. I still can't hear his voice. I've tried to look at this as a blessing. That maybe my Heavenly father has decided I'm mature enough to figure things out without constant prompting. I think about the story of Jonathan (in the Bible--I Samuel 14) and how he won a battle and conquered the Philistines without waiting for the ephod so that God could tell him what to do. I want to be like that. But, I am afraid. I've gotten used to listening to God. The only time in my life God was silent was ten years ago. It was one of the worst times of my life. God had to teach about love and the only way he could do that was to be silent. That silence lasted for six weeks. This silence has lasted for almost five months.

I'm making some efforts to change direction, but my efforts seem so meager. But maybe these meager efforts is all that I have to do. Even if it's not, I'd rather be doing something different, no matter how meager, rather than sitting around and doing nothing at all.