A New Plan

Sooo... as some of you have noticed, I've been pretty depressed with this whole job-less, aimless existence. All I know is that I can't handle going back to grad school right now and I can't get any of the jobs I want until I do.

But after being in Mexico, something has sparked. The first thing was trying to pick up my Spanish again. My new best friend was born a decade after me. His name is David and he's a 7th grader at King's... and the younger brother of some of my friends from King's. His dad and my mom are two of the main muckity-mucks for Mexico, so this year his whole family came on the trip... and it turns out that he and I, in the words of his mother, are kindred spirits.

David was born in March of 1993, and I was born in March of 1983. His Aunt lives in Spain and he's been obsessed with the country and the language every since he visited her. So he and I spent a lot of time trying to say things in Spanish... and I was always asking him if I had said something right because I knew his knowledge was fresher than mine.... anyway, he's generally a really clever kid, so he was a lot of fun to be around and he was constantly amused by all of my strange noises and behaviors and therefore enjoyed my company as well.

I can't even really begin to explain the fascinating connection he and I made, so I guess I should just give up and suffice it to say that being around him reminded me that I used to be good at speaking Spanish and that its fun outside of the drones of a classroom.

Well, I didn't think much of that until I was back on the Social Work job search yesterday and I noticed that a lot of the positions request the applicant to be bi-lingual (something that I've always noticed and always ignored)... and then it hit me: I could be so much more useful if I spoke Spanish fluently... that's the reason I chose the language in the first place: because the population of California is highly Latino... and the ones who don't speak English are usually the ones who need the most help.

So yesterday, I decided that I'm going to get some tapes and learn Spanish again. Of course, I'll have to spend some time living somewhere to really be fluent, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

And because I really hate it that I spend my days without enough productivity, I decided that even though I don't have a job, I can still remedy that. So, along with Spanish, I will be picking up piano and flute again... as well as my Social Work text books that I've purchased for my own personal education... and I'd like to be more intentional about my crafts (especially Bryan's A's blanket that I've been working on for over a year).

So my plan is to get new music for piano (RENT or other musicals) and flute to motivate myself to practice. I really think I'll enjoy picking up my old hobbies, so I plan to spend one day each week focusing on one of these five things. I really want to keep this up even when I do get a full-time job.