from "The Artist in Exile"
Apr. 5th, 2010 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyrasantae31.3.2010 — ...[M]y existence can hinge on something as small as a place I just really want to be. And that one very small thing... I must keep out of sight and out of mind at work. Nobody there cares about it, nobody wants to know. By the time I'm home from work, my friends in Finland are sleeping. I feel locked away from the only place I really call home. It's incredibly lonely...especially when there's nothing else to hold me up.
I wrote to my UF (the guy who kind of manages/supervises my student teaching) that "issues of social dynamics and isolation in my personal life" are affecting my work and he's like "just try to put the personal stuff aside for the next three weeks." Problem is, one can't "put aside" feelings of isolation when it's the work that is partly causing them. Also, doesn't banishing feelings of isolation make them worse?
[...]
I feel that in my position I have a public obligation to "be Canadian" and (of course) "be an adult" and, while either of those "masks" are relatively easy to wear individually, having them both on at the same time feels like turning a full 180° from the person I am. I hunger for self-expression, but I'm asked to express an anti-self, if you get what I mean.
And then put on top of that the feeling of not getting any help from my mentor teacher. He seems more interested in having me practice my presentation/teaching skills but I don't need as much of that practice as I do with planning skills. I'm usually quite spontaneous. I think -- and then I do. You don't really see me laying out step-by-step plans for stuff -- and when I do make plans, I never end up following them. And then I'm terrified of committing plans to paper when I have one. You can kind of see that at work in the rest of my life --> I think about living in Finland but I don't have a plan of how to get there; or I write nice and emotional endings to essays and stories but don't know how to lead up to them.
On the other hand, if I'm given a plan, I can critique it for what I think would work, what might not work, and what things may still need consideration.
I wrote to my UF (the guy who kind of manages/supervises my student teaching) that "issues of social dynamics and isolation in my personal life" are affecting my work and he's like "just try to put the personal stuff aside for the next three weeks." Problem is, one can't "put aside" feelings of isolation when it's the work that is partly causing them. Also, doesn't banishing feelings of isolation make them worse?
[...]
I feel that in my position I have a public obligation to "be Canadian" and (of course) "be an adult" and, while either of those "masks" are relatively easy to wear individually, having them both on at the same time feels like turning a full 180° from the person I am. I hunger for self-expression, but I'm asked to express an anti-self, if you get what I mean.
And then put on top of that the feeling of not getting any help from my mentor teacher. He seems more interested in having me practice my presentation/teaching skills but I don't need as much of that practice as I do with planning skills. I'm usually quite spontaneous. I think -- and then I do. You don't really see me laying out step-by-step plans for stuff -- and when I do make plans, I never end up following them. And then I'm terrified of committing plans to paper when I have one. You can kind of see that at work in the rest of my life --> I think about living in Finland but I don't have a plan of how to get there; or I write nice and emotional endings to essays and stories but don't know how to lead up to them.
On the other hand, if I'm given a plan, I can critique it for what I think would work, what might not work, and what things may still need consideration.
