This is Omar’s blog

And it is the weekend :)

I was meaning to write something about how bad habits are so much easier to pick up then good - fast food, lazing, more lazing. While I suppose that is true to a degree, the benefits are so much more superficial. Quick fixes if you will. Whereas good habits like regular exercise, eating healthily, being that little more organised are, frankly just hard work. The thing about getting into good habits is to just take each time you do it as a success. Do it, just once more. Take each time individually and then before you know it, it’s habit and it you forget how you even started.

Pilates was good again tonight, my posture is getting better. It is just easier to avoid that slumped down position.

A leading psychiatrist says that depression is not a human defect at all, but a defence mechanism that in its mild and moderate forms can force a healthy reassessment of personal circumstances.
Dr Paul Keedwell, an expert on mood disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, argues all people are vulnerable to depression in the face of stress to varying degrees, and always have been.
The fact it has survived so long - and not been eradicated by evolution - indicates it has helped the human race become stronger. link

There’s truth in there I think. There were times when I felt awful. For all the pain, I would never take any of it back. It’s such an important part of who I feel I am. I am definitely stronger for it.

Today was a good day, it would have been better if I had time to eat lunch but that’s a minor quibble.

The number of times I had to cross the road with my class; 6. Benefits of having a split school site I suppose. One of the TAs mentioned that they had a longer school day because of it. Pick up children from playground, cross round to classroom. Literacy. Coats on, get snacks. Cross road. It’s just time consuming is all.

On the whole they were really well behaved, some of them needed some help staying on task. That said, today by some standards was pretty easy. We did some writing and some maths-ing. Some ICT, which I ummed and ahhed about and then found the programme and then wasn’t sure what to do and then did it anyway (!). They did really well at it, we were looking at binary trees and using that to sort a groups of minibeasts (let us not mention the photocopier.)

I got there earlier then most of the staff, spent 10minutes driving backwards and forwards to find the car park - there isn’t one.

It’s funny how, at the end of doing a days supply, you get a sense of whether you like the school or not. You know. From interaction with the staff, to the kids and so on. I really liked the school today, as in I would quite like to work there.

This week I have been listening to this essential mix, which has some classics on that I haven’t heard again.

This Christian Metalcore, this 80s classic (they have a new front man too), this cover of that song (from this album).

Also this link about a university professor’s methods is awesome

In reference to yesterday, somethings either make you smile or make you want to stab someone, don’t they?

So, I’m going up the hill towards Birdlip on another 50minute commute (WOE IS ME). Do I overtake the slow slow lorry or not. So I do. Then 5minutes later I decide I want to pull over and check my map. It occurred to me at this point that although I knew the village the school was in, I had forgotten where abouts in the village the school was. (I think, that the positive part of me just decided it would be ok.) So, I pull over, check the map, glance over my should and watch the big slow lorry trundling by with a huge queue of traffic behind it.

And then I just smiled. Sometimes things happen and there’s nothing you can do about it, and that is just fine.

(I was in the Cotswolds today, as in the proper Cotswold, little village with narrow roads and it still had gates to shut across the road that had become overgrown and all the houses were that golden colour. I got there at about 7:55 and everyone else arrived at 8:15. Strange. Year 5/6. Some of the year 5s left for literacy and numeracy so I didn’t really see them until after lunch. The year 6s were fine, we did numeracy (ok, to a point, some misunderstandings) and literacy (some violence in acting form - me “does the king have to die?” them - “yes”). Then we played music bingo and had a go at some drawing, ideas supplied by another supply teacher. Which in itself was weird.)

(Excuse the focus on the second photo.)

Mum said this on my last entry:

the timing of two or more things is just right or just wrong depending on your outlook

Which I was thinking about today. That, sometimes whether you have a good day or a bad day is entirely dependent on your outlook. On whether you choose to focus on the positives or the negatives. I mean some days are clearly rubbish and the opposite of true or course, but there’s a whole lot in the middle that will differ depending on your mood, state of mind.

The first picture is the staff room at the school I was at today, which made me smile. The second is from a note the teacher left, I did in the end and it wasn’t that bad!

I had the first time of not being left work today, I haven’t had that feeling of the tightness in your stomach, the nervousness of not being sure what you’re going to do. Fine in the end obviously.

“Nobody in space wants to read about accidents,” explained Allan, “Specifically ones caused by man. When you live in an environment where you count so desperately on people to keep you alive it always has to be a million in one fluke, God’s will, or something else’s fault, but not man. People cannot face the reality their lives are constantly at the mercy of somebody else’s incompetence. It’s too much of a horror to deal with. So blame it on the mountain, tectonic stress or some such nonsense. It has nothing to do with the arrogance of man pushing too far and reaching too high.”

365 Tomorrows

Walking down the road, driving in your car, sitting in a building. It’s all the same, right?