jan check in

-finished stupid ucr extension graphic design course
-had couple days notice to sub for 3 weeks for an econ/wh teacher at mater dei, was stressed af to plan for an incompetent capitalist teacher
-joshua tree trip: no itinerary, just did whatever we want. was great. hiked, climbed, took photos, ate pizza, rested at airbnb
-experienced a ton of weird microaggressions at md, felt the upper/middle class culture killing my insides
-finished brief #2 immigration for data for demoracy
-found out i'm doing labor center's workers & learners brief
-got chosen to be part of team for pbs' asam documentary lesson building
-called, interviewed, chosen in a day to cover for lorin griset until june
-revamped budgeting sheet

i feel insecure about not having my own classroom, but i'm reminding myself that this year i am doing a ton of stuff to better myself as a teacher:
-took english methods course
-took ucr extension graphic design course to get supplemental auth.
-studying for/planning on taking cset
-even did ux/ui course on top of all that just to learn for kicks

and now just to keep track for next two months:
-data for demoracy
-ucla labor center
-ucla gseis staff directory
-pbs/aaaj lessons
-study for cset
-lorin griset long term subbing lesson planning

nov & dec check in

nov
-just working n stuff
-prof john recommended me to prof cecilia
-dogsitting
-miss my students, sad i'm subbing

dec
-white elephant with rainbow squad
-watchmen, mr. robot season 4, his dark materials
-reading books
-nanor's wedding
-visit sd friends
-bought a baby monstera
-gardening with michael

twelve

your presence, quiet
your absence, deafening
in joy i pause
to cast my gaze and find that
in your wake i've made me

can i outrun
the grief in my limbs?
it is my bones

every year
i write to give life
to the turmoil death left
a blinking dash
morse for words i know not


every year i try to write something and i end up with unpublished drafts. today i rode my bike and remembered that he ran while we biked. i looked for flowers to press but didn't find any that reminded me of him. i read a book in the bookstore and remembered that he took us to b&n on weekends and it was one of my favorite things to do. he drove us after some rounds of chemo, too. i made mac & cheese with broccoli because i remember that he liked it. i drew a portrait of him and watched coco because i like that dia de los muertos celebrates life and memory.

this time every year, i am contradiction. i want to be alone but i also don't. i want people to know but i also don't. i don't know if i want to grieve in public or in private; is it worse to feel sad and alone where no one can see you or where people who don't know you can see you? especially this year, i laugh because i chose a person who makes me laugh; but shortly after i cry because we cannot laugh with you. or you with us. is there a difference between me missing you and you missing me? do the years make it easier or harder? am i closer to you or further?

fall check in

aug

-plants with michael
-first couples therapy session
-processed fullerton & mater dei
-e starts nursing school

sept

-processed santa ana
-started subbing more
-making guava jam
-dog sit magnus & valla
-lots of conflicts
-liking la vista
-interesting to see different schools and see educational inequity unfold
-invited to design for ucla gseis

oct

-fancy bridal shower for nanor
-finally cleaned living room
-spoke for cohort 4 and visited my students
-processing for anaheim
-started ucr design class

july checkin

-hot pot with rainbow squad
-chernobyl with demy and jon
-signed up for ceramics class
-signed up for PT
-tramway with sender friends
-ucla lc still wants me on as graphic design consultant!
-babysat the hoffmanns
-sequoia trip
-gardening!

june check in

-last week of school; cried a lot, laughed a lot, had closure with my students
-bridal shower!
-renewed my license and retook my picture lol thank goodness
-presented my thesis
-graduated!
-prepped for wedding decorations for two weeks
-got married!
-best month

may check in

-last month of teaching

-alicia graduated!

-ethnic studies students presented their YPAR projects

april check in

-feeling better about teaching
-spring break:
saturday: hair/makeup, pokemon go with aries & gloria, demy bday dinner with baby caden
sunday: bum in bed, study outside; buy skincare, wedding plan; ask emmanuel about april 27, lesson plan at demy's/watch got, Mary Poppins, spiderverse
monday: beach with michael and planning at paris baguette
tuesday: donate bottles, study at OCC, run 2.8 mile, write thesis stuff
wednesday: visit uni teachers, work on thesis at woodbridge center cha for tea, sit in sun for a bit, get groceries, hangout with gloria, run 1 mile, climb, watch kdrama episode 1 of Her Private Life
thursday: cook pasta with emmanuel, cut his hair, study, alicia
friday: study, gas, groceries

-watched avengers
-esther's last overflow concert
-tender greens with demy, ramen with rainbow squad

march check in

-picked up my dress
-got my shoes
-made the invitations
-finished website and sent out invites
-baby shower for caden
-worked on a fun v6 at la boulders; trying to return to climbing when i can
-still struggling everyday/week. this fog is debilitating
-looking forward to seeing joshua

-unit wwi (people's experiences) and unit russian revolution going well
-some students still ass holes
-most students not
-on good days, i feel purposeful and fulfilled. on bad days, i want to quit

feb check in

-fighting inadequacy, powerlessness, frustration, under-appreciation all day
-some things i'm thinking about: what does it mean to be "good enough" - instead of perfect; how can i rest restfully to sustain myself for the long run
-i am not my anxiety or depression
-soon this will be over
-i am not my productivity or lack thereof
-maybe i should "look back and celebrate" instead of "look forward and be terrified"

jan check in

-depression during winter break
-bad anxiety week 1
-strike for 6 days, got to sleep better at night
-going back to teaching, switched naydelyn out. got new students. still anxious.
-new mantras "just get through the day" and "just be good enough"

dec check in

-finished first semester of teaching
-went to utla march
-counseling with ruth and mom lol
-finally winter break, bumming with siblings & pokemon go & mrs. maisel
-deep debilitating anxiety

nov check in

-it is currently thanksgiving break, this month was a blur and i barely remember anything
-this month was just working on the imperialism project; was really frustrating because many students didn't do the project
-i'm having a harder time setting boundaries/knowing what i'm in control of and what i'm not in control of
-i want a way out. when i feel trapped and option-less is when i feel the worst (i.e. living at home, solid landings)



self talk mantra
i am enough
it's okay if the students don't do work
it's okay if i rest
it's okay if i don't know what to do in a week
it's okay to be tired and anxious
it's okay because it's my first year teaching

ten years, now eleven

10.31.2017
it is strange to me that dad passed away ten years ago. i don't really keep count of the years so it could be five years for all i know. ten years usually sounds so celebratory but in this instance it twists my throat and gut into unsure knots. when i was in san francisco, janet, whom everyone on the streets called grandma, shared about how she lost her father when she was a child and started to cry. i looked at her white hair like a foretelling of my future, staying grief. this week in class, roxana shared about the altares created during dia de los muertos - about how they signify celebration of life and how they invite re-memory of loved ones so that they do not disappear. i appreciate this; i don't know how the taiwanese culture remembers the dead. i don't know if they do, but i do know they fear the emotional pain as much as some cultures fear the dead.

it is not yet the 31st, but today i borrow from c.s. lewis' words in preparation for tuesday:

"no one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. i am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. the same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. i keep on swallowing. at other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. there is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. i find it hard to take in what anyone says. or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. it is so uninteresting. yet i want the others to be about me. i dread the moments when the house is empty. if only they would talk to one another and not to me. there are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that i don't really mind so much...then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this 'commonsense' vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace."

some things i dread all of october: the unbearable secret which no one in the room knows, the screaming desire to tell everyone and no one; feeling like i am living two timelines at once as the present becomes irrelevant and bothersome. the compounded grief as the years move me further from the epicenter of my memory of him; like i am being moved further from shore with no mind to my protesting legs and lungs. it's cruel because the waves don't give a shit. thinking/hoping i am ready to be sad that day and never being ready.

10.31.2018

i had forgotten that i wrote this last year and never published it. it is october once more and i am reflecting (obsessing) about the impossible challenge that is teaching. october is obscenely difficult for first year teachers, but something that is giving me pause is the ethnographic work that we are doing with our adviser. i think undoubtedly my parents were my first teachers in life. because my mom and i have such a contentious relationship, i remember my dad fondly as someone who i knew i could ask for math help. i often did not want to because he would inevitably teach me ten steps ahead of what i had to know in class. even so, i could tell that he loved math. "a function is just a black box," he would try to explain to me for the fourth time. "if you put this number in the black box, something happens to it and it comes out like this." i never understood that analogy as hard as i tried.

i grieve the fact that he will never see me accomplish my dreams. i grieve that there are things i will never be able to ask him or know about him; that i have to imagine and fill in the blanks with conjectures. this year, after the first half of the month passed and my terrible anxiety and anticipation of the day passed, i found that the actual day was manageable even though i cried in every period telling my students. i'm not sure if it's because i cried it all out earlier in the month or because it's been 11 years. in some ways i hope the pain will never disappear entirely, because it would feel like a disservice to him.

oct check in

-october been really rough. all of week 9, can barely get through the day without crying
-i hate planning day by day. i hate not knowing what i'm going to teach.
-i hate when students treat me disrespectfully. darlene reminded me that it's because they are acting out of their non-thinking brains. they are reacting from their trauma. that in a way, because i have created a safe environment, they know they can act like that.
-to that, i say that it fucking sucks
-i wonder if i could choose another career and be happy and not stressed
-is sacrificing my wellbeing to meet my stupid high expectations and moral obligations worth it? idk
-this month was so hard; when i look back i hope i remember how hard it is so that i don't ever dismiss someone else's teaching struggle. also so that i remember where i started at

teaching

i'm not sure what the purpose of writing this is. i have been feeling a lot this month and i just want to record it. it is mid october and i am in the thick of teaching. everyone tells me that october is the hardest month on top of first year teaching being the hardest year. i am miserable. i can't count how many times i have wondered what other jobs might be like, or if i would enjoy another working field other than education. are the possibilities still endless? can i still try other things? is education still hold the transformative possibilities i thought it did - even as i'm watching my students give up in class or drop out entirely or get sent to other schools?

sept check in

-finished first sixth of school year
-grading is hard and takes so much time. teaching rsp kids is difficult too. not sleeping much is difficult. but love building relationships with the kids
-two mondays off and one wed off; was super helpful
-apparently i have carpal tunnel
-palm springs for photo shoot & to celebrate 5 years
-bought a car wat!

august

-this month was a blur of anxiety, crying a lot, stressing at night, waking at 5:30 to get to school at 6:15, moving stuff to new apartment
-intermittent fasting
-retraining my pip joints
-can't wait to not be a first year teacher

july check in

-interesting developments at home
-really dumb and expensive teeth situation
-thinking about: mindfulness, how trauma imprints upon the brain, nonviolent communication
-i love steven universe!
-quit my job at sender, 3 year anniversary wow
-preparing to teach

june check in

-finished first year of grad school & first six months of teaching
-started pd training and prepping curriculum map. summer is flying by
-summer reading list:

• kindred, octavia butler
• parable of the sower, octavia butler
• the body keeps score, bessel van der kolk
• citizen: an american lyric, claudia rankine
• this bridge called my back, anzaldua & moraga
• the radical king, mlk jr
• an indigenous peoples' history of the united states, roxanne dunbar-ortiz
• algorithms of oppression, safiya umoja noble
• the sexual politics of meat, carol adams
• theorizing liberation, gary okihiro

p.s. engaged!

may check in

-so... i got hired!! to teach ethnic studies!

-reached out to landlord to reclaim some power in this living situation. things looking up

-meal prepping has become such a drag

-dr. solorzano's talk about the physical/emotional impact of microagressions and microaffirmations
-started therapy again. hard but good, working through childhood wounds
-walked around santa monica palisades park for 2 hours
-awful food poisoning

april check in

-roommate is shit human i absolutely fucking hate her and i wish her the worst
-spring quarter is nonstop interviews, lesson planning, part time jobs (2!), grad classes, readings, sending resumes
-passed my edtpa
-didn't even realize april was almost done tbh
-westworld, legion, and handmaid's tale coming back this month. best month of favorite shows
-experienced my first vomit story! lol. students were amazing and empathetic. super proud of them.
-i snapped at a student to put down the worm in the garden and he felt hurt and cried. i apologized and asked for forgiveness.

march check in

-i have never forgotten to do these check-in's until this program's fast pace made time fly by

-didn't eat well this whole quarter but survived regardless

-finished my first 10 weeks of legit actual teaching and my students are amazing and i love them. "even though other teachers don't have hope in me, i know ms. eunice has hope in me" ;__;

-turned in my edtpa and it was a rollercoaster

-hate my roommate and i wish the worst on her. need to move out

-parents @ christine's wedding were super loving and kind to us.

-got a job w/ ucla labor center! it fell through but she offered an even better offer: GSR w/ full fee remission potentially!!!

-did taxes lol

-started doing interviews omg please hire me
-finished season 2 of jessica jones

feb check in

-lunch w/ trish at good karma cafe
-lesson planning going well
-taught foshay students about feminized, domestic, affective labor
-interview w/ ucla labor center
-can't believe it's already week 7 wtf though; every week blurs together
-watching the punisher during spare time
-fixed up resume

jan check in

-grateful for grace (for helping plan things), michael (taking pics with me of v stressful letters), uncle ken & auntie alice (for supporting our family), aundrey and jackie (for supporting me with forrest stuff)
-danny solorzano and ypar students in our ethn321 class, super inspiring and heartwarming and invigorating!
-started my figure drawing art class
-met with g.diaz and x.sanchez
-steadily getting shit done
-splash conference was fun but only a couple students showed up
-visited san diego!! hotpot with friends