Half-Way

I am currently enjoying a week off work as it is the half-term holiday. So far I have eaten lots of food and seen some steam trains with my grandfather. That is besides the point. This holiday marks the half-way point of the academic year and my first in the job. It’s weird how things have changed in that time.
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A sign that reads “Halfway”. Does this really need a caption? Not really, but I for reasons I cannot explain I have written one anyway. You may have decided that it doesn’t need one either yet you continue to read this caption, hoping there is some point to it. There isn’t.
Starting the job in September was a really hard experience for me. Having ultimately failed in my mission to qualify as a teacher my self-confidence was at an all time low. I had become even more socially awkward than I was already and I although I had some experience of working with children with special needs I wasn’t confident that I’d do a good job.
Things have changed a lot since then. It turns out I’m a pretty good teaching assistant. I am confident at what I am doing and have even learnt a fair bit of basic sign language. And whilst there’s no way I’d describe myself as Mr. Socially Confident, I am certainly better than I used to be. I can manage actual conversations with strangers and everything.
It might not seem a lot to you but having found some more self-confidence has changed me a lot. I really don’t know what situation I’d be in now if things hadn’t changed but I suspect it would have been awful. I was going through a genuine quarter-life crisis but now I out the other side.
A year ago I was trying, but failing, to relax through another half-term holiday. I was in the middle of my final teaching placement, the period where my life fell apart. I was failing miserably at my chosen profession and it was horrendous. Every day was a huge struggle.
In a way I am thankful for that. It was a truly horrible time that traumatises me just to think about but I am sort of glad it happened. If it had gone a little better and I had ended up qualifying as a teacher I would now be halfway through my first year of teaching. And I suspect by this point my life would be falling apart because I would be really struggling, utterly failing at being a competent teacher. It would have happened at some point, and I am just glad it was sooner rather than later. Instead of that dystopian vision things are really looking up.
There is another reason that things are looking up of course and that is after passing my driving test recently I now have a car. It’s an orange Renault Clio, nothing special in the world of cars but I love it all the same. For some reason it feels very me. And it is also my passport to freedom. No longer will I have rely on the limited local public travel services or the everlasting kindness of my parents. I can actually go wherever I want, whenever I want for the first time.
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This is my actual car. It looks even more orange in real life.
It is somewhat scary (read “terrifying”) driving a car by yourself for the first time. I pretty much spent the first couple of journeys being my own driving instructor, telling myself out loud what to do and where to go. It turns out though that driving by myself is actually a lot easier than driving with an examiner in the car judging your every action. Suffice to say I have begun to enjoy driving by myself now.
All in all, I suddenly feel a lot more confident about myself. At the start of 2015 I hoped the year would be a much better one for me and only a few weeks in and I feel like that’s the case. There’s still plenty of things in my life I’d like to sort out but I am getting there. I have begun to find myself.
And if I rephrase that paragraph in term of the concept of this blog: I’ve got a long way to go until I’ve upgraded to a Dan 2.0 but I think I’ve made it up to Dan 1.5.

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