Failing

Failing has always been one of the hardest things for me to live with. Fear of failure has kept me back so many times in my life.

Lately, I've started failing while working.

My desire to help has been lagging behind in the amount of work I have to do. It's true that City Year is difficult, in fact, much more difficult than I had originally thought it would be. I had problems earlier while working for CY and now it seems they might be coming back. My tolerance, patience, understanding, and acceptance is completely bottomed out. My frustration, annoyance, anger, and difficulty is topped off. A sad aspect of this is that I can already tell it's starting to affect my team again. Will I ever get over my own shit?

I keep telling people that the only thing that keeps me working for City Year are the kids I have in the program. Without them I would quit. Well, that's what I keep spouting to anyone who will listen. Being labeled as a quitter is something I also abhor.

Lately, it's been harder to even work with my kids. I don't know what's going on in my head, but all I keep thinking is "These kids don't want my help. They don't want their teacher's help. Why do we try? What's the point in being here and taking our time to try to help them out? These kids don't care about the varying levels of higher education only a city away. They don't give a shit that we want them to be successful and to reap everything out of life. They don't give a damn about the complete lack of compensation corps members receive to put up with their shit all day. Why the fuck am I here if I'm not wanted?"

It's hard justifying going to work everyday to myself. I start to put on our uniform and things just go straight downhill. My thoughts always turn towards what I could be doing with myself and my life. Money I could be making. Security and stability that I could be reinforcing.

And of course, the ease with which I could return back to my hometown and fall into some sort of never ending self-imposed hell.

I absolutely do not want to go back to the Midwest. I absolutely do not want to put myself back into that town.

I want to make waves. I want to have an impact and to be remembered. Not for what I look like or how fun I was, but for what I did, what I accomplished.

Right now I feel like I'm just accomplishing failure.

And it's totally killing my mood.

PS - If you care, Brady seems to have moved out of my life on his own volition. Josh has as well, although I think I had something to do with his direction. Travis seems to be gone as well, although, that could just be because he never gave me his number and he didn't come to our last soccer game. C'est la vie, I guess. However, two new players have entered the scene as well: Rudy and (surprisingly) Jack. You City Year readers will know who he is, ha ha! I'll give more background on their stories later if I end up wanting to do so.

Oops. Hope they were okay with being associated with me avec the internet.