Almost There

As to where I'm referring, I'm not yet certain. I'm still on my language kick. I'm making use of a few different programs at once now rather than before where I put all my languages into one program. This worked fine for a long time until my hard drive died some time ago. I've since rebuilt my Vtrain cards and twice the program crashed and I lost thousands of flashcards and countless hours of work. So while I am by no means splitting up languages, I am taking it easy not to overload any particular program. I am also using a few web-based flashcard programs. I probably spend in total 20-30 minutes doing flashcards in an average day. This is by no means in one sitting. Depending on how busy/patient I am during a day this could be anywhere from 3 to 30. Seems to be working, but it takes months to know for sure.

In other news, I had a meeting with the director of human resources at the hotel I had the 1-month teaching gig at and although I am restraining myself from getting excited...(actually I never get excited..I just get my hopes up and then dashed on a fairly regular basis) as it will be a week before I have any sort of confirmation in writing. Before the meeting I had already calculated every possible outcome about how much I wanted vs how much money I was willing to accept and I was quite pleased to come out of the meeting feeling like I can get exactly what I asked for.

The salary/schedule I designed was meant to be beneficial to all parties - The hotel would pay me 90% of what they were paying the school who is employing me temporarily at the moment and would therefore save money. I required that I be in charge of setting up the entire program within reason. Everybody studies 3 times/week for 1.5 hrs/session.

I would get nearly twice what the school was paying me. But, I'm more than worth it.

The staff would get to study with things that I chose/modified to be most efficient. The schools tend to give you a book the first day so you have little time to familiarize yourself with something new and the situation is worse if you don't like the style of a particular book as the school has already charged the students/clients for copying the books.

I have a million ideas of how I want to run things and I think this could be really good for me. Obviously, this would set me up perfectly financially. I would make much more than I currently spend while working just 18 hrs/week. The hours would be such that I would still have plenty of time to pursue most of the other things I do - Uni classes, piano lessons/practice, daily exercise, Korean lessons, badminton in the evenings and a bit of extra p/t work if felt like it. I'd have to give up my night Chinese class for good (I have kind of done this already as I have come to the conclusion that classes that I don't teach tend to be useless - and some of the ones that I 'teach' are also). Showing up for a class for a year or 2 doesn't mean shit if the teacher/book/your own effort and/or etc sucks.

I want to go more into this right now, but I gotta shove some knowledge in my brain so it will have to wait a while. I finish my work slav-a-thon on Tuesday. Then back to the gym to attempt to coax my muskles back from their month-long holiday.

***I'm going to stop there...but it just occurred to me that this could very well be just an 'up' phase in my life. I have been off of Zoloft for nearly a month with no adverse effects. I do feel like I'm dying because I can no longer breath properly and I have coughing fits frighteningly similar to when I quit smoking, but I feel mentally/psychologically fit. I'm still drinking every day, but its more of a habit than anything else. Its extremely rare that I get drunk. There has to be some situation that brings it about. Just coming down from a long day is not a good enough reason for that. I'll try to write again soon, but who knows. Certainly not me.