I am back

 

Bird Box Day on the Upper Pond

Sorry folks I have been out of touch with a lot of things lately.  I am not sure how I am going to approach this particular blog.  I guess some semblance of honesty would be good, however too much and I might send you running the other way.  As some of you know I started school full time.  I was so excited.  I can't tell you how long I have been trying to get my degree.  I have taken classes now and then my whole life.  Well not exactly my whole life.  I started taking classes after I had my first daughter.  I wanted to prove to myself that I was smart, that I could learn.  I dropped out of high school and that is never looked upon as a good thing.  I am not proud of that myself.  I wish I would have stayed in school.  I love learning.  Anyway I signed up for some classes and I had a hard time sticking with it.  I moved on and didn't take classes again for another couple of years.  I tried going back to school again after my second daughter was born.  This time I completed a few classes.  I took some kind of career class hoping to find out just what field I would be best suited for.  I always wanted to be a nurse and after taking the career class things pointed me in that direction.  I didn't take anymore classes until  my girls were a few years older.   We were living in Visalia, California.  I decided to try and take a full load of classes.  I can't remember how many classes.  I just remember that I was always telling myself that I need to get my degree.  Somehow I knew that I would need to be educated to get a job that would allow me to support myself and my children above the poverty level.
I am hearing impaired.  Not many people know what it means to be hearing impaired.  I didn't even know what it meant or quite how it effected my life for many years.  But it is who I am, it is what has made me who I am today.  It has colored my entire life.  I am so different from many people because of the impairment.  Now I am sure that there are many similarities if we were to sit down and compare.  However it would not change the fact that not hearing effects the type of job I can do.  Hence one of my desires to get educated.
I seem to have a limited corridor of the kinds of jobs I can do because of my hearing.  I do not know if this is self inflicted or if it is really due to the fact that I can't hear. That is not entirely true.  I cannot answer phones.  That is a given.   I have a really hard time being in situations where I have to deal with the public unless I can set up how it is I am going to communicate.  It is hard for me to be in situations with people coming at me, like being a cashier,  it is too much too fast for me to interpret.  That is what I do with the type of hearing loss I have I am interpreting all of the time.  It is exhausting to be constantly interpreting.  I can't physically and mentally keep it up for very long. I am very good at interpreting English, but then English is my only language and I have found it near impossible to learn any other language.  I hear vowels, I am deaf when it comes to hearing consonants.  I was raised with English speaking people, live in a country with English speaking people and attended school in this country.  English is my language.  I can interpret it extremely well.  But it some how effects the way I can work or rather the type of situations I can work in.  Right now I am working at Home Depot.  I work at night, I do not have to deal with the public.  I work independently so I do not have to deal with talking with people very much.  The pay is decent but it is part time.  The company works on the concept that we are just one big happy family!  Woo, woo!  So many of the jobs I have had are great for me with my hearing loss but they do not pay enough for me to do anything but exist.  Now I realize that in today's market most of us are doing just that, existing.  I have been doing this all of my life and I am tired!  Hence why I started back to school I thought that it is never too late.  I thought that I could take a full load of classes and be done in one year and onward and upward.  Not!!!  I found myself drowning.  I was taking all classes that I had to memorize and that is one of the greatest difficulties I have found with my hearing impairment.  I just can't seem to get information into my head easily or quickly and the classes I was taking you go one week get a load of information and then test get more information the next week test and it just goes on and on until  the end of the semester.  I couldn't do it.  I can't do it.  It was just too much too fast.  I am now wondering if I am trying to get into the wrong field.  Why am I not taking something that works for me but what?   It seems that the things that I have a passion for don't pay anything.  Maybe I haven't tried hard enough.  Well I know that isn't true.  I didn't get to be 55 years old not trying hard enough.  I am a hard worker!  I get a lot of things done and I do them well.  Trying hard enough is not the problem!
I have one more week of my Microsoft Word class and I will be glad when it is over.  I do not know which class I will take next.  What ever it is it will be the only class I will take.  One class at a time.  I think that will be enough for my brain to handle.  Any class I take will be a semester of memorization.  One thing I have going for me is that I already made most of the flash cards for three different classes.  That in it self is an accomplishment.  I can tell you seriously that I was studying my every waking moment and still not learning anything.  That is just not right.  So as I said it will be one class at a time.  Enough of this banter I have a house that has been seriously neglected.  Cat hair and dust everywhere!  Anybody want a twenty year old cat?  I am tired!