Dealing with Failure - or how to go from down-in-the-dumps to flying high in less than 24 hours

It began with the huge fiasco of my performance during my TOEIC course group. The grammar point was Gerunds vs. Infinitives, and who was I to think I could take on the question of “Why?”
Only the teacher, of course. And evidently, a teacher who doesn’t know where to draw the line, because I actually invited them to ask! And is there really an effective answer to the question of why certain verbs must be followed by an infinitive and certain others must be followed by a gerund? Why couldn’t I simply have stated – as my wise German teacher had stated that very morning in German class – that there’s no rule about why, you just have to memorize and deliver.
No way! That would totally frustrate them (thought I)! No, I had to prove their questions were answerable, right? But in my misbegotten attempt, the only thing I accomplished was to make the whole question of infinitives and gerunds so impossible to fathom, that they probably felt like killing me and then themselves! As my students filed out of the classroom when I adjourned the class (a couple of minutes early because by that time I was a mass of frazzled nerves), I knew they were farther away than ever of having any kind of understanding at all about infinitives and gerunds.

Luckily, that was my last class of the day.

Quickly I gathered my things together and hurried to get away unnoticed, such was my shame. But once I was in my car, the blow to my self-esteem really started to kick in (no pun intended). Here’s a question for you:
How do you react when you’ve really blundered?
a) Wallow in it?
b) Try to escape from it?
c) Try to deal with your feelings and get over it?
d) Look for sympathy and relief?
e) Try to make amends?

Now, don’t think you have to choose one alternative; in my case it was more of a process of going through all of the above. First, I wallowed in self-blame and reproach. It quickly reached the point where I had to talk myself down or have a heart attack. But I wasn’t ready to listen to myself, so I turned on the stereo, where I had left Divine Idylle, the latest (?) album of Vanessa Paradis. It was on the last song, which is my absolute favorite (and by the way, if you can translate any part of it, please feel free to do so in the comments section! I don’t know what it means, but I know it must be something deceptively simple, yet deep and sublime!): The song is "Jackadi" and you can see the lyrics here: es.mp3lyrics.org/SVRC]

And yet, even though the song charmed and soothed me, when it was over, I was back in the throes of my self-struggle. Now I tried to take on my feelings and make myself get over the whole thing. Yet that is easier said than done, and even though I was telling myself that I knew I was being ridiculous, and that it was really not that big a deal, I couldn’t seem to accept it and move on.

By that time I was home. And I found myself acting in complete contradiction to how I usually act - i.e., pass through the living room, greeting anyone who happens to be there watching TV, put my things on the chair under the cuckoo clock in the dining room, head into the kitchen where I check out what’s on the stovetop, then continue on to Car’s room to say hi and tell him I’m famished, whereupon he tells me exactly what he’s cooked that day, whereupon I cut him off at the draw so I won't have to listen to how I’m to prepare my plate, what toppings or garnishes I should add (and exactly how much of each), and how many seconds I should heat it up in the microwave! WHEW! I then proceed to wash up and eat, and I assure you, the way Car cooks, I enjoy every bite of my meal. If anyone’s around, I sit with them to eat; but if not (usually everyone has finished by the time I get home), I’m perfectly content to fix my plate (load up would be an apt expression), take it to the living room and eat while watching a movie on TV.

But on this day, I simply could not deal with anyone or any food because I still hadn’t come to grips with my grand fiasco in class! So, I decided to go upstairs immediately and turn on the computer. My intention was to get some sympathy and sure enough, I saw CLo online and promptly made use of alternative (d) by confessing my guilt to her. She of course, talked me up, and then I saw IRS online, and mothers ALWAYS know the right thing to say, so soon, I was feeling good enough to recognize my hunger. Also, by then, I had devised a plan to fulfill alternative (e). I now knew how I could rectify the situation!

Below you can see my solution:

E-mail to my class
Subject: gerunds and infinitives

Hi everyone,
After yesterday’s class, I felt like that guy in the movie we started watching – Elizabethtown… the guy who begins by saying, “there’s a big difference between a failure and a fiasco.” I felt like a true FIASCO!!
However, in hopes of rectifying the situation, I am sending you both a link to one of my favorite online English resources and an attachment of a good explanation of the grammar point yesterday. The attachment is taken from the webpage listed above, but I urge you to check out the webpage yourself and try any of the exercises you think you could benefit from.
Meanwhile, hope everyone has a wonderful day and see you in class!
Best regards,
minshap

The next day, I was flying on a natural high all day! I felt that I’d vindicated myself. I felt reborn! In each of my morning classes, I was at my super best, as both teacher and teacheé (because I firmly believe that teaching is absolutely always a give-and-take situation. It’s inevitable. When you spend your day exchanging ideas and thoughts with people about almost anything you or they can imagine, you both come away from the experience with something new to think about in terms of both the language in particular and communication in general).

When it was finally time for my group class (the others are individual one-on-one classes), the students arrived with smiles on their faces. They’d received my e-mail and obviously forgiven me. We were all in a great mood and they worked hard and they did very well on the practices, and I even taught them “Down by the old mill stream” complete with gestures. By the second try, all I had to do was act it out, and they sang it! (these kinds of things work great as a way to pause to re-energize during a grueling grammar and stressful listening review).

Cat's got my tongue

I can't think of anything to blog about! This is how it's been for quite a while now... maybe I can include a bit of the first chapter of a book I'm working on!
Read on:

On second thought, I'd rather not post it.
I'll think of something else to blog and back and get back to this later.
Sorry!

The Other Side of Woe - as in WHOA!

So there I was, making the big realization that what was bugging me so was simply a case of the blues. I took a good hard look at myself, my dissatisfaction and my anxiousness to GET AWAY FROM IT ALL, and I realized that just insisting to myself that I was going to do it was actually contributing to my panic. Of course it would be lovely, but how would it be in my case to make two separate trips back-to-back over the space of three weeks... that would be three weeks of no pay... that would be a two-week family road trip, followed by a quick solo plane-ride to visit my family in the States for another week. I mean, since when am I rich enough to do that kind of traveling? Since when can I "have my cake and eat it too?" Since when can I just blow off work at a time when we are trying to encourage more students to enroll?
With a sigh and a shrug, I thus resigned myself to the fact that I was being stubborn and blind to the truth. I decided that, okay, I wouldn't push so hard for these trips...we'd see how things developed. Meanwhile, why not watch a movie!

Funny that Fned's recent blog talks about a time when we lived with almost nothing in the way of possessions and money, yet still had constant and almost cost-free access to unlimited cable channels on TV. And it's true that we watched lots of movies (see her blog for the details). At any rate, I realize now that perhaps that time in my life was the beginning of my insatiable hunger for movies. And last night, it all hit home as I began my search for a movie.

Now I have all my movies - VHS and DVD - in one place, but that does not necessarily mean they are easy to find! So as I stood before the bookcase, letting my eyes travel over all the visible titles, I suddenly understood once and for all how I could keep track of where each one is. All I have to do is NUMBER THEM!!! Why didn't I think of that before??? So I started then and there (at 12:30 a.m.) to do just that! And I got as far as the first 50 VHS tapes.

You might think I could surely have gotten farther than that, but then you don't realize that these 50 black-and-whiters were taped for me by my mother over the years... each has at least 2 if not 3 movies recorded, and of course you need a magnifying glass and patience to decipher my mother's thoroughness in labeling each tape... she includes the dates, the times, the movies, a commentary - i.e. "really good!" - and if she has taped over something (she gets good use out of her cassettes) you have to figure out which are the current movies... or you have to realize that The Josephine Baker Story of Chanukah is really "The Josephine Baker Story" taped over "The Story of Chanukah"... but it was a lot of fun going through them, and don't they look nice all lined up with their little numbers on them? Can you see the numbers at the tops of the boxes?

But that was just the beginning. My own tapes, the 100 or so I've recorded over the years, are still stacked on the floor!...

And of course those are the tapes that I recorded at home... but you can see that I've also bought a few movies over the years, and though they may look orderly, they are not in any order, so I've still got to pull them out and record all the names and put numbers on them and put them back...

Which I thought would be a cinch, until I looked at the larger scope:

So yes, I've started to number the tapes, and will follow with the DVDs, recording the numbers and titles together in a list that I will later feed into the computer, and posting the reference numbers at the sides of the shelves where the corresponding videos are... but as I write this, I realize I've got a looooooooong way to go...

And knowing myself as well as I do, I'm laughing at this whole thing even as I write it!! Dream on, Minshap! Dream on!

The Bubble of Truth

So I've decided to shake off the blues - was that even what I had? That pessimistic, why try?, dissatisfied-with-everything restlessness that doesn't get you anywhere but down. It started with seeing myself in pictures and just went on and on... an entire week of moaning and begroaning what I can't change.

It just don't getcha nowhere to bicker on about it!

So I'm saying Basta! - Enough is Enough! - Genug!

or whatever...

The coming up with this realization - that I'm blue - happened when I was stirring the beans. That's right. I had decided to make Frijol con Puerco - an absolutely outstanding dish from Yucatan (?) that sounds so blah until you dish yourself up a bowl - with all the toppings!

Because what starts as just your basic black beans (Jamapa of course) and pork (though I use beef and pork 50-50), boiled together with epazote and some garlic fried with chorizo thrown in, becomes the most colorful, zesty dish you can imagine when you top it with chopped radishes, purple onion, cilantro, chile habanero, chunks of avocado (for avocado freaks like me)and fresh-squeezed lemon. It's fortifying and satisfying, exquisitely different from anything you've ever eaten. And the next day, it tastes even better!

So, back to the story; I had pressure-cooked the beans and was about to open the pot, after cooling it under running water till the pressure valve went down, when Anto came into the kitchen and warned me that it might still open with a pop. I shook my head, knowing the beans were cooled down to opening level, and opened the pot, which did not blast open. Turning to give him a simpering "see, you were wrong" kind of smile, I picked up the spoon and started stirring the beans and suddenly, BAAALOOOOP! The spoon brought up a huge popping bubble of beans and meat! I guess the meat had gotten suctioned to the bottom or something. Luckily, none of the splatterning bubble went out of the pot, so my face was saved, but what a scare! No sooner had I recovered my cool and begun stirring again when another BALOOP! bubbled forth. This one was weaker in force, though not in sound, and, coming so soon after the first one, it gave me pause.

And that's when I realized that I had been suffering from a case of woe-is-me-ness. That's when I knew that all my cantankerous insistence about doing all this getting-away-from-it-all was mainly an attempt at escaping from the blues!
Stay tuned!