Another dull day at college....
Actually, it�s not too bad. Come the summer, come fewer encounters with students. It gives one time to catch up on paperwork, mark essays a month overdue, file bits of paper, complete reports, plan for the next month�s worth of lessons, and sit around on my arse, worrying about money. When I came in this morning, I had a smoke and watched the junior hodcarriers learn their trade. It galled me to think that these little bastards, come leaving college, will probably be earning at least as much as me. For humping bricks around building sites. Here I am, 35, university degree, ten years an EFL lecturer, two of those running a language school with 2000 students, and now stuck on �19,500 a year, failing to juggle a mortgage, credit cards, schooling for my son, debts and loans. Where the fuck did I go wrong? OK, in the grand scheme of things, I�m not doing badly, but compared to what I could be doing, I�m really fucked over. I should have dashed my brains against a wall early on, and lived a contented life hodding bricks, reading the Sun, and ignored the Glamour of Future Great Things.
Well, beating myself up over it isn�t going to alter my situation. The question is, what do I do? I need help: I need someone to help haul me out of this tiresome mire and back into the light. The truth is, I�m afraid. I have responsibilities that I feel I can�t control, and that is the worst thing. I can�t control the necessary circumstances in my life. That wouldn�t have been bad ten years ago, as a single guy, but now, with son, wife, house, car and life, I really don�t know what to do. The juggernaut of debts, requirements, demands and wants is thumping closer through the mad crowd, rolling ever nearer to crush me. And yes, I know I�m not alone, yet I feel that way. I look for an escape route, but the mad crowd, which consists of all the things I need to do, doesn�t let me out, it merely presses harder and harder, suffocating me. The juggernaut looms: soon it will roll over me, squeezing me out of existence.