Long time no blog, so I should catch up on it while I can:

During the days after I last blogged I had a think about things. I’d been thinking that perhaps I’d like to do some training to be a fitness instructor, or something in the field of fitness, so that eventually I could have a career in an area of interest. I’d also been thinking about whether I’d want to do class teaching ever again, and accepted that while it wasn’t exactly what I liked, it might eventually come down to that. I also thought about doing music tuition. The thought about doing perhaps a MBA also crossed my mind. To cut the long story short, the main problem was that up to this point, what I had trained to do – teaching in schools, I didn’t want to do any more, because I’d hate to go back to that sort of classroom environment, where I didn’t do as much teaching as I did policing, and praying that the kids wouldn’t cause any problems in my class. (At least, that’s what happens in most comprehensive schools – the private fee-paying schools are a different matter.) I also didn’t want to go back to things like writing daily lesson plans, spending evenings marking and worrying about the next day’s lessons.

Eventually what I decided was that my current part-time job, giving one-to-one English support to students in a good school, would financially carry me through the next year or so, but I would use the rest of the time to try to set myself up as a music teacher (specifically piano) and offer tuition. If that didn’t work out after a year or so then I could go back to thinking about doing courses and stuff like that.

If it sounds like I’m having a mid-life crisis, it probably is, although at 28 I don’t think I qualify to be in the category of “mid-life” – unless I’m going to die in my 50s.

The whole thing had been bothering me quite a bit – but now that I’ve thought things over and am more or less decided on that path, I feel a lot better. Needless to say, my already-sporadic training had been postponed indefinitely and had been erratic, and I think I should get that sorted out now. “Training” the last couple of days has been merely limited to lots of walks, stuffing flyers into peoples’ homes – hardly worth thinking of as cardiovascular at all! And my reps for “quality” pressups are suffering as well.

Kate’s been poorly – fifth bout of flu in less than five months! Maybe we should get both our asses working! (Although to be fair, she’s ill because she’s overworked.) Her parents are coming to visit tomorrow, so the stress factor is up as well – they are a bit pernickety about things and seem to think she leads a dingy existence, and her mum always starts finding things to clean up almost immediately when she arrives. I’m off to Bedford when they’re here, so maybe I’ll get on the bike or do some running during those few days.

Hope everyone has a good weekend. Looking forward to reading everyone’s weekend blogs – Mark, Chris, Jed, Danielle, Heiser, Becky, Heather. I have a high regard for the individual dedication to training and enjoy the engaging styles of writing as well. Good stuff!