We still have to teach the Gods to be human
They should bend to our will, not us to theirs
First, we have to understand ourselves
And an idea of heaven that everyone shares

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Today I’m feeling:

I didn’t sleep well but felt ok at my alarm. Two hours into the day though and I’m feeling a little low and flat. My eyes are sore again and the cloudy grey skies feel depressing.

Last night Paen (Baitoey) contacted me again feeling depressed and suicidal. I don’t know how much more I can give her. I know she doesn’t have the skills but it seems like she doesn’t want to do the hard work and is always looking for the easy way out. She needs some guidance to turn her thinking around and I’m not the best person for that.

Her struggles weigh me down too.

Today I’m grateful for:

Payment coming through today as I was just about to run out of money. It meant I could pay the gardener who came today and can also order some more cat food now too. I still have money put aside for the aircon fix and hopefully enough spare for the plumbing fixes. Not sure if there will be enough for the guttering though.

The best thing about today was:

Many interesting conversations with my students outside of class.  They usually remind me about things I went through when I was their age.

Also, Champ was back from Australia for a quick visit and he was telling me that he had to do some part-time work to be able to afford to stay there whilst studying. He’s working at a school teaching grade 5 kids. He was comparing the difference between the education systems in Oz and in Thailand and that he now has a clearer understanding of us farang teachers when we work here and get frustrated at the way things work. I’ve adapted myself now but it does feel like a little vindication.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

When I got home I could see that the gardeners had been. I’m thankful to them for tidying up our home but also can’t help noticing what a bad job they are doing. After asking them to clear the weeds properly along the driveway last time, this time they made no attempt at all. Worse still was that they cut the avocado tree that Bruno gave me last year, cut at the trunk! It was just starting to grow well and looked like it would develop into a nice-looking young tree. Fucking careless.

Something I learned today?

The great Chinese spy balloon incident is over. The US admitted that they found no evidence of anything beyond the weather instrumentation that the Chinese told them it was. The US is in the hands of adults acting like 5-year-olds.

How did I practice kindness?

Today I sat down with Paen and listened to her grievances about her life and what help she would like me to give her. She actually didn’t say much, I did most of the talking. I challenged her a lot because I can see that she is just running away from the real issue which is her own self-esteem, insecurities and problems at home. I can see that the things she wants me to help her with are not long-term solutions. 

I have shown her a lot of kindness and tried to help her many times. I can’t fix what happens in her head but I will support her as best I can.

I also ran into Preawa during the day and she was having some kind of problem with her boyfriend who was following her around forlornly. I messaged her this evening to see if she was ok and she said she was and appreciated my concern.

I think one of the reasons that the kids like me is that the can feel my empathy towards them even as I might be berating them for being lazy. I may not be the best teacher in the world but I think I’m a pretty good human.

What do I want to focus on today?

It looks like I will have to focus some time on helping Paen to see if she can change programs back to English. I see this as a band-aid solution for her because the problems are coming from within herself. I’ll try and find her the school counsellor and also find out why she stopped taking her meds. She seemed to be doing well in the first couple of weeks of the new semester.