The Process

Today was one of those days. A true slog: fighting against my rebelling, not-yet-recovered body, dozens of dirty, screaming kids, and clerical and scheduling errors in the curriculum that left me scrambling all day. While I could write a full blog entry on any of the aforementioned struggles, today wasn't about succeeding, it was about surviving. This is all part of The Process.

Tennessee's new head football coach Derek Dooley likes to tout "The Process," and with a 2-4 team, that's about all you can talk about. It's not about fixing your problems right now, it's about the day-to-day improvement that will lay the foundation for a better future. Improvement may not be immediately noticeable, and even less often tangible, but it is there.

Last week, I took two small steps toward that future: 1) paying off a credit card and 2) putting away my first $500 toward grad school. They may have been small steps, but my future is looking that much brighter because of them.

While $500 is a much lower number than what I had originally wanted to deposit, when considering the start-up costs of moving here, getting sick, and paying off old bills, it's not a bad start. I figure by January I should be depositing between $1000-1500 every month. That will be when baby steps become leaps and bounds.

Work. Study Korean. Save money. Repeat. This is my process.

As previously stated, this is not to say my life is without problems, I merely traded one set of problems in Milwaukee --no career, little or no income, no opportunities--for another set--loneliness, self-doubt, and of course, my dog Sydney. But here's the difference between these two sets of issues: all of my new problems are fixable, whereas it seemed the last set had spiraled past the point of no return.

Clearly I'm in a better situation now. It's much better to be low and trending up, than the other way around.