Ok, I admit it. I play Farm Town and FarmVille on facebook. They say admitting is the first step in fixing the problem. I'm addicted to both those games. I must apologize to all my friends who are NOT farmers, who get notifications whenever I farm. (HINT: You can click "HIDE" and not have to see then anymore.) I worry about my farms, I try and figure out what makes me the most money and I spend LOTS of time arranging, rearranging and making my farms look nice. I know it's too much and I've been trying to figure out why and Friday during our 90-minute meeting, which lasted 45 minutes too long it hit me. I had an epiphany. I have to start by saying this: I do not consider myself a control freak. I have been told that I try to control other people (never been my intention!)and that I want everything my way. I do not ever try to manipulate or twist situations to get what I want. I could give you a list of people who are much more manipulative and controlling than me and try to control everything around them, even to the food that other people eat! That is SO not me! I am bossy, and I do sometimes think my way is the best way, but not always. (Other people may disagree with me, but I don't care!)
Here's my epiphany: I feel completely out of control in my life. At school, I can't get all my stuff done at school because other people dictate so much of how I spend my time. We have so many people telling us what to do and some of them have no idea what we do every day, but they are telling us what we are doing wrong. , I can't get my students to so what I need them to do, and it is a constant struggle to get them to do anything. In most of my class periods, I spend more time being a referee than I do teaching. I feel like I need a whip and a chair. After almost nine weeks of school, my students still haven't' learned to come in and get their folders off the shelf. My students have broken and/or "lost" eight pencil sharpeners this year – two of which are electric. We probably aren't getting a raise AGAIN this year, and that means not even getting our step for teaching another year. This is my 16th year and I'm still being paid for 13. I wanted a media specialist job really badly and had my eye on one, but the county put somebody there- again, nothing I could do to change it. I know, I know, I'm just supposed to be glad I have a job and I am, I thank God every day that I have a job. However, it annoys me to no end to have people who got their raise and make a whole lot more money than I do, doing a job that has NOTHING to do with students tell me that constantly. There are several other personal issues that make me feel helpless and that bother me, but I'm not going into details now.
Here is the other part of my epiphany. I love my farms in Farm Town and FarmVille because I am completely in control there. If I want to make a river, I make a river. If I want to bulldoze all my fields and put down new ones, I can. If I want to have elephants on my farm, it's OK. Now, I'm collecting purple hay bales, with the plans to make something with them later and it's OK. I can buy a house, pink fences, whatever I want to do. I can check on my friends, water their plants and get ideas for my farm. I can have llamas, sheep, and plant and tend all the flowers I want. In my real life, I can't grow anything, but I have tons of flowers on my farms. I have benches by lakes and a pink hammock between my river and my lake.
So, again to those of you who are not facebook farmers, I'm so sorry if my farms annoy you. I think they are my sanity.
