Merry Christmas

During Christmas I always find everyone to be very stressed out.  Going shopping depresses me, watching people being rude when buying things for others, a real life Grinch!  It’s such a wonderful time of year, and so many good things happen, and sometimes I forget about the good parts because I am so stressed out about other things.  For instance, my family is the both the best and worst part of Christmas.  When I say worst, I mean in the worst way family could ever be, they are family right?  I have four grandfathers… I’m sure you can do the math on how much Christmas we have.  There are days that are designated for certain grandparents, and we alternate them, and its very set in stone.  This year, my parents switched everything up, and our entire family is here.  I am both excited to see all my family, and to see their reactions with each other.

Today I got the best Christmas present I could ever imagine.  I have family in Australia, and we have seen them maybe three times.  Instantly we fell in love with each other two summers ago when they were here.  Because they live so far away, we have never been able to spoil them at Christmas it is just unreasonable in pricing.  Because of technology, this has changed, we could order them a gift from a local store.  This year, for the first year ever, we got all four of my cousins a gift: a red wii.  I just got a message from my Auntie and it was a video of them opening it.  My Aunt saved it for last, and hid it, so when they found out it was from us they were excited enough to begin with, then they opened it and it was hilarious.  They just sat there screaming, literally the best reaction I could think of.  Getting this video was the best thing I have ever got, I was so happy to just see them and see their reaction.

Facebook has been the best thing in the entire world, because of it I can know my cousins.  Without it, I would know nothing about them.  My Aunt will send us every picture, and I can chat with my ten year old cousin daily.  I miss them greatly, but thanks to technology I can have a relationship with them.

I’m so glad I could watch that video, so I can remember how much I love Christmas, and especially my family.

Merry Christmas everyone.

 

Dear WordPress

Dear WordPress,

I have a confession: you make me highly uncomfortable.  The idea of blogging actually terrifies me.  I am someone who definitely likes to express my opinion and always has hundreds of words on the tip of my tongue, and yet when I go to blog I have a great deal of difficulty doing so.

This is probably me just being silly, but I can’t help it.

The main reason why I am so scared is probably because of the nature of why I blog.  The things that I post online are things I spend a great deal of time thinking about.  I am extremely self-conscious about my thoughts, most specifically when it is regarding teaching.

I feel like I know nothing, most of the time.  I am surrounded by people who know so much and I find my thoughts are insignificant to theirs.  I have so much to learn, and I am so grateful to be surrounded by people to learn from.

Technology has truly propelled me into learning how educators feel about many things.  I read a lot of blogs, and feel very relieved when I find my thoughts are similar to people who are actually out there teaching.

While blogging seems to put me out of my comfort zone, which makes little sense as I have been a social networking addict for as long as I can remember, it also helps me a lot.  It is a huge stress reliever for me, and also a huge procrastination tool.

When I first started the blog it was for an education class, and after it was done I thought I would never blog again.  When school started to get really stressful however I decided it was the best place of release and did a single post.  I poured a large amount of thoughts into one post, and loved the fact that all my thoughts were gone from my head.

The most drastic change in my outlook on blogging was when I came to a point of complete frustration in my life.  I felt like I couldn’t talk about it with anyone but also needed to drastically.  My decision to blog it came because I knew that it didn’t really matter if anyone actually read it, the point was that there is a possibility that millions of people could read it, and chances are I barely know any of them.

I have started to try and use my blog more regularly now, and it again came from a moment when I didn’t know how to respond to a situation and blogged away my frustrations.  My blog has created a place for me to reflect on a lot of my thoughts and feelings in a very positive way.  I actually had to make myself not go on WordPress the last couple of weeks, so that I would actually study for finals.

So WordPress, thank you, and because you do so much for me, I am going to continue to put myself out of my comfort zone.  I’m not comfortable with you yet, but I’m working on it.

With all my love,

Samantha Douglas