A new starting point

First, I had my PhD in Literature, then my scholarship ended and I felt like an unemployed. Few months after I started a new job in a new city, I lost my motorbike because I couldn’t afford to keep it, and a few days later my partner died. She suffered a cancer for two years and I witnessed everything by her side.

My grieving process was a lonely one. In addition, I’m living in a small city where I don’t have friends — yesterday I started to feed a cat who lives in the street and usually takes a nap in my backyard. Right now, it’s in the backdoor staring me, afraid to come in.

Few days ago, I quit my job. I was a teacher in high school. It wasn’t a really bad job, and the payment wasn’t that bad neither. It was me; I sincerely couldn’t go on… Everything I’m doing, I do in a slow pace, it takes me hours to read my students essays; it takes me days to answer e-mails, I didn’t lose any deadline, but it required me a lot of effort. I should have taken some days instead of quit, but I was too tired and too mad.

Now I need to restart. I will apply for a college English teacher — that’s why I’m starting this blog. I need to master my English writing. I will keep it as a journal and this is my first text.

In today’s process, I remember the poem “One Art”, by Elizabeth Bishop. That’s a good way to finish this first post. Here’s it!

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.