Motivation

  I was supposed to have my Leaders class at 7:15, but it was cancelled.  My last class ended at 6:25 and I was told about the cancellation shortly after that, but I'm obligated to stay on campus until at least 8 o'clock.

Even though I have had all this extra time that I could have used to work on planning our Southeast Asia trip or writing the article that I started (and keep telling myself I will finish), I've done nothing.  

It's funny how having a job, which take up a very large percentage of most people's actuality, you dislike can drain the pleasure from other areas in your life.  Even though I'm excited to go on vacation and I want to write the article, I can't muster up the motivation to work on either of them.  I spend the bulk of my life in Korea dealing with things that I find daunting; so even the smallest amount of effort required outside of work seems unreasonable.  Maybe it's a defense mechanism I've built up: creating a comfort zone inside an uneasy environment.

This intermittent self-defeating attitude of mine snowballs until it sits pretty heavy on my shoulders.  It's days like these that I feel like I have nothing to post about here.

I got to know Montana a little better today.  He has a triple citizenship: Korea, Italy and the US.  Actually, he recently gave up his US citizenship for tax reasons in Korea.  He lived in Northern California where he owned and ran a vacation spot on Big Bear Lake.  The economy hit the travel industry especially hard and his little operation was bought out.  So, he looked for work elsewhere and decided to come back to Korea for awhile.  

He was present for a mini meeting I had with Julia today in which she got onto me about skipping pages in some of the units.  I skipped the pages because they were reading intensive (the students would read a paragraph and answer questions) and in a forty minute "conversation" class I didn't think they were a good use of time.  I told her that and, since I was disagreeing with her, she repeated herself over and over again.  Julia doesn't understand differences of opinion; to her, you must be misunderstanding her if you're not in line with her point of view.  Montana seemed to notice that I was bustling with rage internally, so he came to my rescue, jumped in and acted as a translator so that Julia would back off.  It worked and I got to see that Montana isn't afraid of Julia.  There was no kowtowing, ass kissing or shyness like we saw with Gene.  Montana translated her words to me and told me pretty frankly that I should just comply, but in no way did he even feign an alliance with her.  So far, I'm feeling pretty good about him.  He's definitely got a spine and this company could use somebody with one. 

Good night!