I have a very hard time believing that. You bring joy to most of my days and someone who brings joy to others deserves all the blessings they can get. Don’t ever doubt that.
It’s probably already past this (depending on your time zone) but good luck all the same!
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict he’s already done the interview, smashed it and got the job. We believe in you!
(Hoping this post ages well).
Thanks for the reminder. I know this to be true, but still struggle. It goes back to the days right before I watched ‘Bigger, Stronger, Faster’ and I felt like I was always just a little less than. I just needed to get a little bigger, a little leaner. The scene where they interview the male fitness model doing a photoshoot for hydroxy cut blew the top off my reality. He had ‘the look’ that was always just out of reach. And he cheated to get it.
Like I said, I just need a little more work in my head. It’s silly to know something and still argue with yourself about it.
I know that I’m a human and a sinner. I know the cost of that. I don’t ever feel like I deserve any help from God. I ask hoping for a blessing, but I don’t expect it as if I’ve earned it. When I seek God’s blessings, I feel like the man who told Jesus “Lord I believe, but help my unbelief.”
Thanks! Interview is done. I felt like it went decent but you know how you start second guessing yourself afterwards…
Thanks! All I can do is wait now. After I posted earlier I read Proverbs 3. The heading is ‘Trusting the Lord’ Talk about right on the nose.
Proverbs 3:5-6 NLT
[5] Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. [6] Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.
So that’s where I am. I asked for him to give me clear thoughts and the right words to say during the interview. All I can do is wait now.
At least I have a job. I’m seeking better, but I’m not going to starve if it doesn’t work out. I feel very blessed that I’m not a college grad seeking their first job in my field. The openings are scarce this year.
Awesome post, on so many levels!
Thanks for helping my day, even though you had no idea.
C5 W2 D3 - Conditioning
Warm-up
Meh. Stretch, roll, some KB squats.
Sled
Tank M4 Sled L3 no added weight
Pull 25m/Push 25m x 6 ea
Watch died so I used my phone the best I could. Old goal was 10 total trips in 10 and I think I got it with 45 lbs added not too long ago. Well, the flew and I finished 12 trips under 10 minutes.
Walk
1 mile in about 17 minutes
Leg Extension
100 x 20, 20
Notes
This felt too easy. Maybe I should’ve repeated the pull/push/run workout I did Sunday. I had to wait a couple minutes for the sled and the guys who were using it kind of stayed in the area and got in my usual path a bit. I think the sled feels easier because my overall lifting volume is down with this template.
No news on the job. Time to doubt yourself sucks. I thought of a question I could have answered better and now I’m wondering if that cost me… I also have no idea when they’ll make a decision. I’d feel better if they said they’d call on Friday or something like that. I answered the phone three times for spam calls todaybecause I don’t want to miss the call. I talked to a guy for almost 10 minutes during my warm-up about life insurance before I figured out his company doesn’t even carry our current policies. 
C5 W2 D4 - Lifting
Warm-Up
The usual plus decline crunches and 24" box jumps.
OHP
45 x 5
85 x 5
105 x 5
120 x 5
135 x 5
120 x 5 x 5 (FSL)
superset with
Pull-Ups
8, 8, 8, 8, 7, 6, 6, 6
Clean Pull
165 x 3
190 x 3
215 x 3
190 x 3 x 3 (SSL)
This workout is kind of meh. I feel like I need more pulling work, but it seems like it takes forever to get this far. Actual time on the clock was only 31 minutes and I was at the gym for about 45 minutes. It feels like it was very inefficient. One more week and then I can move on. I’ll probably turn the mobility days into straight up assistance days. I’m working on mobility with the warm-ups and don’t feel the need to have it be the focus for a session. What I’m giving up isn’t worth it. I have been doing pretty good lately and this template feels like it’s going to allow me to detrain.
Still waiting to hear about the job. Not feeling great about it. Looking forward to knowing either way.
I’m angry. I’m furious. I want to smash things. I won’t type cuss words but I’m thinking them and everything starts with F.
My feelings of failure were true, but it’s worse.
“You knocked it out of the park.”
“You checked every box.”
“If you need a recommendation for another job…”
What the heck am I supposed to do with that? I made no mistakes and still failed!? And who did I lose to? Someone with more ties to the community. Someone who graduated from there. On one hand, if I was from the community, I’d want that to help me. On the other hand, what’s the point in interviewing if you can be perfect and still lose?
This whole process made me hate my current job and now I’m stuck with it. I have a great schedule and great weight room, but I’m so sick of the urban environment. Kids who think a D average is good. Kids who aspire to be welfare recipients. I know I’m in a rich environment to serve, but I hate it right now. I’m tired of seeing kids who have been in school for two years and have zero credits. I’m tired of getting kids dropped in my class from the juvenile detention facility. I’m tired of seeing kids with GPS ankle monitors. I’m tired of seeing kids who are illiterate ‘graduate’.
Diversity is exhausting. I miss my hometown experience where we all wanted to get As and Bs because that was the expectation of our parents and society as a whole. I miss schools that had 500 students TOTAL. That’s just the senior class where I work. Each class below it is bigger.
I don’t know how I’m going to overcome this negativity, but I don’t have a choice.
Guess this streak continues except for the part where it was up to me. I never had a chance. Why the hell did I think I could land such a job in a small community as an outsider?
The cruel humor of it all is that I know I deserve jack s—, but somehow I had hope. What a fool I was.
I’ve spent my adult life pursuing careers as a servant and at the the of the day I find myself surrounded by people I don’t like in situations I despise. What’s the point? My family suffers because of my stupidity. We barely get by. My best retirement option is my life insurance policy. My wife has to bust her ass so we can make ends meet. I’ve pretty much failed in every aspect as head of household and I justify it by saying I’m serving the greater good. Am I? Who? I have a master’s degree (turned in my final assignment today), make less than $65k a year, my health insurance is crap, and I’ll get about $2k a month in retirement if I work for another 25 years.
I don’t know what else I can do, but I’m tired of the ‘urban’ environment. I’m an idiot for thinking I could escape that.
Really sorry to read that, bitter disappointment and loss of a hoped for future are hard to swallow.
I won’t throw out an platitudes or encouragement, it’s crap and you’re right to feel that.
If you ever want to talk offline let me know.
Maybe you mean you aren’t owed anything? That would be true. No one is owed anything, but to say you don’t deserve good things? That breaks my heart. Please don’t think that.
I am assuming that this is one of those situations where you just needed to vent so I will just tell you that I’m sorry you didn’t get the job. I truly am. I know the level of disappointment that comes with losing a job that you really wanted. My heart is with you. If you get to a point where you would like some perspective offered, let me know. Until then I will simply remind you that you regularly improve the day of at least one odd woman who has never even met you. I can’t imagine that you don’t make life better for the people who are lucky enough to actually know you.
Maybe a better way to put it. I think in terms of how a lot of people feel entitlement, and I know better.
Correct. I’m in a bad place right now and it’s going to take a bit to pull myself together and refocus. I feel cheated. I don’t know why or if it’s even correct, but I feel it anyway.
The requirements for this job were:
Bachelor’s Degree or higher in Physical Education and a teaching license.
My credentials:
B. A. in Exercise Science
Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (NSCA)
Teaching License
Master of Science in Education in Transition to Teaching completed this semester
There are no classes about physiology, biomechanics, energy systems, weight training, or anything related to the weight room in a college PE curriculum. It’s all about playing games in a gym and legal issues. My Exercise Science degree didn’t earn me a teaching license, but it puts me leaps and bounds ahead of any candidate walking in with only a PE Degree. And that’s very frustrating.
Finding that one hard to ‘like’, but want to acknowledge it, so:
He speaks truth.
And that’s very frustrating.
From this and the other post you wrote, about them wanting to pick “someone from the community”, there may be some solace to be had in the truth that it sounds like you dodged a bullet by NOT being employed by a total slapdick organization like this one. If they’re this fast, loose and sloppy with their hiring practices, you gotta imagine the kind of people you’d be working alongside that were granted access based on their arbitrary standards AND how much of a goat rope it would have been trying to get ANYTHING done in a Kafkaesque organization like this one.
Like: knowing that this place will willingly overlook a superior applicant simply to select one connected to the community is cronyism, pure and simple. You don’t want in on that.
This doesn’t take away from your current situation at all, and I don’t intend to do that, but these folks showed their hands.
Unfortunately this is the norm in educational settings outside the urban areas.
If you’re still here, thanks for the support. This is as close to a diary/journal as I get. I vent here..I process here. I write stuff out that I don’t share with people I have to look in the eye. Strange when I put it that way…
My brain is currently stuck and obsessive with my situation. I’m in a revolving door with stops that revisit the interview that rotate with me obsessively checking to see if there are any more job openings in the area. There aren’t and we’re nearing the point of no return. There’s a day in May that’s the cutoff for not returning to your teaching job. It’s a contract and if you quit after the cutoff, you have to pay a buyout penalty. It’s capped at like $4 or $5k, but people generally aren’t making changes after that date… After now really. I’m stuck for another year.
Flag football was officially sanctioned and I’m the coach. That means I have to start thinking about next year and summer stuff. I really don’t want to do anything right now. If you made me commit to something today, I’d quit all the extra stuff I do. I kind of want to avoid everything work related for the summer.
My wife is coaching at a track meet tonight so I’m home with the kids. I missed my workout window to take my son to the doctor to have a wart removed. It’s bleeding so they couldn’t do it, but they took our $30 copay. Another win for me for the week.
I could go train and leave the kids home alone, but I’m kind of in a F it mood and don’t care. And that will probably continue for a few days.
I’m hard to get rid of. Sorry bout that.
I do the same. It’s kind of like therapy. It’s actually helped me deal with what’s happening with my mom quite a bit. I don’t mind letting everyone here see the ugly that lives in my head. I feel like I have to hide it from the people who know me. It’s an outlet.
Yeah. It’s a total racket. I had to have a wart frozen off of my son’s toe and it took like 4 times to work and they charged me for a surgical procedure each time. That was one expensive plantar wart.
Words to live by.
It’s time to hit the reset button. I had a week left of my previous template, as I stated previously, the heck with it. I need a fresh start mentally so why not do the same with my training? The last few days have not gone my way. All the little stuff that can annoy you has happened and I’ve about lost it every time. Taking my son to the doctor to remove a wart, but they can’t. I made a rum and sprite drink last night - about 20 oz of fluid - and immediately knocked it on the floor. I just cooked some BBQ chicken chunks in the air fryer and turned on the wrong side so they didn’t cook. These are all stupid little thing but they’re hitting me like an anvil.
It’s time to get ready for church so I better get moving. The training reset is just to drop all the fancy named templates and just do what I enjoy - 5’s PRO, FSL, and 25-50 reps of the assistance stuff. I’m switching to the traditional weekly split, too. Barbell squats are back, but they’re pathetically light and difficult. I’d like to bring back deadlift but I want to see how my back handles high bar squats.
Warm-Up
Foam rolling, stretching, leg swings, hurdle step-overs, pogo hops and pogo jumps.
Seated Leg Curl
90 x 20
130 x 10
Leg Extension
100 x 20
Squat
(no TM established so this was basically my TM test)
135 x 5
165 x 5
195 x 5
225 x 5 (probably failed a TM test because these were slow, but this is the TM)
145 x 5 x 3 (FSL) - these moved fast and that’s what I need to work on.
Back Extension
30 x 15, 15
Lying Leg Raise
15, 15
RFESS
50 x 5 ea - these sucked. my adductor on my left leg is angry with these.
Rev Cable Fly
30 x 15, 12
Push-Ups
20, 20
Lying Leg Curl
Single Leg: 60 x 12 ea
Double Leg: 125 x 10
Reverse Lunge
BW x 10 ea
Currently waiting for my daughter to return from a school trip so I have time to kill (it’s 11:20pm). They went to Kansas City to visit a jazz museum and then hit up Worlds of Fun. It’s a few hours away and they were slow to round everyone up at the end of the day so they’re running behind schedule.
Meant to share this earlier in the day but distracted myself with the failed air fryer chicken lunch and ran out of time. I don’t know if I’m just being a covetous fool or if I’ve been tricked by the devil, but I now realize I’ve sabotaged myself most of this school year. First it was looking at land and determining if we could pull off a move. And now it’s my job. If I won the lottery tomorrow and could do anything, I’d buy land and a house near a small town. I miss the small town experience and as I’ve made very clear, I’m tired of the city behavior. But I can’t afford that. And I’m not quite sure how to view the whole thing - do I suck it up and find a way to make it happen or do I let it go and appreciate what I have?
If it’s the former then I need to develop a plan. If it’s the latter, then I need to stop viewing what I have negatively. The whole experience (land/house and job hunt) has left me unhappy. And for what? I’m still right where I started and no closer to any of the things. I guess the big problem is my wife. She’s happy where we live and isn’t overly motivated to move. If she was like “Yes, let’s get out of here ASAP” then I’d be making decisions to make it happen.
I don’t really know how to proceed. I need to figure out how to appreciate what I have again. Because wanting what you don’t have and being unhappy with what you do have is no way to live.
You can do both. You can keep feelers out and keep an eye on the job market while still enjoying the life that you have. It will probably be easier, knowing that your wife is good where you guys are. I’ve found that when my husband is content, it’s easier for me to be.
This is probably a good idea no matter what you do. If you can give yourself a mental reset it can only help you.
Yeah. This is a surefire way to find misery.
A gentle reminder.
Also, I feel like this got glossed over.
Congratulations!!! 
You completed a master’s degree with a full time job, a wife and very busy children! That goes beyond impressive.
Don’t forget to celebrate your accomplishments and find joy in the many blessings that are in your life.