3 Changes That Cause PANIC!

I am a girl who constantly craves change. I change my hair. I change my classroom. I change my wardrobe (although my budget has a hard time keeping up with this change!). I even change my furniture around every so many months. I think it might stem from my constant moving as a kid. I have lived in 37 different houses. If I'm not packing up and changing my scenery every so often, I get antsy.

As much as I like some change, because I think it leads to new adventures and fresh perspectives; I also fear changes. Some changes actually have me wanting to hide in a corner or cry myself to sleep.

Here are three changes that can cause a little panic!
Change number one has to do with hair mistakes! I like to think of myself as a person who is adventurous and brave when it comes to hair decisions. I have tried pretty much everything from color to cut. I have been a blonde, brunette, and even a red-head! I've had long hair and even had a pixie. {I went a little overboard after seeing the movie Ghost! Yes, Demi Moore looked adorable. Me, I just looked like a boy with a bad haircut.}

Nothing is worse than a bad haircut (not even stone washed jeans and a matching jacket)! Although I will say the majority of the time, I am happy with the outcome. But that 1 or 2 mistakes has scared me for life. More times can I count my hairdresser has tried to talk me out of my need for change. Most times I don't listen. Every time I have a little regret. I'm still trying to hold on to growing my hair out, but knowing me, I'll probably cave and cut it short.

Change number two has to do with leaving the classroom. I have been a teacher since 1997. I feel like teaching is a part of my identity. This past year I left the classroom and moved into an Admin role- Student Support Specialist. It has been quite a change. I'm still technically a teacher but on assignment. This is where the confusion sets in. The title of the job indicates that I will still be working with kids. However, it doesn't specify how and all the other changes that come with it. I had no idea how much this change would impact me. I didn't know how much I would miss the familiarity of eating with and talking to my team or how I would miss the ah-ha moment that comes with teaching and learning. I have a new team now, and I still support my old team and a few other teams. But this change took some time to get used to. I did learn to understand that the bigger picture isn't always what we think it is. It has left me thinking how many times can my principal have been right about things (which really annoys me, as I enjoy being the one who is right).  It has also forced me to change my thinking about those little devils in the classroom. At first, this change gave me a need to increase my anxiety meds! But as time has gone on, I have had the chance to see that a little change is necessary. Below you will see the fun I have had being one student's behavior reward as we brought a lot of change to one brown box. (Ah... the things you can do with a box, but that is a whole other story.)

Change number three almost gave me a heart attack! It was changing computers. My Mac crashed about 2 weeks ago. It was a sad sad day. Needless to say, I had to get another one. {Not the best timing, but had to be done.} When I finally got my brand new Mac I was pretty excited. A feeling of euphoria quickly turned into to full on panic. New Pages? No! No! No! I have been avoiding new Pages for about 3 years. I made the mistake of updating it when it first came out (because I love change so much, I always update everything! It also keeps your computer relevant). I quickly realized my mistake. I tend to believe that companies, such as Apple try to improve products as time goes on. Not in this case. The new pages may be a nicer Word Processing document, but not great for creativity. I searched the Mac forums, Youtube, and the entire Internet! All the reviews were the same- nobody likes New Pages! So I reinstalled Pages 09 and went back to work. However, when my new Mac came, there wasn't a CD/DVD drive. How was I going to get Pages 09 back? That ended up being quite a feat. What I can say is New Pages has one nice feature- I like the editing tools to the right of my work. What I hate is you can't copy a page from one document to the other. WHAT? Does that even make sense? I just can't understand the idea of this. I also dislike how thumbnails are not set up by default and when you add them you have to reopen them every time you go back into a document. Or you can just open it and have the thumbnails be blank for a few minutes causing a slight panic attack until they come back on. All in all this change was for the best because I have a new computer complete with Pages 09! If you're a Mac lover like me (although I'm a little mad at them right now), and you use your computer for creative work, the answer lies in a portable CD/DVD drive which you can purchase at Amazon for about $20, and an old copy of Pages 09 {also available at Amazon for about $27.} Save yourself the opportunity for change on this one! It will also save you the increased chance of coming down with a stress-induced condition.

On the brighter side, I'm up for a change of pace in the next few weeks... off to Hawaii! That's a change I can look forward to. (Except the 6 hour time change! But who can complain about Hawaii?!)

Until next time...