Don't Let Them Change You

Today I quit the language school. It might sound like a big deal, I mean a brave decision, but it wasn't much of a decision at all. They wanted me to do something which I refused and that's it. And I do feel glad about it, for I haven't slept properly for weeks now, staring at the ceiling and wording my email in which I tell the students about it. Finally, it wasn't a big thing, either. I just told them I no longer work there and they're gonna get a new teacher, and thanks for everything, best wishes, and so on. But I'm not saying it's gonna be easy.
Luckily, I still have 8 lessons a week at the other school, which puts me in a somewhat better position than absolute unemployment would be. And I'll still have plenty of time to figure out what to do, I mean send out CVs and cover letters (which I frankly hate to write). And I'll have time to relax and read a lot of books. I've recently bought a couple of bones for nice dinners and a recreational weekend at Szeged, so I won't have to spend on luxuries for a couple of months. I also bought my very expensive and not so precious public transport monthly ticket today, so I won't have to bother with that, either.
Oh, Life, I love thy Irony! I just wanted to mention one of my favourite poets, Kiss Judit Ágnes, and as I opened up her blog, the most recent story was just about the same problem I have now. You see, she pays her taxes regularly, but she hasn't had a steady workplace, so now she's not entitled for munkanélküli segély. If you work on temporary contracts, it doesn't count anywhere, not to your pension, not to health insurance, nowhere, even though you do pay your taxes. And she's a writer, for god's sake.

The reason I wanted to mention her is that she's been one of the most inspirational and most influential poets in my life and on my own writing. We have a lot in common, and I'm not faking it. She went to the same university, and she also plays the oboe, she has a degree in that, too. And very often when I'm reading her poems I have to cry out loud, oh my God, it's just what I wanted to say. So yesterday when I was trying to sleep, I remembered one of her poems, Álmatlanság (Insomnia), looked it up and read it to give me strength and hope, and calm me down. In the last year of university I had a course aimed to improve teachers' voice and performance (and probably self-confidence, too), and we had to learn two poems by heart. Nobody was happy with it, especially because the teacher made us (me) recite the poems what seemed like a hundred times, and we were supposed to change the tone, the pace, whatever. I did everything she asked me to, and finally she left me alone claiming I was hopeless. Anyway, the two poems I chose were Álmatlanság and Irgalmasvérnő visszatekint, both by Kiss Judit Ágnes, from the collection Nincs új üzenet. These are about finding one's strength and carrying on, and knowing that there's more to you than it seems. I wish I could write like that, and live up to that.

P.S. You may want to read the above-mentioned poems here and here.