I am learning something of the clockwork pace of seasons in Japan. In Australia the seasons vary mostly according to where you are and don't particularly conform to the conventional spring-summer-autumn-winter archetypes (for example, where I grew up in Adelaide has something like winter for about nine months of the year, and about three months of warm-ish weather, while up north in Brisbane where I lived for the last seven years we tend to have nine months of summer – with three very wet months in the middle of that – and three months of winter). Here, you can time the seasonal changes almost to the day. While we may yet have some warm days, summer is over here and the winds of autumn are blowing. Soon the leaves will be changing (it is reputedly very pretty here in autumn) and not long after that I will experience my very first actual white Christmas, only the third time I will have even seen snow also.

So it is that almost six months to the day that I have been here, the weather is much like it was when I arrived – less hazy, windy, and grey most of the time. It is strange to say but I think the weather is one of the antagonists of my current funk. Not because I am missing the summer, but because it is so similar to when I first arrived... I find that I am in a fog of nostalgia and everything seems difficult and stressful, much like it was six months ago when everything was new. I am feeling especially inept at work this week, just when I was starting to feel like I really had a handle on this job and could actually do it quite well. Two of my four classes yesterday were not so good and I know I probably shouldn't be blaming myself because some of it was beyond my control, but I can't help but think that things really shouldn't happen like that six months into the piece, y'know?

Add to this that the boss has decided to do some lesson plan competition for the next unit. I think it's a crap idea on numerous levels... first of all that I resent being made to compete with my colleagues, I think it does absolutely nothing for cohesiveness or workplace harmony... I guess for me it's also a throwback to my full-time dance days when our teachers would quietly manipulate and set one of us against another under the banner of 'healthy competition' in order to 'get the best out of us', effectively dividing friends, setting up two camps and rendering us unwilling to support one another lest we give another the edge. No. In my experience, 'healthy competition' rarely is. On top of that, how is competition even relevant since the six of us work basically autonomously and very differently, at different schools, with different kids? How are our lessons to be compared? I've barely just stopped myself from continually making comparisons between me and CoWorker (in which I pretty much always came off worse) and accepted the fact that we have very different personalities in the classroom and that neither is better nor more valid than the other... and now we are to be compared again? I don't actually understand how a Best or a Winner is to be decided given that we are all conduct our classes so differently. I raised this with the boss, along with my reluctance to compete with my friends, but he didn't really do much to allay my concerns, couldn't really explain the criteria... I asked him flat, why was he doing this competition, to which he told me it was to bring the best out of us. That old chestnut again... *sigh*.

Anyway, I am guessing that his vagueness conceals a covert reason for the competition, perhaps it's just a way of checking progress or perhaps one of us is not doing something the way he wants it to be done and this is his way of changing it. In any case, I decided to do my plans the same as I ever have... but then we were given a sheet outlining a framework for a 'good' lesson, which I will have to pay some attention to at least... and then, there's the fact that because we are competing, we are all reluctant to ask questions or share ideas about the next unit, which I always find invaluable in my lesson plans… kinda shitty. So, although I intended to opt out of the competition, I find that I am stressing stupid amounts about these next lesson plans.

And finally, thinking of colleagues, perhaps the nostalgia is also reminding me of the things that are different from six months ago, in particular the presence of the Jazz Singer. I can't deny that her arrival has rocked the boat and that for me it doesn't seem to be settling yet, two and a half months on... she seems to have bonded with CoWorker (let's face it, who wouldn't) but now I feel like I am on the outer. I miss my friend and I miss the way things were when it was just the two of us, but it seems like the two of them fit together much better and that even the interests that CoWorker and I used to particularly share have changed. It's subtle things, like the Jazz Singer addressing CoWorker solely more often than not, or when she is ostensibly talking to both of us she looks only at CoWorker. I don't feel particularly wanted or needed, which leaves me more inclined to be closed off rather than open, which in turn only serves to alienate me even further. It's crap, it makes me feel like I am in high school again... I always believed that when we grew us, adult friendships would be above these petty jealousies.

I'm feeling unsettled. It seems that every time I begin to feel comfortable, something shifts. Guess that's life I suppose, and that today I am just in the frame of mind to let it get to me. Perhaps it will be better tomorrow.

Addendum: Actually, it's only about five hours later, but I just had a good day of teaching and things are looking a lot better... these moods do pass...

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