Sunday, September 7, 2008

I Hate(d) Labor Day

Well it’s September and I am back at school. I used to hate Labor Day; the end of summer, felt almost like death. Before I started teaching, I was an assistant manager at Pathmark Supermarkets (A supermarket chain in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area). For 12 very long years, I struggled with the pain and frustration of working at a job, which paid the bills (barely), but was not what I wanted to do. The main problem was that I really didn’t know what I did want to do. So that was my life, I was in a dreadful career situation; knowing that I did not want to do what I was doing but not knowing what I did want to do. My only respite from depression (other than my family) was the summer, which gave me the rest, recreation and vacations that took my mind off my depression.
I would look forward to the summer the way a child looks forward to Holidays, their birthday and playtime all rolled into one! Memorial Day was my favorite holiday, it was the beginning of summer and I hated Labor Day, the end of summer; the two holidays that represented birth and death to me.
After leaving Pathmark and teaching for 17 years, the depression I felt towards the end of August, had turned to a sad melancholy, which I still had at the approach of Labor Day. Hey, don’t get me wrong, one of the perks about teaching is having the entire the summer off (more to come about teaching) and I know I get no sympathy (nor do I expect any) about the sadness associated with the end of summer. After all, I did have it off. But, something happened this year that was different. Perhaps the change was due to my daughter’s wedding on Labor Day. Her wedding was as perfect as anyone could have prayed for. The weather was perfect. The anticipation of the wedding and its coming to perfect fruition may have also helped. I don’t know the cause, perhaps it was due to the ability, after 17 years to let the past (Pathmark) go; or the changes that come with maturity (a nicer way of saying “getting older”); or the final realization that I now, truly know what I want to do with my life. Whatever the reason was, the depression / sadness / melancholy I have felt over many years, has seemed to stop.
I have a passion and a love of teaching and I incorporate it in not only my profession as a teacher, but as a hypnotherapist, father, grandfather, husband, uncle, friend, etc. etc. etc…

It’s September and I’m looking forward to working with my new students. At the end of the last school year, I took off my teacher’s hat (I never truly take that hat off) and put on my hypnotherapist hat. I have spent the last two and a half months hypnotizing people for everything from uncovering their past lives to eliminating their phobias; from breaking their addictions to cigarettes to improving their golf games; from helping them understand why they overeat to why they have low self-esteem and much more. Now it is time to put back on my teacher’s hat and keep my hypnotherapy hat ready for evenings.
I now know how to remove depression from your life. It is simple really. Get passionate about something… anything that gets your interest stimulated. My passion started with teaching special needs high school students, supermarket careers. Once I became involved and passionate about what I was doing, every other good thing in my life followed and quite suddenly, I realized that my depression is now, a thing of the past.

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