Story #61 "What Is A Good Teacher?"

Story #59 is a CPE essay on positive psychology.

Positivity. A shibboleth and a trend of modern society. Body positivity. Workplace positivity. All day everyday positivity. A cliché the proponents of stand tall with, encouraging people, as Samuel Beckett once said, to try again, fail again, and fail better. That said, is the happiness-first approach the only means to succeed, and is it fair to assume that not everyone is designed to be an “always over-exuberant smiley” person?

To be a happy individual and a better person for society, one should strive to reframe any negative mindset and adopt “happiness” principles, as the opposite brings feelings of stress into life. What the aforementioned concept fails to take into account, however, is that negative emotions are far from being something that should be just tolerated - these have to be examined through the lens of a more nuanced view. Stress is a natural physiological response a person not only suffers but also benefits from. Anecdotal as it sounds, stress serves as a medicine, which means that in healthy doses it facilitates achievement and contributes to a positive emotional state.

However, in some cases, it is simply impossible to maintain that “always happy” practice. There are people, known as defensive pessimists, whose broodiness and fatalism are the normal state of affairs as it is their way to think ahead and prepare themselves for challenges, hence the conclusion - what is acceptable for one is not for another. While riding on the pessimism bandwagon provides defensive pessimists with a unique tool to cope with stress, having an overly negative mindset may lead to clinical depression and anxiety.

Optimism and pessimism are two opposites, both of which are fundamental to mental development. That notwithstanding, it is natural for an average person to regard hopelessness, sorrow, and the like as something one has to avoid at all costs; thus, the popularity of the positive thinking concept will continue to increase.

(word count 316)

(I should also mention that my tutor said that wasn't an academic style intro - the very beginning:) It would be great for a review or an article, but too bold for a discursive essay!)

Some more factual information behind the CPE fiction article "The local hero". You can find a full article here https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/05/nyregion/girl-s-death-is-attributed-to-rabid-bat.html

Story #13 which is an Instagram post A FEW WORDS ABOUT WRITING AGAIN

Where do I get prompts from?

Everywhere. As simple as that. I never really look for them, they just happen to find me. There might be a word, a phrase, or a whole excerpt that hooks me up, and I want to channel it into words.

Here’s a list of prompts I’ve accumulated so far:

🦋“When you choose to collect experiences rather than things, you never run out of storage space” (a random meme from the internet while preparing a discussion about decluttering for my speaking club);

🦋“Imagine a world without sadness, loss, or suffering. No one is ever in a bad mood. Tears are unheard of. You never wake up at 3:00 a.m. riddled with worry or anxiety about the future. Lovers never leave each other. Loved ones never die.” (From the “Blink”);

🦋“I value privacy, maybe not secrecy, but I value privacy.” (From the interview);

🦋“Vic didn't dance, but not for the reasons that most men who don't dance give to themselves. He didn't dance simply because his wife liked to dance. She was insufferably silly when she danced. She made dancing embarrassing. (from “Deep waters” by Patricia Highsmith);

🦋 “Do you know what the worst thing about being a parent is? That you’re always judged by your worst moments. You can do a million things right, but if you do one single thing wrong you’re forever that parent who was checking his phone in the park when your child was hit in the head by a swing. We don’t take our eyes off them for days at a time, but then you read just one text message and it’s as if all your best moments never happened. Parents are defined by their mistakes.” (From some other book. Hell, if I remember its title now);

🦋 “We tend to prefer the certainty of misery, rather than the misery of uncertainty.” (“Blink”);

🦋His promises were like… - by @ira.lutse.ielts;

🦋Sharing from your personal experience.

You see. Ideas are everywhere. Which one resonates with you most? Later next week, I want to start sharing them with you. We’ll start with #8. ✌️

Story #28

The X-files fanfiction "We only heal together" 2/3

Read it on AO3

2.

Mulder looked at her with those dark, intense eyes, his gaze traveling over her body. Neither would be able to explain any of what happened afterward. It could be attributed to the inexplicable slideshow they had been forced to watch or just something he saw in her eyes. The next moment his mouth was on hers. One hand was sinking deep into her hair, and the other was covering her breast.

For one millisecond she was absolutely frozen neither returning the kiss nor pushing him off, but then her arms went around his neck drawing him closer. Mulder walked her backward until she was pressed against the metal cabinet, the sharp edges of its handle digging into her back. He skimmed his hands down her sides, gripped her hips, and lifted Scully off the ground. She braced her hands on his shoulders and instinctively wrapped her legs around his midriff, the narrow black skirt riding up and bunching at her waist. The hardness of his arousal was rubbing against her core. Mulder growled in her mouth and pulled her tighter, caressing her everywhere he could reach. Scully’s heart was thudding so loudly in her chest that her voice of reason drowned in the noise, not a single clear thought in her head. When Mulder squeezed the cheeks of her ass through the thin nylon of her tights and sucked on that sweet spot behind her earlobe that always made her knees go weak, Scully let out a moan and opened her eyes. She wanted to see him. She wanted to watch.

There was a wild glint in his eyes like he was on the brink of insanity, and it immediately threw her for a loop. With her hands still wrapped around his neck, she yanked hard on his hair compelling him to look at her. 

“Mulder. Slow down.”

He was tuning her out and that didn’t surprise her in the slightest. She could hardly hear herself over the tumult from the ringing in her ears. Groping, stroking, feeling her up, Mulder was acting like an overexuberant teenager on the cusp of exploding if he didn’t get inside her soon.

“I want you so much, baby.”

If that look in his eyes combined with Mulder’s erratic behavior did nothing to Scully, that ‘baby’ definitely tipped her off. She couldn’t imagine Mulder calling her that even in the throes of passion. Scully’s eyes widened in shock as it became abundantly clear that Mulder was under some kind of influence. He may have not even realize it was her in the room with him, his mind was foggy from whatever he had been subjected to. This wasn’t her Mulder.  Her Mulder was caring and kind. That Mulder was churlish and indignant.

Was it some kind of perverted trick to make her finally leave him? She would never believe Mulder was capable of hurting her willingly. No. He would not. 

The crystalline blue of her eyes filled with tears, but so did her mind with determination to stop her partner from his greatest fall. Overcoming a logjam in her throat and gathering all her strength, Scully managed to push Mulder off and slid off his hips. With her hands planted firmly on his torso, she said as calmly as she could.

“Mulder, stop! Something has been done to you. To us. This is not you!”

Shockingly, her resistance only added more zing to Mulder’s already steel-hard cock and he began grating himself over the layers of her pantyhose and underwear.

“Who else would it be?” he replied gruffly and with one quick motion turned her around, her back to his chest, her compact body trapped between his forearms.

Scully heaved a shuddering sigh, but it was the furthest from pleasure as it could be. Mulder tugged on her hips grinding against her ass, and it felt strikingly right and wrong at the same time. Nothing ever felt so good before. Nothing ever felt so bad before.

“Mulder, no.”

He was panting heavily into her ear, moving his lips, with a taste of water and salt from her cheek, down to her neck to bite on the tendon where he felt her pulse thrumming. Pressing all his weight to her backside, Mulder held Scully between the metal cabinet and his hard rock body, roaming with rough hands over her hips, her breasts, her stomach. Anywhere he could reach, his erection nestling right over the reddish ink of her tattoo.

“I’ve been wanting to do it since day one, Scully. I know that you want it too. Come on, help me here.” He punctuated each word with a thrust of his pelvis.

“Not like this, Mulder. Please. Never like this.”

How would they survive it? There was nothing they could possibly do to overcome it. This would create a rift so deep in their relationship, that nothing would ever be able to fix it.

What they had between them was more than a partnership, more than a certain amount of camaraderie, more than unspoken understanding. There was affection. Devotion. Love. How could it all be shattered to pieces in the blink of an eye?

One of Mulder’s hands crept under her skirt, and when it reached between her legs, she heard him tearing her pantyhose. He expected to find her all wet and aroused for him and was deeply frustrated to see that she wasn’t. Moving the gusset of her panties to the side, he dipped his middle finger inside of her to the second knuckle. He imagined her letting out a moan which would be a mixture of ache and pleasure.

What came out though was a gut-wrenching scream. Mulder covered her mouth with his big palm along with her nose making it impossible for Scully to breathe. A lack of oxygen sent her to the furthest corner of her mind, where one of the darkest memories was buried.

A ten-year old girl, a good swimmer, a natural - she wasn’t good enough that day. One moment she was diving with Bill and Charlie in shallow waters and the next, they were gone. She kept turning her head right and left rapidly but couldn’t see a thing. Utterly terrified, she failed to fathom that her lack of vision had nothing to do with her eyes, but was caused by the water itself. She was drowning. No air. She couldn’t breathe. Panic struck her and she opened her mouth to scream only to gulp mouthfuls of murky salty liquid. 

That time Bill pulled her out to the surface, literally saving her life. 

Here and now her life was only in her hands. Gathering her wits, Scully bit Mulder’s hand so hard that she felt the metallic taste on her tongue.

“Fuck!”

Mulder cried, pulling his hand away from her face. Scully was half ready for him to backhand her in return and used the moment to jump behind the desk, as far from him as the office allowed. She wasn’t really sure if that Mulder wouldn’t strike a woman.  

The man in front of her didn’t move as he was looking at his bloody hand. When he finally lifted his eyes to Scully, she was eyeing him cautiously, her lips were ruddy red with his blood, crimson smears on her palish cheek.

All of a sudden, Mulder was back to another time. They were in their office, their real office.

“Look at you!” Scully smiled, entering through the door and handing him a brown paper bag while moving aside the photos lying in front of Mulder on the desk to sit with her hip on it.

“Is this our new assignment?”

Mulder smirked and stood up to move to the glass-encased annex, the furthest part of the office used as a minuscule kitchen, and grabbed a mug to pour her some coffee from a carafe. 

She took a sip and put the porcelain cup down where both their mugs rested together: his - a huge white one with a gray almond-shaped eye alien printed on it, with milk and three sugars, and hers – an elegant golden-rimmed porcelain piece filled with pure black. 

He remembered her asking him if extraterrestrials were supposed to be green, and him blowing raspberries at her, stating what a widespread misconception it had always been. It was a theory for amateurs, he said, and they were pros.

He remembered complimenting her on her outfit that day and how she lowered her eyes shyly and started fiddling with the papers on the desk.

He remembered how a red bloom of blood stained the page as she got a paper cut.

He remembered rummaging through the drawers trying to find a box of Kleenex, that, for whatever reason, was missing, and then desperately reaching out, alarmed and panicky, to grab her by the hand and take her finger in his mouth to suck on it gently.

He remembered her eyes going wide, not from the shock of his action but the understanding behind it. He couldn’t stand seeing her bleeding. Not again. He couldn’t stand seeing her hurt. Not ever.

A red bloom of blood stained the page as she got a paper cut.

There was blood on his fingers. Blood on her lips.

“Oh Scully,” he whispered as realization dawned on him.

“Scully… Scully… Scully,” Mulder whispered suddenly completely drained. “Oh God, Scully. I’m so sorry.” 

She was right at his side. He could feel her feathery light touch on his cheek, her strong hands pulling him into a tight embrace, her soft breaths on his neck. 

She didn’t let go of him as they slid together down the wall. She didn’t let go when he broke into sobs, gently rocking her on his lap.

“I’m so sorry, Scully. I’m so sorry.”

Mulder took her hand and brought it to his lips, trying to soothe and kiss away the pain he knew was in her heart, his tears mingling with the red streaks on her ashen skin.

“It’s OK, Mulder. We are going to be OK.”

They seemed so unfixable and irrecoverable, and she knew that it would only add to Mulder’s guilt. Scully had no idea how but she would fix it. They would fix it. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from you, Mulder.”

When Mulder felt Scully’s weight changing on his lap almost imperceptibly, he looked back at his arms, and it was like she was slipping away through his fingers. Melting like ice, leaking through the cracks, soaking his clothes, and pooling in puddles by his feet.

“Scully?” he cried. “No, don’t go. Stay with me.” 

He tried to squeeze her harder, to hold her as close as possible, to keep her solid and warm. 

“Don’t leave me, Scully.” 

He shook his head refusing to believe in the reality of the scene unfolding, his head pounding, eyes shut tightly. When he summoned up the courage to open them again, he was sitting on the floor in the pool of water and blood, his arms empty, and the rays of light were turning into snowflakes and falling down from the ceiling, whirling around him - tiny particles gathering in a storm in the midst of their office.

“Scullyyyyy!”

The pounding was getting louder and louder, becoming a deafening roar, the snowstorm raging and enveloping everything in blinding whiteness. His head was the epicenter of the explosion, burying under its ashes everything around, and there was a fleeting thought that he couldn’t help but feel relief. It was over. Whatever it was, it was over.

Story #57 "You gotta stay away from work to work better"

Said A. in our yesterday’s lesson when I asked her about Women's Day. Hell, yeah, I replied, would be nice but kind of hard to do your work not working it. We laughed it off and got back to our good old lexical items but the thought stuck. 

It played on the loop later as well, when I thought back to my last year's holiday. And two years back. And basically all the holidays of the last 10 years. The first thing I pack with me is my laptop. I take it out to the airport to check the student's homework. I take it out on the plane to outline a workshop. I take it out in a hotel to upload some extra materials for them and then write some more. 

The children run around asking for a cable car trip, or a dip in a swimming pool. The husband is pulling me under the blanket in his subtle attempt to make out with his seemingly relaxed pre-holiday wife. The dog we don’t have (thank god!) scratching the door desperately to remind us about its basic needs, would complete the picture perfectly. 

Yet, I have my laptop on my knees. The wheels are already set in motion while I’m getting ready for my lesson in the room I set up for my study in our two-bedroom suite. 

That begs the question - why the hell is it so hard not to work at all? And If I strip myself of any opportunities to be engaged in any work-related environment, can I break that vicious cycle? 

What’s your holiday like, guys? Is it a real work-free holiday or do you tend to squeeze in a few lessons/homework checks/course supervising/etc. in between a morning beach stroll and an evening family dinner?

Story #39, CELTA 2022

I’ve been wanting to take the course for the past three years or so, but somehow I couldn’t answer to myself “to what end”? And then it just clicked. So here I am.

I didn't want to do a full-time 4-week offline CELTA. Since we live in a digital age where people Zoom this and that, you don't even need to leave your apartment. Maybe even your bed.

My CELTA is a 12-week online course in ITI Istanbul.

We have a multinational group with people from Turkey, Iran, Russia, Japan, and even Argentina!

The workload is pretty heavy, but all the tasks are quite doable, and if you manage to organize your time properly, there’s just the right amount of time for work, side projects and family errands.

All the tasks mentioned below are compulsory; however, only the first two are assessed.

What it consists of: 🦋4 written assignments (up to 1000 words); 🦋8 45-minute lessons; 🦋6 hrs of teacher practice observation (including your tutor); 🦋7 weekly sessions; 🦋30 units of coursework on the Cambridge platform; 📛nerves, sweat, tears unlimited.

My teaching practice is starting at the end of November and finishing somewhere around December, 30. (Alas! no teaching after the New Year’s Day). The last week is dedicated to wrap up all the loose ends.

This should be the first step for taking DELTA afterward… so we’ll see.

Story #11 "Ignorance is no longer bliss."

I was nineteen when my father died. He was only fifty. An industrial accident that changed all our lives in the blink of an eye. It was a late summer Sunday afternoon when the doorbell rang. Two men were standing on the threshold holding a small black plastic bag. They were the bearers of the tragic news. I couldn’t believe what I heard until I opened that bag. There was my dad’s lunchbox, untouched. I remember looking at that plastic box, not being able to open it, thinking how it was even possible. He was supposed to eat that food.

Everything was fine! He left for work in the morning, packed his lunch, and a couple of hours later those people were standing at the doors of our flat saying that my father would never get back home again. The sight of that container in the plain black plastic bag broke me. I kept saying that that was not happening. That was not happening. That was not real. Only it was.

His death was of the utmost importance because he was my father. Someone I knew and cherished. Someone I’m going to remember and love till the end of my days. But there are so many other deaths around we hardly notice. Every. Single. Day.

How many wars can you recall in the last seventy years? I remember the American-Vietnam war, probably because it was widely popularized and countlessly screen-adapted. I’ve definitely heard about several armed conflicts in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Maybe some other places as well. I’ve no idea what was behind these conflicts, or what other parties were involved, or whether it escalated or not, or how many people died. Because these people are just blank faces in the crowd of other blank faces which have nothing to do with me. They’re faceless of the faceless. They don’t even seem real. They all live somewhere there. NOT here. Not close enough to be a problem for anyone apart from those who live and die there. They are out of sight and, therefore, out of mind.

It will not happen again. Donbas showed us that any war is real and cannot be considered trivial. There’s no small war. There is no war people can ignore. We all see now what happens when we act like it’s someone else’s problem. Once small and seemingly insignificant conflict, it escalated into the large-scale war. History repeats itself and once again gives us a lesson. Will we learn it now? I don’t know, but there is hope.

Everybody has to care. Everyone should think of consequences. We are not allowed to be blissfully ignorant anymore. Regardless of nationality, skin color, beliefs, etc., human life is priceless. Period.

Story #51 is The X-Files fanfiction story.

Read it on AO3

Stories #80-84 are chapters of the X-Files fanfiction story.

Read it on AO3

Story #79 "Mapping My Childhood"

That was a creative writing exercise from my tutor, and it's a mix of fiction and real-life events.

There was a heavy wooden bookcase in the living room of our old two-bedroom, creaky dusty shelves storing all kinds of books - detective stories, thrillers, romances that would make the most jagged reader blush. I rummaged through it from top to bottom and stopped my gaze on “Hatter’s Castle” by Archibald Cronin, a hefty volume of blue color - the book my younger self, fascinated with British and American literature – devoured whole in one week. Took me another week to digest it, before embarking on Dreiser’s “American Tragedy”.  We’ll get back to that.

Kesha, our green and yellow budgie, was tweeting in his cage as I stood there hypnotizing the book, trying to decide if it was worth a read. As I made up my mind to give it a shot, I sauntered over to the kitchen to boil some water for tea. Benny, our beautiful white mongrel, looked at me with her wet brown eyes – always seemingly sad – and I paused by the door of the kitchen with my manuscript.

Later.

We could look through Hatter’s castle later. Tea could wait too. It was time to walk.

“Hey, let’s go out for a while.”

She didn’t hesitate and jumped on me, pawing my knees excitedly.  I crouched down to be level with her lovely fluffy face and pulled her increments closer. Maybe somewhere in the back of my head, I had already known it would be one of our last times together. As I had known that one sunny day in June, I would forget to pull down the bar of Kesha’s cage while filling his bowl with fresh food, and he would fly away.

We tended to keep the balcony doors open in summer, but I still believed the chances he’d find his way out would be close to nil. Well, fucking stupid of me. But what would you expect from a fourteen-year-old – a clusterfuck of uncertainty and confusion? 

Fourth floor. Eighty-eight steps up and down. Every day for the past six years, and then the next ten. Inside it smelled like dump plaster and cigarette smoke. I used to know all my neighbors by name, the types of plants they had (they asked us to water them when on holiday), and the loudness of their spouses’ voices once a row was in full swing.

Every four weeks it was our turn to sweep the floors of the lobby and wash two flights of stairs. Twenty-two steps. Up and down. I wish we had a rug there, so I could sweep under it all the dirt and humiliation I felt every time I got spotted by a random passerby.

Checking the postbox was the thing I loved best. There were letters and postcards I could read. When I was in high school, newspapers joined them. Later, when I entered the college, catalogs and brochures were added to the pile of the mess our postbox had become.

“What you got there?” The boy from the top floor – the fifth – asked me as he stepped across the narrow two-by-two lobby to check the box of his own.

“Yves Rocher catalog,” I mumbled and he pivoted on his heels swiftly.

“What?”

“Yves Rocher catalog,” I repeated louder and then felt compelled to clarify. “You can buy a lipstick there or a mascara.”

The boy smirked and swept my body down with his eyes, grinning wickedly.

“You think it’ll help?”

At his words, my face started burning. I kept staring at him with eyes wide open, acutely aware that if I closed them for a second, the tears that had already filled the back of my throat would spill over my lashes. I swallowed a sob ready to escape any moment and brushed past the guy, bumping his shoulder painfully with my backpack.

“Fuck you.”