Anxiety spiral

{First I wanted to thank people for the supportive comments yesterday. I didn’t expect that post to be linked to elsewhere and I didn’t expect so many people to read it, but I’m glad I wrote it and I hope it helped at least a few people better understand where teachers are coming from. I also want to make clear that just because I don’t think it’s safe to return to the classroom right now, that doesn’t mean I support the “we won’t return until there are no new cases for 14 days” movement either. I do believe there is a middle ground, and I would be willing to take it, but I doubt federal, or even state, leadership will do what is needed to get us there any time soon. And now, on to today’s post.}

I couldn’t sleep last night. I went to be early because our son had woken us up several times the night before and I was exhausted. I did everything right – I didn’t watch TV before bed, I read my book instead of scrolling on my phone and then I turned out the lights at 11pm. Three hours later I was losing my ever loving mind.

Sometimes it sneaks up on me, the anxiety. I don’t even know I’m feeling it until I start spiraling through a million aspects of my life, and the lives of those I care about, that I have no control over, and I can’t shut my mind off no matter how hard I try.

It was a reminder that things are hard right now and people are struggling. Of course I didn’t need the reminder, two of the things I was anxiety spiraling about were a good friend’s very troubled marriage and another good friend’s serious mental health issues. Both make me incredibly sad and both are directly related to the fucked up situation we all find ourselves in.

I’m also realizing that just because I finally know that we will be starting the year in distance learning, I don’t really know enough else to start planning. I usually channel my anxious energy into planning, but right now I don’t know what my kids’ daily distance learning schedules will look like and I don’t know what my own daily distance learning schedule will look like. Everything is up in the air, so I can’t even start test driving possible ways to make it work in my mind.

And the clock is ticking. My kids “start school” in less than three weeks. I start with students only two days after they do. I’m trying so hard to get some meaningful, productive work done but most days I’m just spinning my wheels. It’s frustrating and I’m exhausted.

I think today I’ll try to be productive, but I’ll also try to cut myself some slack. I’m not a napper, and the thought of lying somewhere and trying to sleep, when I spent SO MANY HOURS doing that last night, just causes me more anxiety, so I’m going to have to push through the exhaustion. I will NOT read anything from the NYT or WaPo and I’ll take something to make sure I sleep tonight.

Tomorrow I’m sure things will be better. In the meantime, I need to keep on putting one foot in front of the other.