Bailing with a too-small bucket

It was a loooong week. It felt even longer. The first three days with students went well, but each one required an incredible amount of effort. Just so. Much. Effort.

I will admit, it has felt like I’m in a boat that is filling with water, and all I can do is bail it out with some bullshit bucket.

Which is fine honestly. I had a phenomenal summer. It was just so, so much. If I had been reading me I would have thoughts along the line of, goddamn bitch goes to all these places and doesn’t even get COVID? Because for real, how did it all go so according to plan?

It wasn’t fair.

And now summer is over and I have to figure out how to make my real life work, the one where I actually have to pay for all those trips and all that fun. The one where I have to clean my house and show up at a job and cash a pay check. The one where I have to take care of my kids and do laundry and feed the cat and fill prescriptions and remember events.

I had a bunch of stuff to write. I swear I did! But now I can’t think of a single thing. I’m so, so tired. It’s Monday now and it wrecked me. (I started this on Saturday? I think?)

The days at school are so long. I thought it wouldn’t matter, whether I was prepping at 7:45 or teaching, but it might matter? It feels like it does matter, at least so far, but I also have hope that I’ll get used to it and it will matter less. But right now, getting to work at 7:15 and not leaving until almost 4pm most days… well that is a lot and it’s making me tired.

I got a lot done this weekend. On Friday I REALLY felt like I was in a sinking boat that I couldn’t bail out fast enough. It literally felt like I was drowning in our own stuff. It still feels like the boat is going down at home, sinking under the weight of all our possessions, but I was able to do enough to keep the panic at bay. I need to a real purge, a real and massive culling of the stuff, but that requires way more time and energy than I have. Maybe at Christmas? Bwahahaha!

What a way to set myself up for failure.

This week we have Back to School Night. I think once that is done I’ll feel better. I just got to get to Friday.

I keep reminding myself that the first weeks of school require a ton of energy. You can’t just give them a thing to do and let them get to it, because they don’t know how to do anything yet. You have to explain every thing to them. You have to show them all your procedures and repeat all your directions. It’s a lot. But it’s also short lived. If I do a good job of it over the next few weeks, things will get easier. I just have to stay the course until then.

I want to write more but I need to get to sleep really early tonight. So I shall publish this post and then try to show up here again later this week.

Thank goodness the coming weekend is a long one.