Not a Wasted Word

So I did end up going back and looking at posts from this time of year in 2019 and 2018, and you know what? I wasn’t that much happier back then. Maybe I wasn’t happier at all.

I was frantically busy and ultimately unsatisfied with a lot of my life. It’s not that surprising, I had been suspecting that was the case. I have been feeling kind of panicked recently that in a year or so, when things are closer to normal, I still won’t feel much better. I think, somewhere deep in my subconscious, I knew that there was more to how I was feeling than could be simply attributed to the pandemic.

So what to do about it? One possibility: I need to think really hard about what makes this difficult and identify the aspects from my old life that would alleviate those hardships. And I need to work incredibly hard to not fall back into the patterns that led to the over-scheduled life I left when all this started.

I also need to identify what about our current situation is actually better, and think of possible ways I could maintain some of that.

The good news is that one of the things that made my life really frantic in the past was the PTA, and next year my kids will not be at that school, so nobody can expect me to keep doing PTA stuff there (I really am not doing any PTA stuff anymore and it has been amazing, but it would be hard to stay away if no one stepped up again next year, which is likely since all of the current board is leaving). It will be a lot easier to just not participate in the PTAs at my kids’ new schools (my daughter will be in middle school and my son will be at a different, closer elementary school that a couple of his friends go to and that has a later start time, than it would be to watch the PTA that I spent so many years on implode and not step into to do anything about it.

I also don’t miss the ferrying of kids to and from activities in the afternoon and evenings. This is harder to let go of since I know my kids really benefit from swimming (my daughter) and martial arts (my son). I’m not really sure how to avoid the hectic feeling of the evenings once those activities are available again. We already limit them to one afternoon/evening activity each, I just have very little tolerance for all that driving and sitting at places waiting. (If you have any suggestions on how to keep activities from swallowing the afternoon/evenings let me know).

I don’t miss waking up early and dragging my ass down to school every morning. I don’t miss the short nights of sleep or the commute, or the traffic or any of it. Being able to wake up at 7:30pm (or later) is amazing and I cherish the slower, less stressful mornings we now enjoy.

I also don’t miss being the only parent available before 6:30 or 7pm. My husband has really stepped up and is very present and involved with our kids and other family stuff all throughout the day, and I very much appreciate that. I’m hoping he will have some more flexibility as far as working from home is concerned once they are back in the office. I will definitely be talking to him more about it early and often.

I really like how much time we spend outside doing things that don’t require money. I don’t really miss movie theaters or restaurants or bars much, and I doubt I’ll be doing that stuff as much ev I like hosting outside so much more than inside (my house is generally a mess and by the time I get it prepped for guests I’m exhausted) and I hope that meeting outside is something people will be willing to do even after it’s not required.

I definitely miss my parents and their presence in our kids’ lives. I miss them taking our kids for spend-the-nights and other adventures. I will be thrilled when they can have the kids more.

I also miss my kids being at school, though drop off and pick up were always a source of stress. I definitely need to remember that as I’m looking at middle schools for my daughter. Considering schools across town that would take 30 minutes to get to is a bad idea. I need understand that for me, things like drop off and pick up time really do matter.

I want to write about this more but it’s 1am and I’ve found that if I don’t publish posts they languish in my drafts folder. So I will just press the button.

But not before I recognize how incredibly fortunate I am that my situation is such that I can consider what I do and don’t like about this horrible situation and attempt to use that information to improve my life later. I know I am very, very lucky.

I’m finding it hard to remember what is normal and what’s not. Is it normal for me to count the days between breaks like this? I can’t remember. I know I can go back and ready my own blog to get an idea, but I don’t know if I want to. I didn’t love seeing all the stuff we did before the pandemic started. I had come to believe that our lives weren’t that different – that we always spent this much time at home – but seeing photos of those two months in 2020 before all this started reminded me that our lives really have changed.

I’m tired. It’s hard to get excited about things. Every day feels like an interminable slog. I know I’m skirting depression but what can I do about it? I’ve been here before and I’ll be here again and I know I’m here right now because of circumstances outside my control. I’m working out. I’m eating (relatively) well. I only drink on the weekends. I’m staying connected with friends as well as I can. I’m doing all the things I know I need to do to keep head above water, but the currents are strong and it’s hard to keep swimming.

I know I have it better than 99.9999% of people right now. I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m just writing out what it’s in my head.

I hope you’re all keeping your heads above water too. It’s all we can do.

I can’t believe our first break of the school year is almost over. Today is the last day we actually have off and tomorrow starts the weekend.

I have to say, it was really nice to take a break from work. Even though we couldn’t really take a break from our lives, stepping away from the less pleasant parts of my job was a relief. It was nice for my kids to have a break from online learning too.

I did take my kids down to my campus on Tuesday so I could get some work done (and my husband, who was still working, could really get some work done) and they could play around outside. I have done quite a bit of work during the break but there has been no emails to respond to and no classes to teach and only one week’s worth of work to grade. I have gotten a fair amount of the work related tasks on my to-do list crossed off (and I can finish the rest this weekend).

I also got the Christmas box down and the Christmas tree up and decorated. I washed all the Christms clothes and distributed them to their owners. I even went to Target and bought some Christmas presents along with matching Minecraft Christmas pajamas for my kids. Besides not having any idea what to get my daughter for Christmas, I feel pretty on top of things holiday wise.

I’m almost done with the calendars, which for some reason are taking forever this year. I couldn’t decide on a style so I ended up picking a blank white one and then after I got all the pictures in I decided I hated it, so I tried to start again but that was too daunting so instead I added embellishments from another calendar onto the original white one. At this point I need to just be done with it and order them already. That should happen tonight.

{I don’t have to make my grandmother’s calendar for the first time this year, and I’m trying to focus on what an relief it is that I don’t have to get pictures of all the other great grandkids and make a totally separate calendar instead of how sad I am that she isn’t with us anymore.}

{When I started looking for pictures for the calendar I plugged my stick into my phone and learned I had over TWELVE THOUSAND PHOTOS on there. So I downloaded them all to the stick and erased about half of them. Man oh man, I’m glad I got them off of there. I tire of making the calendars but I do love that it inspires me to go through and choose the best photos of the year (which live on Shutterfly forever), and to purge them off my phone once I’ve gone through them.

I already designed and ordered this year’s ornament. I’m pleased that it is our first “bubble” ornament, which feels very fitting for 2020.

{Those of you who have been reading me for a while know that one of my favorite Christmas traditions is creating an ornament for the year. This is the 11th year that I’ve created an ornament for our tree (and the trees of the grandparents -they get one too).

One thing I have not done is clean up my house. I just can’t seem to get it done. I’ve been telling myself all month that once Thanksgiving break came I’d get the house cleaned up. But here we are, two days away from going back to work and I have barely picked up. I don’t know why I can’t seem to get through this particular headspace that has me just shutting down the minute I try to clean up my house. It’s seriously bothering me.

I have plans to tackle stuff this weekend. We shall see if it actually happens but I want it to. It stresses me out to have the house this messy.

I have gotten the kids outside every day this week (except Wednesday, I let them lounge all day on Wednesday). I’ve kept up with my workouts. I even kept up with my intermittent fasting for Monday through Wednesday. I’ve gotten a ton of stuff done. I am proud of all that and I’m trying to remind myself of it instead of berating myself for not cleaning up the house, but it’s hard.

Thanksgiving ended up being very nice. My parents did an amazing job creating a Covid-safe outdoor celebration and I think they even enjoyed it themselves. They had made a traditional Thanksgiving on Tuesday and packed up half of it for us to take home. On Thursday we all ate pozole together, which is a stew made from hominy (we were at one table and my parents were at another). We played some card games outside, and ladder ball. My mom brought out Christmas cookies to decorate. The kids spent over an hour in the hot tub and we left about 6pm. All in all, it wasn’t that different from a regular Thanksgiving, except we were outside with masks (and our close family friends weren’t celebrating with us). Of course we are lucky that the weather is still very nice here, and yesterday it was especially nice.

We’ve been working through the Marvel movies, though we’re not watching all of them (this bothered me but then I realized that this is what they can handle right now, and later they can watch them ALL again in order if they want). My son loves them but my daughter is losing interest. Luckily she likes to read and doesn’t mind doing that instead of watching… Tonight we’re watching Winter Soldier.

I made face masks for our Elf on the Shelf Heart, and her reindeer Toots. My son has been very worried that Heart will not be able to make it this year. I keep telling him that I think it will be okay but December 1st really can’t come fast enough. I’m thinking Heart might drop us a letter tomorrow morning to ease our anxiety.

I hope you had a safe and resful holiday. Thinking of everyone right now. This shit is hard.

I’ve been dreading the conversation with my parents about Thanksgiving. I know they are less cautious about possible exposure – they eat at a common table with other couples outside, the hang out with people outside without masks on, they have even hosted dinner in their house – and I knew they would want us to come inside to eat. I also knew that was not something we were comfortable with.

I did talk to them, and they promised to take more precautions for two weeks before Thanksgiving. I agreed that if they did that we could eat inside. But as numbers here rose I felt less comfortable with that decision. And my husband didn’t feel comfortable with it at all.

So after losing my shit about hard everything is, I called them back and we talked it out. My parents were understanding and expressed that they were mostly worried that traditional Thanksgiving Day food would get cold quickly outside. I suggested something different, maybe a pozole (my dad makes amazing pozole, which is a stew made with hominy and meat – usually pork). They were interested in this plan. My dad suggested trying a green pozole with turkey. We talked more after the tension had abated, and and in the end we decided to circle back after we knew what the weather would be like. (I will suggest we eat in their massive two-car garage with the door up if it’s raining.)

Later, lying in bed, I realized I hadn’t confronted them about eating outside because I don’t particularly want to do it either. The idea of spending a day lounging around my parents house, feeling warm and happy and content, is incredibly alluring. I would love, love, love to do that. But we can’t do that and ensure everyone will be safe. That is just the reality.

It’s frustrating to see how many people recognize the importance of staying home right now, but decide to travel anyway. Farhad Manjoo’s opinion piece in the New York Times today made me so mad (the majority of the comments mirrored my frustration). That is the kind of thing my parents will read and use to try to convince me that we can just be inside. Other informed, well-educated people are doing it so we can too! It’s hard to do the right thing when you see so many other people doing exactly what you would love to do.

So many of my students are flying right now, many are spending the week with other families in a cabin in Tahoe, and others are hosting relatives that are flying in from all over the country. Then in December they are supposed to come onto campus? After all that exposure? I’m so tired of people making choices that effect our community negatively. It’s really crazy how little people care about the common good when it inconveniences them. And I live in an area where people wear masks in public and generally adhere to public health guidelines more than in other parts of the country where community spread is insanely high.

So yeah, I had a good conversation with my parents and we are making Thanksgiving work for us, outside, this year. We reached a compromise, which reminds me that in real compromise, no one is really happy. I’m relieved that we came to an agreement that works for all of us, but I’m sad that we won’t be having the holiday I know we all want to have. I’m already thinking about Christmas and how we can kind-of celebrate that holiday. I’m thinking a garage celebration (again with the garage door open), probably in our garage, but maybe in theirs? I have lots of padding for the floor and furniture that can be in my garage (stuff I’ve been using for play dates in our backyard. I can get a small tree to put up in the garage, and we can meet to open presents and eat a meal. If its cold I can do laundry and run the drier, which really warms up our garage.

I’ve been working on a post about what it’s like working full time from campus. It’s been hard to put together something coherent on what feels like a massive change. Hopefully I’ll have it up after the break.

How are you celebrating Thanksgiving safely this year?

We have been really lucky since shelter-in-place started that the majority of our social circle was similarly concerned about exposure to the coronavirus. We were all taking the same precautions, so we were able to find ways to see each other while following social distancing protocols. We have always been meeting outside with masks on. On the few occasions we’ve eaten together we’ve stayed more than six feet from each other.

It seems our luck on that has run out. Now that it’s colder, and some days even rainy (gasp!) covid fatigue is setting in and people are finding ways to justify meeting inside with masks on. Or close enough to it.

Today a friend invited us over to watch a movie in their garage. We’ve done that a few times before, with the kids sitting apart from each other on the floor of the garage and the adults sitting in camping chairs apart from each other in the driveway. We were projecting the movie onto the wall so it needed to be dark – which meant we had to start them pretty late. But we made it work. We’ve done two movie nights like that, so I didn’t think much of it.

But when we got there today the garage door was closed (because it was too light to see the projection with the door open) and the girls were sitting together on a couch, masks down so they could munch on snacks. I immediately knew it wasn’t going to work.

It sucks to be the family that is taking more precautions than others. It’s hard to be the aguafiestas (wet blanket). My daughter is already left out of a lot of her friends’ hang out time because we aren’t letting her make YouTube channel videos with them. Luckily they are making videos of themselves playing Roblox and our daughter isn’t that into Roblox, so she’s not too upset that she can’t participate. And we’re letting her play around with making videos of herself playing Minecraft and she’s fine not posting them anywhere. We’ve always put way more limits and restrictions on our kids internet use and screen time than her friends have, so she is used to it, but it still makes her sad. And today made her sad too.

Luckily my kids were okay leaving the movie party once I realized the situation did not meet our social distancing expectations. Both our kids got new games today so they were okay going home to have game screen time. We’re going to watch that movie tomorrow during movie night.

We’ve had to have some difficult conversations with my parents as well. At this point I don’t know if they will be watching our son once a week because we told them we weren’t comfortable with him being over there without a mask if they were having people over to eat inside (we just learned they started doing this while their patio is being repaved), and they haven’t responded to let us know they’re okay with that arrangement. We are having Thanksgiving with them, but they’ve promised no more indoor hosting between now and then.

I’m tired, and we still have so far to go before any of this gets easier. Today’s episode really bummed me out, and I’m already in a pretty low place.

Meanwhile I start working from my classroom full time on Monday.

I guess I thought at some point things would start getting easier. But instead they just keep getting harder. It’s going to be a long, bummer, winter.

{The conversation I had with my friends about the YouTube channel was also a big bummer. I think it’s great the girls are collaborating to reach a common goal and create something they are proud of, but I don’t understand why they have to put it on YouTube. When I asked if the girl who owns the channel had lied to say she was 13 to create the account, her mom didn’t even know she had do that. They thought she could have the channel with parental supervision at 10, but that is what you can start doing at 13. Already a girl they knew in 2nd grade (who caused tons of drama back then) is trolling their channel from North Carolina, where she now lives. I can’t fathom what value posting on YouTube brings, or how that value makes up for the potential downsides. I knew our social media boundaries were going to start becoming more apparent during adolescence, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon.}

{Another thing that’s hard about this is usually I talk this stuff out with my friends to feel better, but I can’t talk to them about this stuff in a way that will ease my anxiety. There is no one to talk to about it all except my husband, but he is so judgemental that it doesn’t really make me feel better. All this makes me feel so isolated and alone.}

Of my many “areas of growth,” a lack of motivation has never really been one of them. I mean yes, in some areas (::cough:: cleaning my house ::cough::) it’s always been a problem, but generally in life? Not so much. Which is why right now I’m struggling so hard to navigate it.

I mentioned before that it’s normal and expected to be really burned out by mid-November. I recognize this feeling as fitting with this time of year. But the complete and utter lack of motivation feels new. I don’t want to do anything. And what’s more alarming is I don’t particularly care if it gets done. I really do not give any f**ks right now about any of it.

I’m not particularly worried yet. About depression I mean. Yes, this is one of the ways depression manifests for me (and millions of others), but this doesn’t feel like depression. I still can feel happiness, which falls along a healthy spectrum of emotions that are also available, but I just can’t bring myself to care about things in a way that motivates me to do them.

I’m chalking it up to exhaustion, and overwhelm. The election was causing a lot of anxiety and anxiety produces adrenaline and adrenaline gets you moving. Now the majority of that anxiety is gone, and combined with the unsatisfactory nature of teaching online, it’s hard to self-motivate.

Luckily, living with depression for a decade has taught me a thing or two about getting the bare minimum done when I’m finding it hard to get anything done. So that is what I’m doing. My house is a shit hole, and my kids are getting more screen time than I would like, but I’m getting through the days.

I’m hoping (the better word is probably expecting) my motivation to improve during and after the Thanksgiving break. But the reality is not a ton will have changed. We’ll still be stuck at home with our kids, who will be bored and frustrated and fighting. Nothing will get easier, except I’ll have fewer things to do every evening. Maybe that will be enough.

The good news is, right now I care very little about what I’m actually accomplishing with my students, so when I go to the staff meeting today and learn about how the electives schedule will be rendered unworkable once we enter Phase 3, I won’t be so mad about all the planning I’ve done that will go down the tubs (Phase 3 is when we bring all kids back to campus on staggered schedules, and they are pushing it up to December from January because they KNOW our numbers are going up and we probably won’t have the option after the new year so they want to get kids in BEFORE that happens – what a short sighed bunch of ass hats they are).

So yeah. That is where I am at. I have zero f*cks left to give but my life gives zero f*cks that I feel that way so I gotta keep on keeping on.

I have to admit, now that Biden has been announced the president-elect, I feel an incredible amount of relief. I still have a lot of processing to do about the fact that way more people voted for him this time around than the last time, and that those people were overwhelmingly white (57% of white voters chose Trump?! WTF?!), but I am so, so glad Trump will no longer be in the White House come January 2021.

I was wondering if I would feel different – less anxious and distracted – after the election and… that might be right. I’m less distracted than I was last week but it will probably take a while for that ambient anxiety that has been swirling in the back of my mind for most of the year to settle.

Meanwhile, I’m still totally burned out. I have absolutely no interest in doing anything related to work. I’m tired of planning. I’m tired of creating content. I’m tired of scoring and inputting scores. I’m tired of teaching. I don’t want to do any of it. It’s Sunday afternoon as I write this and I have a fair amount of work to do but I’m writing this post instead. The thought of creating the lesson I need for Monday and the practice I need for Tuesday makes me want to curl up and… I don’t know. Do anything else?

I know that it’s normal to be this burned out in early November. At this point we’ve only had two days off since we started the school year in mid-August. The fall is a looooong haul and there is always a feeling of exhaustion and overwhelm by November. It’s not odd that I’m counting the days until Thanksgiving break.

What is different is that I can’t schedule any cushion days. At school we’d spend a block period watching Coco after Day of the Dead in early November and I’d get caught up on my work. I can’t do that kind of thing now. I’m already covering so much less content than I should be so it’s hard to allow myself some days off. I guess the real issue is it’s much easier to just phone it in for a day or so when I’m in the classroom, but during distance learning I have to have something meaningful ready for every day.

I’m glad we have Wednesday off. I’m annoyed it’s in the middle of the week, but I’m going to enjoy it. I plan to take my son to his distance learning care (I really do not know what to call it – it’s not camp, it’s not after care) on Tuesday at lunch so he can meet the kids and staff and play around a little. I’ll have him stay until after my staff meeting at 4pm then I’ll pick him up. We’ll have Wednesday off entirely then he’ll go again on Thursday, for a longer part of the day. The week before Thanksgiving he’ll go for even longer.

If you’re wondering why someone who has sent her child to various after care programs and summer camps without any worries is taking such a cautious approach to this new program, it’s because my son will have fewer zooms and less work than the other students and I want him to have abbreviated days there to start so we can figure out how much we need to bring for him to pass the long hours. After the Thanksgiving break I have to be in my classroom full time which means he has to be at this program for two eight hour days, and he definitely won’t have eight hours worth of work to do each day. Since the other kids have different schedules the program can’t plan many activities that they all participate in. I’m really worried it’s going to be a disaster but I hope it works out.

I keep telling myself that I just need to get to the Thanksgiving break. I can do some work that week to get ahead of my planning for the three weeks in December, and then we get another two weeks off. After that I might have students in my classroom. Who knows?

I intended to write more but it’s almost midnight and I need to go to bed. I did end up getting the lesson for tomorrow ready and the practice for Tuesday posted. I’m trying to schedule all my morning emails and preparing for my 8:35am Advisory class before I go to bed which is killing me because it adds an extra 30 minutes to my work at night. I’m hoping that once I’m in my classroom all day I’ll have the time to do it before I go home. Right now it’s really hard, but I feel like I need to get into that habit before I’m attempting to make it to work before I start teaching.

I know when I saw that this was a rough week, I don’t speak only for myself. It was a very, very rough week for all of us.

Even before the election, I really struggled to get a damn thing done. On Tuesday I was mess. By the end of the night I was sure Trump would win and grieved accordingly. It all felt so familiar that I didn’t even cry (I almost did, but I kept it down because I refused to let that @$$hole affect me in that way).

I took something to help me sleep that night and was pleasantly surprised the next morning when things looked better. But I’m still not letting myself feel relief. Even if Biden does win, we’ve seen how a huge portion of our country feels about Trumpism – they aren’t just willing to endure it, they have embraced it wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. McConnell will most likely control the Senate and Biden will get nothing done even if he his elected President. This country is a mess and if I didn’t live in such a liberal stronghold I would be more actively researching ways to leave it (right now I’m only casually exploring other country’s visa requirements).

So yeah, the outcome might not be as awful as it could be, but at this point we know it won’t be very good. Having felt the horrible despair of assuming Trump won again on Tuesday has helped me weather the uncertainty of this week, and the disappointment of knowing just how enthusiastically our country has embraced a man who sows hatred and division, while attacking the very fabric of our democracy.

I really have struggled this week to get a damn thing done. But I did manage to enroll my son in a childcare program at my district. He’ll go Tuesday and Thursday and he starts next week. The M/W/F program was all Kindergarteners and we felt like 5 days a week was too much, since he’ll have a lot less work than the kids in my district, who are getting a much more robust distance learning experience and need more time to attend zooms and do work. We’ll see how it goes.

I ran yesterday and afterward I was finally able to sit down and score two class’s worth of assessments. I also scheduled all my morning emails to send. I need to get into the habit of this because once I’m commuting to my classroom I won’t have time to email anyone before the school day starts.

I finished the second book of The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. I’m loving it so much. I can’t wait to start the final installment.

I hope you’re all hanging in there, and that we feel more confident about the outcome of the election before soon.

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who commented to let me know I’m not alone in my struggle. I hate that others are feeling as hopeless and overwhelmed as I am (if not more so!), but it does help to know I’m not the only one who hasn’t just moved on as if things are business are usual.

Thursday I taught my 7th period class from my empty classroom. I needed some Day of the Dead materials and I decided it made more sense to try teaching from my classroom, which I have to do soon anyway, than go down to grab stuff one afternoon. I also made plans to get there early and meet with my principal to talk about what returning to the classroom would actually look like. I assumed we could reach an agreement where I come in three times a week. Three times a week I felt like I could manage.

But it turns out three days a week is not an option. The district has decided that we have to be in our rooms from 8:30 to 3pm every day and the union has agreed that if some teachers have to be there every day, every teacher has to be there every day. It’s only fair. (I think they’re doing this so that everyone will be equally upset, and equally ready to take next steps, like working to contract, or possibly even participating in a sick out – neither of which has been formally mentioned yet.)

So starting November 16th, I have to be on campus, teaching from my empty classroom, every. single. day.

I cried a lot Thursday. First of all, teaching from my empty classroom is super depressing. It’s one thing to teach from home, which is weird. But the weirdness of teaching online is matched by the weirdness of being at home while I’m doing it. Teaching from my classroom, which used to have all my students in it, feels weird in a really depressing way. It was really hard to focus while I taught that class.

I also just don’t want to be going down to work like this. I want to be home, supporting my family. It doesn’t feel fair that I have to commute to work, to teach in exactly the same way I was teaching from home, when nothing else from my old life is accessible. Everything else is still locked down, but I still have to go to work every day. If I were doing something differently at work it would make more sense, but I’m not. In fact, I won’t be for a long time.

We have decided to our son in some kind of childcare. If I were going to work three days a week we could cobble together some kind of coverage between us. But if I have to be at work full time – 40 hours a week – we need to put him in some kind of childcare for at some days.

My district is offering childcare, and they are giving staff a discount. We can sign up for just M/W/F or Tu/Th. We’re thinking we’ll do three days a week, so we have that option on weeks we need it. We can also just not go on Fridays when that feels feasible.

Tuesday I don’t teach as much so my kids can come to work with me and participate in their zooms, and do their work, from my classroom. My husband plans to take Thursdays off, using covid leave and the copious time he has accrued in the last seven months by not taking any sick time or vacation days. My daughter will stay at home on the days my son goes to childcare, because she can get her work done on her own.

So this is our new normal. It definitely starts November 30th. It might start November 16th, which is the first day of our second trimester. We get the entire week of Thanksgiving off, so if it starts on the 16th it’s only one week extra.

I’m really sad about it. I don’t want to work from my classroom, totally isolated from my family, and even my colleagues (because we can’t interact with each other in any real, substantive ways). I don’t want to be stuck in a place I don’t want to be, alone, apart from everyone. A couple days of it might have even been nice, but five days a week? No thank you.

But I don’t get to say no thank you. I don’t have a choice. So next month I will start going to work again. And it won’t feel like things are going back to normal because nothing about it will be normal.

I’ve been writing this post for four days, so I’m just going to post it. I hope everyone had a safe Halloween and that they can vote safely and easily by Tuesday.

I’m having a hard time right now. I don’t read many posts about people struggling with this anymore. Some peoples lives are almost back to normal – kids are in school, childcare is available again, life is resembling the before times. But for us that is not the case. Even though San Francisco is the densest urban area in California to reach the yellow tier (the second lowest level of restrictions), our kids’ school district has no plans to return ANYONE to classroom before 2021 and even then it will only be urgent learners (and they don’t actually have a plan to bring them back). Meanwhile I have to go back to my empty classroom to teach (still online) in a couple weeks.

I am so tired of this. It’s been eight months and nothing changes. Things just get harder, if anything. It’s hard to keep going when there is no end in sight.

And yes I know how good I have it. I have a draft about all the good in my life right now. And yes I know I can cut corners, I have another draft about all the expectations I am allowing to fall by the wayside (a draft I started in early September!) But it’s still really hard.

I wonder if I’ll feel better after the election is over. No matter the outcome, at least the uncertainty will be less overwhelming (and yes, I also know the uncertainty is unlikely to dissipate for weeks or even months after Nov 3 – I’m talking about once it’s all said and done, whenever that may be). But maybe not. I really don’t know.

All I do know is I’m struggling. And I wanted to put it out there so that the other people who are struggling, and maybe aren’t hearing that anyone else is, can know that they are not the only ones. I’m feeling worse than I have in a long, long time. If you are too, you are not alone.