Not a Wasted Word

Family:

30-60 minutes of quality time with each kid per week. I know my kids really appreciating having one-on-one time with me. I really want to work harder on making that happen.

Buy St. Louis tickets for summer. This needs to happen regardless, but it would be much better if I did it earlier in the year.

Marriage:

Hang out 2 times per week (put on calendar). This has been hit or miss. We’re still working out the kinks. The good news is my husband seems genuinely interested in figuring out how to make it happen. I appreciate that.

Friends:

Meet up with a friend one time per month. Keeping the bar low on this one. I better be able to manage that.

I used to have things to say. I used to care so passionately about a topic that I was driven to get the words on the “page.” I used to publish post after post after post and not think twice about all that writing. I used to be so prolific.

Now a days it’s a struggle to come here. I can’t find the words. I don’t have great posts swirling in my head, ready to be written. The ones that are up there have all been written before. I feel like I’m stuck, a record that plays to the same spot and then jumps back, constantly repeating itself.

My moods court depression, but never commits. I struggle to honor my feelings without wallowing in them. I’m never sure if a negative thought is realistic or pessimistic. 

For me depression is characterized by a lack of a hope. My self talk circles around familiar narratives of despair and overwhelm, of being stuck and unable to find a way out. It’s hard to know if a situation is as bad as I perceive it, or if my thought processes are just falling into the deep ruts of hopelessness that they have traveled for so long. 

The political situation is dire. I am still learning how to stay informed without panicking ineffectually. (I do believe panic can be a productive emotion, but panic about political situations I can’t control is not productive.) The truth is I had not been great about regularly reading the news and staying informed before; a lot of my exposure to current events was via article shared on FB. Besides the years I subscribed to (and read) The Week, this is the first time in my life I’ve consumed mainstream news media on the regular. I have not yet figured out how to digest so much content in a meaningful way. I have no clue how to repurpose it in the context of my own thoughts and commentary. 

Even if I figure out how to do that, I don’t know if I will. I’m not sure I have the iron stomach to make this blog political. A terrifying prospect in today’s media climate.

I find myself retreating ever inward. I text less. I see my friends rarely. I don’t even speak with my husband much. I write the same posts over and over again. I read blog posts but rarely comment. I obsess about the minutiae in my kids’ lives because I have nothing else of substance on which to train my gaze. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts in the car. I play solitaire. (How am I not yet sick of solitaire?!) If I have a lot of mental energy I play Lumosity. I become engrossed in a couple of shows. I avoid phone calls.

It’s not as bad as all that, I can just feel myself retreating. On one had it has it’s positives. I no longer pine after a more active social life; I’m totally happy to stay home and watch a show. This really has helped me feel more content. But I also know that much of my attitude, and behavior, is in response to stress. A constant, low grade stress, that eats away at my very being.

Perhaps part of it is that things at home are somewhat easier. And in the meager space that is afforded when my kids play nicely in the tub for an hour instead of requiring my constant supervision, I’m not sure what to do. So I do nothing, and then I feel downtrodden. 

Do I feel downtrodden because I do not yet having anything to fill these new spaces? Or do I do nothing with these pockets of time because I feel so downtrodden. It’s hard to know.

The one thing I do have working for me is perspective. I KNOW that this too shall pass. I know that I will eventually wake up one morning and the sun will seem a little brighter, and the work day will seem a little less long, and I will appreciate my kids more at bedtime. That day will come, and and I don’t need to work too hard for it. I just need to get through all the days that come before that one. 

And be ready for all the days like this one that are sure to come after.

Today I hate my job. I’m trying hard to figure out why.

In about a month we will start talking, as a school, about what next year will look like. There will be a lot of changes, with the 5th grade leaving to join the 4th grade on a “new” campus and with the 6th, 7th and 8th grade coming together to embrace a new vision. 

Teachers will be moving rooms and schedules will be shifting. A lot of conversations will happen between now and the end of the school year. I informed the administration that I need to have a clear idea of what the district wants me to teach by mid to late February, so I know how wide to cast the net when I look for a new job in the spring. Most districts start posting new positions in mid March.

I’m trying to figure out what is making me so miserable this year. Obviously starting at the harder-to-get-to campus sucks. I DEFINITELY don’t want to be teaching anything at that school next year. I am also disheartened to recognize that I DO NOT like co-teaching. At all. Sharing a class with another teacher has been a much more stressful situation than I anticipated. The fact that we end our day on different campuses and have almost not time to plan together definitely exacerbates the situation, but really I just don’t like having to do things someone else’s way. I’m trying to see this as an opportunity to learn from a really experienced language teacher that I respect, but in the end it’s just hard to accommodate her different teaching style. And she is a really incredible teacher, very low-key, and exceedingly easy to get along with. If it’s hard to co-teach with her, I doubt I’d enjoy teaching with anyone. This is disappointing, because I don’t want to be someone who avoids working with others. And yet, after this year, I’ll have to admit that that is who I am.

So the bad news is, I evidently don’t like teaching with other people. The good news is, being required to do so again isn’t likely. I guess it’s good that I learned this about myself, and know to avoid it (when possible) moving forward.

I also really dislike teaching three periods of 6th grade. I don’t like having that age level for the majority of my day, and I also don’t like teaching the same thing six times over two days (I see the 6th graders on an alternating day schedule). I get bored, especially with that level material when I have to teach it so many times. I might be okay with three periods of 6th grade if I were teaching something different for one of the periods, but I REALLY don’t want to teach six sections of the same class next year.

In a month, when I sit down to talk to my principal, I probably won’t have a ton of say in what my schedule looks like. I believe there is a clause in our contract that prohibits the district from forcing a teacher into a schedule change they didn’t request for more than one year, so I don’t think I’ll have to teach at the other campus next year. That is a very good thing. Outside of that, it doesn’t really matter what I want, or don’t want, to teach. Sure, it can’t hurt to know what I want, but chances are they can’t accommodate my preferences. The purpose of knowing what I do and don’t want is more about looking for other jobs; if it looks like I’m going to get a schedule that I dislike as much as this year’s, it may push me to apply for jobs that I wouldn’t otherwise consider. 

I have 5.5 months left of this school year. I know I can get through it. I may be really unhappy for much of that time, but then it will be over, and no matter what next year looks like, it has got to be better than this.

There are a couple of less-than-helpful patterns I have identified in the past couple of weeks. These patterns are not only unproductive, they are also damaging.

One pattern takes place in my marriage. It looks something like this: My husband and I have some time away from our kids. We reconnect. Things are great for a week, maybe two. Then the mundane routines of life start to reassert themselves and we spend less time connecting and more time alone reading. I start to feel disappointed in our marriage, so I adjust my expectations and make even less effort to connect, so even more distance grows between us. My resentment grows until we have a big blow up. We eventually re-connect and things are better for a little while until the mundane routines reassert themselves. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Clearly what I need to do is keep making an effort to be close with my husband, or truly adjust my expectations to be genuinely okay with a lack of closeness. I’m going to ask that we schedule one evening during the work week and one on the weekend when we expect that we’ll spend an hour or so together after the kids go to bed. No devices/books/distractions. Maybe even no TV. If that isn’t enough, I guess we’ll try something else.

*  *  *  *  *

The second pattern happens in my financial life. It goes something like this: I spend a lot for a month, then feel really guilty about it (on top of recognizing that buying all-the-things didn’t actually make me happy), then I am really good about not getting much for 4-6 weeks, after which time I fall back into a spending binge. Later. Rinse. Repeat.

I clearly need to institute a longer shopping ban, or even a spending freeze. I have started a shopping ban that I intend to stick with for at least three months, but hopefully will stay with until June (or maybe even the entirety of 2017?!). I obviously need to stop shopping for long enough that I’m not just delaying purchases for a little while. We’ll see how I do. But this is just for things I buy, not necessarily experiences that cost money (like seeing movies, eating out with a friend, etc). I am toying with the idea of entire month of a legitimate spending freeze, where I only spend money on the absolute essentials. That would happen in February if I commit to it.

I actually broached the subject (of committing to a spending freeze together) with my husband and he didn’t immediately shut it down. He countered with continuing to track our spending for a few months to see how much we normally spend and then attempting a spending freeze. He has been writing down his spending (he buys everything on his credit card and then uses his statement to track purchases later), and packing a lunch for work most days, so I feel like I should respect his wishes on this. And the reality is, I could still institute my own spending freeze, because a lot of my “experience spending” happens with friends and not with my husband (we only very rarely order in these days and haven’t had a night out in ages). So I still might do it in February, we’ll see.

*  *  *  *  *

This final pattern is a relatively new one for me, so I’m glad I’m recognizing it now. It goes something like this. I have a lot of projects that I want to get done around the house and at work. I realize I have a few days off when the kids are in school so I put off all the projects expecting to get them done during those “kid free days” (which really end up being “kid free hours”). Then those days come and I don’t get nearly as much done as I’d hoped, I panic that nothing is ever going to get done. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

This is a relatively new pattern for me because it only started when my daughter started at a school with a different break calendar than my own. It’s taken me a good year and a half to recognize that I do this, and realize that I need to make time for longer-term projects during daily life. I told my husband that I’ll need at least two full weekend days at work a month from now on. I’ll try to take them on alternating weekends. And on the weekends I’m home, I’d like to get an hour or so of long-term project work done each weekend, like actually taking the clothes that I’ve collected in bags all over the house to Young Families Resource Center, or going through the toy boxes in the living room. I plan to put this stuff on the calendar, and I recognize it will probably requiring doing less of other things I value, but I hope the general piece of mind from feeling more on top of things will even out any sacrifices that have to be made.