Not a Wasted Word

I’m feeling really down lately. I’m just getting so tired of the self-talk required to keep myself out of the downward spiral–it requires so much energy. Sometimes it feels like it requires blantantly lying to myself.

My husband and I are hardly talking. We’re not mad at each other really, we just don’t have the energy to interact. I know I need to get out of the house and engage another adult in meaningful conversation, but it’s December and everyone is too busy with holiday festivities to just grab a dinner or a drink. 

I feel bad for the stuff I bought after my shopping ban was over. I recognize that I was just trying to distract myself from how bad everything is with some shiny new things. That is definitely my M.O. And I understand that it is going to take a LONG time to reprogram those habits, but damn I still feel shitty for it when I fall back into those destructive patterns. 

I know I have so much to be thankful for, and that my life is so wonderful. I know that I will have it better than most during the Trump-era, especially living in San Francisco. Whenever I use that as my self-talk to keep the demons at bay, I wind up feeling guilty. Guilty for being who I am and having what I have. Guilty for being able to put it out of my mind for a while because my immediate safety, and civil liberties, aren’t at risk (I say this as a woman whose job is (currently–who knows for how long) protected by union agreements and who can’t get pregnant with her husband because he’s had a vasectomy).

I know I can’t bury my head in the sand. I know I need to stay active and engaged. I know I need to stay informed. I can’t hide behind my considerable privilege just to make myself feel better. It’s not fair, and it’s not right.

I think part of the problem is that things are finally slowing down at work. The rush of one trimester’s end and another’s beginning is past us. Final grades have been uploaded, new seating charts have been made (this takes me HOURS with all full the classes I have), curriculum has been chosen and outlined. I have a relatively easy three weeks ahead of me before the break, which I desperately need. And yet, I think having that time to stop and think is actually making me feel worse. There are only so many games of solitaire I can play before bedtime without getting seriously depressed.

I’m trying to stay busy around the house, which desperately needs the attention. Yesterday I picked up everywhere and gave all the floors a thorough sweeping–my goodness did they need it. I’ve let the whole house go to shit in the past few months, and it does help to have picking and cleaning up as a general project. 

I find myself counting the days until I can have a drink on Friday night (I don’t let myself drink on the weeknights because I don’t trust myself to keep my overall weekly intake reasonable), but then I’m always disappointed with the actual experience of having the drink. That’s probably because my husband and I have been so distant, and we generally end up sipping our drinks in silence, each on our own devices, until one of us gets too tired and heads to bed. (Usually it’s him that goes to bed, while I stubbornly stay up too late because it’s the weekend goddamn it and I’m going to enjoy it, even if it kills me, and then I feel horrible and tired the next morning.)

I feel like my only lifeline right now are my children. They so enjoy this time of year, and thankfully their enthusiasm can still put a genuine smile on my face. If it weren’t for them, I know I’d be a lot worse off right now.

I wish I could afford therapy, but with my increased retirement contribution there is just no way. Instead I find myself daydreaming about the future, promising myself that the kids and I will spend a month in a Spanish speaking country during the summer of 2018. That we’ll continue doing that in the summers until we find the perfect place to live for a year or two. I imagine how my husband will stay at his parents’ house with our cat so we can rent out home to pay for the trip (there is almost no way this could actually happen) and that he could take a week or two off work and visit. I imagine our years abroad, where I will magically have the time to unschooled my kids and still make enough to pay for our living arrangements (again I’m assuming a family renting our house will pay the mortgage while we’re away) and that my husband can somehow join us despite not having a job that can be done abroad and not speaking any Spanish and probably not wanting to be there in the first place. 

This is where I’m living these days, in fantasies that will never take place. Just trying to make it through… the next four years I guess? The rest of my life? I know it’s no way to live, but I haven’t figured out an alternative.

It’s getting late pretty early now; we’re less than three weeks away from the shortest day. You might think this would be a good time to limit bike use to the daylight hours, but my son’s daycare just moved to a new location where parking is going to be very difficult so we’ll be taking the bike now more than ever.

I’ve spent the last few weeks getting it prepped to be on the roads in early evenings when it’s getting dark. I got spoke lights for the front wheel (the back wheel is almost entirely obscured by the kids’ seat so it doesn’t make much sense to light it up), an LED string light for the “monkey bars” (around where the kids sit), and LED lights for the basket. We each have a light for our helmets and I put an extra light on the back seat. The bike already came with a headlight (I had to get that fixed) and a rear light that take power from the bike’s battery. I also got my son, who sits at the back, a neon yellow puffy jacket and myself a running/cycling safety vest, along with reflective arm bands so motorists can see my hand signals. 

I know a lot of people think it’s too dangerous to ride in a city, and everyone knows the story of someone who has been in a bad accident. I’m trying hard to be safe, while not letting fear get the best of me. I do believe that if I’m highly visible (which is the case now), I can ride safely in the dark. I am always hyper vigilant on my bike, assuming motorist don’t see me or won’t respect my right to use the lane, and now I’m even more caution. I’ve been riding the bike long enough to feel very comfortable on it; I’m aware of what the bike can and cannot manage in almost any situation. 

Riding the bike continues to bring me a surprising amount of joy and contentment. There is something so freeing about navigating the city with the wind in my hair. And where we live the weather never gets prohibitively cold, so I should be able to keep riding it until next spring.

I’m so thankful that we had the financial resources to get this bike, and that we live in a city where bike lanes are well-marked and common (if not always smoothly paved). Riding a bike is such a great way to keep down carbon emissions and decrease traffic, which is a significant issues in San Francisco. I feel grateful every day I get to ride my bike, which I’ve been doing more and more often–my son and I have taken it all the way across the city, to some of our favorite places that present serious parking challenges. With the battery, I can ride that thing anywhere without breaking a sweat. It really is an incredible invention; it could revolutionize the way people get around.

My daughter doesn’t quite understand that I got all the lights for the bike so we would be visible to cars coming in both directions; she thinks we just lit the thing up like a Christmas tree. And I guess we did.

What happens every morning, no matter how early I wake up or how quietly I tiptoe through the house: minutes after I sit down to scrawl my mornings pages, or write a post, or meditate, my son wakes up, and that is the end of my attempted “me” time. 

It’s the story of my life. 

Sunday night I was feeling really down in the dumps about going back to work. While I love writing and implementing new curriculum, the day to day is wearing me down this year. The stress of arriving at the first school late (because my daughter is lagging on the way out the door or the traffic is horrendous), having no time at my school to get ready before my first class there, the sheer number of students I see every week and the paperwork they create… It’s all just getting me down.

I didn’t think I was mentioning much how down I feel about work, so when my husband totally blew up at me when I mentioned post-vacation blues, I was kind of taken aback. Clearly I had lanced a festering boil, and what came spewing out was shocking, and hurtful.

We had a pretty intense fight, and my husband ended up leaving the room. I was fine with that because I was seething with anger, physically shaking with the pressure of it, and I didn’t want to say anything I was going to regret.

When he came back in to talk I told him that his tone belied how he really felt, and asked him to leave again. He obliged.

Much later, after I’d had a good, body-wracking cry, he came back in and apologized. He said it was hard to know that I was miserable at work, even if I didn’t mention it. He said it sucked to know that decisions we made as a family (and that benefited him) were contributing to my unhappiness (taking my daughter to work, which leaves me no time to plan, prepare and grade papers at school). He said that it had been two years of me hating my job and it was really awful to think that might go on indefinitely.

I told him I absolutely agreed.

And while I’m still frustrating that he is (in my mind) putting his own feelings in front of my own, I get it. I understand how much it sucks to see someone you love unhappy with such a huge part of their life. Especially when the path out is complicated at best, impossible at worst.

I know, with this job stuff, I have to shit or get off the pot. I need to either commit to moving on or accept my job and find the positive in it. It’s just so complicated and hard. I really have only one option to change jobs–moving to high school–and that comes with a guaranteed pay cut (between $10-$25K in the districts I’m even willing to consider). In the months since our money situation has improved I’ve grown accustomed to letting go of that constant, financial stress that was always pulsating in the background. I don’t want to go back to second guessing every purchase, to worrying the VISA bill will drain our checking, to that feeling of constant deprivation. I don’t want to go back to worrying about money. I feel pretty confident that taking a pay cut of that magnitude would deteriorate my quality of life enough that any improvement caused by the new job would end up in a wash.

And there is no guarantee I would be happier at my new job. What if I try something new and I’m even more miserable, and all I have to show for it is a smaller pay check?

The thought is simply paralyzing.

But then, what if I get a new job and I love it so much it’s worth the pay cut?

The thought is equally paralyzing.

I can’t how the prospect of staying where I am indefinitely makes me feel, especially now that my schedule each year feels so uncertain.

The reality is there is only one way forward. I can look for jobs in the spring, when they become available, and if one seems so great that it’s worth the risk, I can apply for it. But like last year taught me, applying for a job that excites me doesn’t mean I’ll even get an interview.

And if there’s nothing worth pursuing in the spring–or I don’t get the jobs I do pursue–I have to suck it up for the following school year. I have to accept the situation and find the best in it.

I do think I’m attempting that this year. Writing new curriculum definitely helped make the first trimester a more positive and fulfilling experience. It also left me quite haggard. I’m hoping I can find a better balance in the next two trimesters, so that I can really enjoy creating something new, without feeling overwhelmed executing it.

In the end, it’s the day to day that gets me down, and I’m not sure how to feel better about that. The size of my 6th grade classes drains me, getting through even a relatively easy lesson plan is exhausting. That is one downside to my job that I don’t know how to mitigate. Right now all I can think is to endure it, but I wonder if a tweak in mindset could make “endure” look more like “accept.”

{I wonder sometimes if it’s just teaching that is getting me down, if after 13 years, any schedule, any set of classes, any aged students would feel like drudgery. Maybe I just don’t have what it takes to do this for 35 years. Maybe I have 23 more years of exhaustion ahead of me.}

Ugh. I’ve written this exact post so many times before. I keep circling around this topic, but I get the sense that I need to if I’m even going to pull the trigger and make a change. I would never have found the job that got me so excited last year if I hadn’t written posts like this one, and even though I didn’t get that job (or an interview), I did learn there are thing positions that feel worth the risk of leaving my secure, well-paying job for something completely unknown.

So I suppose I’ll keep writing post like these. And maybe some day, I’ll actually get to write one about getting a new job, or about committing wholeheartedly, to staying where I am.

Last night my in-laws had our daughter over for a spend-the-night so we ordered Chinese food and enjoyed some cocktails and binge-watched three episodes West.world. We didn’t end up going to bed until 12:30am.

When our son was awake for the day at 7am (so amazing he’s sometime sleeping that late after a 5am first wake up) I groggily gave him the iPad and shuffled back to bed. At 8:30 I woke up with a start and realized my 3yo had been on the pad for an hour and half. Oops!

We will definitely be receiving a nomination for #parentsoftheyear.

But you know what? It was worth it. 

I spent about an hour Saturday night falling down the rabbit hole of old posts. First I checked out November of 2014, then November of last year. I did NaBloPoMo in 2015 too, so there were a lot of posts to read.

There were some good posts. Some honest, raw, authentic posts. Some important posts. I was proud of a lot of what I read, and the discussions my words inspired.

As has been the case on many occasions when I read my own archives, I am left worrying that writing has deteriorated, that I’m somehow becoming worse for wear as I write year after year. At the very least my current posts feels lazy. Certainly the topics of my recent posts are. When I read through old posts it always feels like I was tackling more important topics, and getting better results, than I’m currently doing.

Of course back then I was still struggling. A lot. Especially in 2014. Struggle seems to inspire good writing, at least for me. Struggle is interesting. It’s dramatic. It pulls you in. It is part of a arch with conflict and hopefully, eventually, resolution. Struggle is a driving force in writing.

I’m not struggling so much anymore. Sure there are still challenges, but that desperation, that despair is no longer there. I have a much better handle on my life. I think the main reason for this is my kids are more manageable. They can play together for 10 or 15 minutes without any parental supervision. I no longer have to act as their constant referee. 10 or 15 minutes doesn’t seem like much, but those swaths of time are incredibly freeing. And with that freedom comes a calm, a sense of peace, an ability to regroup and prepare for what comes next. Reading back through posts from one or two years ago there is no doubt in my mind…I am a different woman, living a different life. For that, I am thankful.

I suppose what it all comes down to, is that ever lingering fear that in the absence of struggle I don’t have anything substantial to say. This blog is not packaging a brand. I don’t have some message to impart to the masses. I’m just a woman writing about her life.

But just writing that paragraph I’m already scoffing at my own words. It’s silly to think that in the absence of dire circumstances I have nothing substantial to say. Surely that isn’t the case. I have plenty to say, I think it will just take a lot more work to find the words and write them down.

And there is still struggle. Plenty of it. I am still struggling to find a definition of minimalism that makes sense to me. My house is not nearly the disaster area that had me believing I was a miserable failure, but it’s still not where I want it to be. Minimalism (or my understanding of it) delivered me from certain doom, and I absolutely believe it can make me even happier and more content than I already am.

My marriage always provides a steady stream of material, and I think I’m finally learning how to write about it in a way that respects all parties involved. And of course motherhood, and the crooked way I continue to muddle through it, will always leave a trail of blog post fodder in its wake.

So yes, I do believe I have something substantial still to say, I just need to take the time and energy to say it. I dedicated myself to posting every day in November, and while requiring a regular return to this space was a useful exercise, I see that moving forward I need to dedicate myself to this space in a more meaningful way, with fewer, more thoughtful posts.

I know that the election really hijacked my mental space. Navigating life the past few weeks has been an emotional minefield. While I’m disappointed I didn’t show up here with something meaningful to say, I am ready to forgive myself and move on. There is plenty of time to write thoughtfully about this terrifying new world we live in. And I do believe I still have something substantial to say.

So don’t worry. You’ll be seeing more of me, even after November.

I started a tradition when my daughter was two of getting a set of ornaments each year with a character or characters she was really interested in. I have happily continued this tradition; I enjoy decorating the tree each year with a walk down memory lane. Remember how much Garfield we read when you were four? I ask my daughter as I put up that ornament. I imagine I will appreciate it even more as my kids grow up, and away, from me. 

The thing is, it’s not always easy to find ornaments of some of the toys or characters my kids loved. It was when I ordered a set of Dis.ney princess ornaments that I realized people were solving this problem by making toys into ornaments themselves. The set I got on eBay was the exact set of figurines my daughter already had, just with eye pins drilled into the heads. 

This year I decided to make my own ornaments out of some toys that the kids don’t play with anymore by drilling a small hole in the top and screwing an eye pin into it. It worked better than I had hoped. 

The best part is now I have a way to keep some of these toys that I loved so much, but that the kids no longer play with. By making them into ornaments, I’m killing two birds with one stone: decorating the tree and saving sentimental pieces of their childhood in a meaningful way. 

As a comic book afficionado I always loved these DC super heroes Little People. They were favorites of mine when my kids were young.

I also got a couple of sets of figurines (very much on sale) and made them into ornaments without the kids ever playing with them. 

I watched Mickey’s a Christmas Carol a million times as a kid. When I saw these I just had to have them for our tree. 

My son is deeply obsessed with “Light Queen” so I got this set now, because I suspect he’ll still be playing with his set for many years to come (I’m also less confident I can make ornaments out of metal cars–this set is plastic).

Making ornaments out of toys also saves me a lot of money. Now I don’t have to buy a set the year the kids are playing with them, but can instead wait until the toys are no longer used, and then make them into ornaments. It also saves me from throwing away these smaller toys that are harder to sell or donate. 

Between these toy ornaments and the ones I personalize each year with a picture, my tree is becoming a walk down memory lane. Which makes me love it all the more. 

I feel like you pretty much have to put up a gratitude post on this day. And I do think writing out what I’m thankful for will help me getting into the Thanksgiving spirit. So here goes:

I’m thankful that:

I don’t have to spend today with family who have wildly different political views than my own.

My in-laws are always very gracious about giving actual Thanksgiving day to my parents, and are happy to see us on Friday.

My husband and I have been on pretty solid ground for a while now, despite frustrations with how we each are processing the elections.

Interactions with my daughter are so much less fraught and divisive and so much more fun and inviting. For the most part I’m really enjoying my time with her these days.

My son is finally on the mend after a two week stomach bug. So glad to be getting over that.

My immediate family (including parents and in-laws) are healthy right now. Most even seem to be pretty happy.

I have some friends that live near by that I can see when I really need to get away and enjoy a drink and some adult conversation.

I am not yet interested in buying Christmas presents! Hooray!

There is a lot of good stuff available streaming to distract me from weighty thoughts of the future. (And thank you Mel for recommending The Crown–I am thoroughly enjoying it!)

Apps that let me instantaneously check out audio- and e-books on my phone via my library account. This has saved me untold amounts of money.

Friends, near and far, that I can be my authentic self with.

The opportunity to create new and interesting curriculum at work. 

This entire week off from school. 

* * *

I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Abiding with you all, in the good times, and the bad.