Life

The Home Stretch

Posted on by noemikjames / 8 Comments

May and June are always really stressful months for me. Now that I have a kid in school that stress is compounded three fold.

There are just so many events, so many celebrations, so many expectations on parents to bring food to this or that thing. This week was Teacher Appreciation Week and it’s important to me that we show my daughter’s teachers that we hold them and what they do in high esteem. I have to take my last day off to attend my daughter’s Kindergarten Promotion and then that night it’s my school’s Open House. My husband (and his parents, who are my back-up child care providers) are out of town next week when we’re testing on a block schedule so I have to take an hour off (that I don’t actually have) because I can’t be at work until 9am, but have to be here at 8am. There are three or four special celebrations at my daughter’s school in the evenings between now and the end of May. Then there are special celebrations at my school the three weeks after that. My daughter’s birthday party is the first weekend in June, and I haven’t even really started planning it yet (though we did reserve a spot at the park, so at least that’s done).

There is just so much to do and I’m not really sure when I’m supposed to do it all. I’m also worried I’m going to forget about it half of it entirely.

Ugh. I hate this time of year.

Six weeks to go.

Uncategorized

Close It Down

Posted on by noemikjames / 22 Comments

Yesterday I used half of our tax return to pay off the remaining $2,606.66 of my student loans.

It felt amazing.

I know I’m very lucky that my parents paid for my public undergraduate education, and that I only had graduate school debt to pay back. I’m sad I probably won’t be able to afford my children that same luxury. (Even the California State schools and UCs are becoming prohibitively expensive.)

I’m so glad I paid more every month than was required and closed out my account three years early. That is one of the few sound financial choices I’ve made in my adult life.

We still have so far to go to reach the financial security we are hoping to achieve, but paying off my student loans is definitely a step in the right direction.

Identity

Missing Mojo

Posted on by noemikjames / 5 Comments

I’ve totally lost mojo at work and I’ve become a completely mediocre teacher. I just can’t seem to pull it together enough to give a fuck. Most of the day I get by, but my last class is a tough mixture of kids and they need me to  be stalwart in my consistency which requires lots of energy and attention. Instead I end up following them on their random tangents and losing 10 minutes waxing philosophical or meandering down memory lane. We are falling severely behind and I’m panicking about what to cut, because there is no way we can finish it all. I feel like such a failure walking away from work every day. It’s really starting to get me down.

There are other things about work that suck right now. My VP is basically gaslighting me, which is infuriating. I don’t think it’s personal, or even purposeful, it’s just that denying that things she said or did actually happened is her way of avoiding taking personal responsibility. I’m really hoping our new principal can come in and deal with this, because I basically said I won’t teach English Language Development (or administer the CELDT test, or be involved in the RFEPing processes, or have anything else to do with ELD unless she can provide me with a formal description of what that position entails (I know, my expectations are so high!) They will be FUCKED if I step down from the position next year, so I’m confident the new principal will step up and be a professional about it. It’s not his style to play mind games and hide behind the district office like my current VP. Still, it has been infuriating to deal with.

There are also a lot of long time staff leaving at the end of this year. It’s going to be weird without them, and hearing about their new plans is a reminder that I abandoned my own plans to look for a new job. Three of them are leaving the area, not just our school, because things have become so untenable in this area for people making a teacher’s salary. (This actually brings up a whole other hosts of feelings for me about how I don’t feel the negatives of living here outweigh the positives, but that is for another post). The other, my good friend, is leaving to teach at a high school. We talked a lot about positions at the high school level earlier this year, when I was still on that trajectory. I knew this was probably coming, and I am very happy for her, but it’s hard not to see her so excited for a new opportunity when I didn’t even end up really looking for one. I don’t regret my decision (I could still apply for jobs if I changed my mind), but I am sad that I need to take at least one more year to get my shit together at home and at work. I just wish I weren’t always struggling so much. And honestly, I feel so shitty about myself as a teacher right now I could NEVER sell myself to someone effectively, let alone have the self-confidence to even apply. It’s definitely not the year for me to be looking for another job.

I know that things are hard right now at home and that is probably why I’m struggling so much at school. I get it. But it’s still hard. And there are so many days left, so many afternoons where I have to walk away feeling like the most ineffectual teaching on the planet, wondering how I could still suck this much at classroom management after 12 FUCKING YEARS of teaching.

31 teaching days left.

25+ years to go.

 

Connection/Marriage/Spirituality

In Search of Spirituality

Posted on by noemikjames / 13 Comments

{I wrote this the Friday before I found out my aunt died; it felt disingenuous to put it up that following week. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then, especially in the context of my marriage. My husband does not have any need or desire for spirituality in his life, and he doesn’t really understand my interest in it. I wonder if the more fundamental shifts in our foundation are what most bother him. I don’t think divergent perspectives on spirituality need to drive a wedge between two people, but perhaps my pursuit of a more meaningful life signals a deeper change within me, one that might be harder for my husband to embrace.}

If there is one deeply necessary thing lacking from my life, it is spirituality. I don’t believe there is a god, but I do believe their are forces at work in this world that I can’t comprehend and I recognize the need to cultivate a practice that incorporates reverence and gratitude into my daily life.

I feel fortunate that I know where to start, that there is a spiritual tradition that speaks to me and that I believe I can mold to meet my needs. While I would not call myself a follower, I do consider myself a student of Buddhism, and I hope to commit myself more fully to its precepts and teachings in the years to come.

Right now I am focusing on my own values, and trying to practice mindfulness  so as to better embody my values in my every day life.

Three of the values I’m focusing on right now are kindness (toward self and others), gratitude, and understanding (of people’s experiences and the workings of the universe). I can embrace these values on my own, through study, reflection, meditation, and my every day actions, and I am attempting just that. It’s hard, and I have a long way to go, but I know that something needs to change, that something is missing, and I can’t hope to find it if I’m not embracing the qualities that I am drawn to most in other people.

I’m reading a book called It’s a Meaningful Life, If Just Takes Practice (by Bo Lozoff). It’s a wonderful book that address common questions about pursuing a spiritual life with specific practices meant to help you discover and walk your own path. The book is brutally honest in its critique of mainstream American society and I find myself cringing with shame or even bristling defensively at some of what he says. When I react negatively, I stop reading for a day or two and ruminate on the point that was made and how it triggered me. Almost always I conclude that I agree with his opinion, even if I recognize that I’m not ready to make the sacrifices he suggests.

I’m very much aware that I consider some of his suggestions sacrifices (like severely limiting screen time, or abstaining completely from alcohol), even when I can recognize their value. I think a lot about the fact that I have everything I’ve ever wanted and yet I’m still plagued by dissatisfaction–clearly the changes I need to make are not superficial, and yet I conjure excuses for all the reasons I can’t change the things that probably most need changing.

When I first started reading about Buddhism I thought a lot about the monks who had devoted their life to reaching enlightenment, giving up all worldly possessions in the pursuit of spiritual fulfillment. Even at the very beginning of my journey, when I had yet to understand the depth of my need for spirituality, I suspected that I’d choose my own life, with all its creature comforts and crippling depression, over the life of those monks, even though I believed, deep in my heart, that they are happier. Even then I recognized that I didn’t have the courage to let go of the familiar, even when it was making me miserable.

I’m still not sure I have the courage to tear down the foundation of who I am and how I see the world and build something better. It’s hard to go against the status quo, especially when you’re as plagued with uncertainty and self-doubt as I am. It’s also hard to accept the status quo when it’s clearly failing.

I’m not sure where this search for spirituality will lead me, but I know I need to keeping looking. I owe myself that much.

Marriage

Plan B

Posted on by noemikjames / 35 Comments

We’re not going to the couples retreat. My husband was vehemently opposed and I didn’t try to convince him.

He recognizes that being the one who won’t go, he has to come up with some other plan of action. I appreciated that much.

At one point, when I was trying to sell the couples retreat, I mentioned that if we didn’t go we could always make our own couples retreat, and work through some of the exercises in Gottman’s The Seven Principals for Making Marriage Work. Or we could see a therapist on a regular basis. Last night my husband proposed Plan B.

I was surprised at how vehemently opposed to that I ended up being.

The thing is, I tried to do that years ago, to work through the exercises in that book in an attempt to help us be closer. My husband’s reaction was so negative and ugly–Why would we need to do that? There is literally nothing I’d rather do less. You may like that self-help garbage, but I can’t think of a way I’d less like to spend my time.— and felt like such a vicious personal attack, that I vowed never to suggest it again. That exchange has sullied my feelings for my husband, and our relationship, in lasting ways. I don’t think I realized how much it all hurt me until he suggested it as an alternative to the retreat weekend, at which point I struggled not to break down sobbing.

I said I would participate, willingly, but I refused to execute that plan in any way. I reminded him that I’d tried to work through those exercises with him–I’d even photocopied parts of the book I thought would benefit us–and he threw it all back in my face, without ever reading a word. I told him how hurt I had been by that–perhaps it was the first time he was hearing about the pain he inflicted–and that I couldn’t bring myself to be so vulnerable to his scorn toward this kind of thing again.

He understood, or he understood well enough to concede and accept the responsibility for planning the weekend moving forward.

We talked more about why we need to do this, about how distant we’ve grown. He feels a certain amount of resentment that we have to work so hard to be happy together. He believes that couples shouldn’t have to work so hard, that if we were meant to be together, the being together part should be more effortless. I tried to explain that a lot of couples work hard at marriage, but we don’t hear about it. I suggested that as a man, he probably never heard about it, because when would it even come up? Did he even ask his friends how their marriages were doing? And what of the high divorce rates? Honestly, I still don’t think he believes me. He chalks my insistence that something must be done up to my penchant for embracing self-help and trying to better myself. I told him my own desire to be a better person had nothing to do with what I know about other people’s relationships and my certainty that other couples struggle in the ways we are.

We’re looking at the weekend after the retreat would have been: mid-June. It’s better for me at least, so that’s something. I told him I wouldn’t participate unless he’d read the entire book–no choosing exercises without any context to their purpose or importance. He grudgingly agreed. He also conceded that if he failed to follow through on this I would get to pick the next course of action.

I honestly don’t know if he’s going to pull his shit together and do this, or just unceremoniously lob the ball back to me. I suspect the latter. He has never followed through on this kind of thing before, at least not in our marriage, so my hopes aren’t high, but I’m willing to wait until he’s determined that for himself. And I’ll read the book again, just in case.

Marriage

Repair Job

Posted on by noemikjames / 25 Comments

My marriage is… okay right now. It’s not great. It’s not awful. It would be easy to stay here, in this okay place, for a long time.

Honestly though, sometimes this okay place scares me. Sometimes I’m not even sure how I feel about my husband, and I’m not sure how he feels about me.

Sometimes I’m not sure if love is even part of our equation anymore. That sounds more dire than it feels, which makes me think I’m imagining it… the possible lack of love. Surely if the love were fading, we would feel it, we would be in crisis mode.

I’m not sure.

There is a couples retreat in a early June, right before my school year ends. It’s expensive, but is a lot cheaper than actual therapy would cost. And while a weekend away is a lot, it’s logistically simpler for us to be gone for two weekend days than it is get coverage for an hour of therapy every week.

I brought it up with my husband about a month ago. He was clearly uncomfortable with the idea. Instead of really sitting down and talking about it, I kept passively aggressively mentioning that we hadn’t talked about it, and reminding him that the price went up in early May.

We finally talked about it. He’s loathe to participate in such an experience, for a number of reasons, all of which I understand (and many of which I share). To be honest, I’m loath to do it as well. But in the end I feel like we need something, and this is available and we can manage it, and it’s easier to just do it than the alternatives.

Of course it’s not easier to do than nothing.

I wonder if I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill, if this is just how it feels for two full-time parents to be married with small kids. Maybe if we wait it out, things will be better.

Then again, maybe they won’t.

We’re supposed to make our final decision tonight, but I’m not even sure which way to argue. And I know that if I don’t make a case for it, we won’t go at all.

 

Connection/Friendship/Life

Thoughts from my FB Holiday

Posted on by noemikjames / 12 Comments

I’m only three weeks into my break from FB, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what it’s like to be away.

I will admit, the first week I suffered a little withdrawal. Months ago I had relegated my FB app to the second screen of a random folder on the third screen of my phone, in the hopes that I’d use it less if it were harder to get to. (Spoiler alert, it didn’t stop me from going on FB, it just made it more annoying to get there.) I spent the first week navigating to that spot, only to find it empty. The first day I came face to face with that empty spot at least a dozen times. The next day maybe five. By the end of the week, I had stopped mindlessly swiping my way to FB.

The problem was, I quickly discovered, I had no where else to swipe to. By 10am I had usually read all the posts in Feedly, and without FB I wasn’t adding new articles to Instapaper. If I didn’t have a good Kindle book on loan from the library I had nothing to read. And without reading material, and without FB, I had absolutely nothing to do on my phone (I don’t play any games on my phone–I know I’m a weirdo).

The obvious result of this was that I was bored a lot. I would absentmindedly turn on my phone, swipe back and forth between screens, realize there was nothing to distract me and turn it off. Eventually a subtle positive revealed itself–I turned on my phone less and was more present in moment.

After a week I signed up for Lum.osity, an app with brain training games that are supposed to strengthen memory, attention, flexible thinking and problem solving. Every day the app provides a workout of five games and I have a lot of fun seeing if I can beat my previous best scores. I’ve actually learned a lot about myself and the way I think; it’s been surprisingly eye opening.

The thing with Lum.osity though, is that you have to really concentrate to play the games. It’s not something you can do mindlessly to pass a spare minute. This means that I’m still not on my phone as much as I used to be; I only turn it on when I know I have a couple of minutes when I can focus enough to play a game or read a blog post (if there are any in my reader).

Of course FB is not just about my relationship with my phone (though it played a bigger part in that relationship than I realized). FB is ultimately about connecting with other people, by sharing my life and having access to what others share about their lives. I will admit that it has been weird to not post things on FB, and a bit unsettling not to see what others are posting. I’m definitely missing out on things, and every once in a while I’ll participate in a conversation that underscores how much I’m missing.

But you know what? I don’t really care. When I find out about something I missed on FB, I realize there isn’t a hole in my life where that information should have been. Knowing these things about people isn’t a necessity. In fact, I wonder if knowing so much about so many people was actually having a negative effect on my life. I’m still not sure.

One thing’s for sure, it’s way more fun to actually talk to people now, because I don’t already know everything of note that has happened in their lives. Recently I was chatting with a colleague at work and she mentioned a new relationship that she’s really excited about. When I looked happily surprised she seemed confused, hadn’t I seen the photos on FB? No, I hadn’t, but that meant we had something interesting to talk about for ten minutes and she actually got to share a little bit about her life that I otherwise wouldn’t have known. What a novel concept!

Of course my aunts and uncles in St. Louis were sad to hear there wouldn’t be any pictures of my kids for a while. They seemed truly disappointed. I think that was the first time I realized how positive of an experience it can be for some people: even though I only see many of my aunts and uncles every other year, they feel close to my family through the photos and moments and I share on FB. That is a powerful connection for very little effort on my part.

One interesting result of telling people I’ve deactivated my account? The initial reaction. People want to know why I would do such a thing, but they aren’t really interested in hearing the answer. It’s one thing to never create a FB account, but to participate and then choose to opt out…people see it as a verdict being passed on the whole system, and anyone who participates. It’s interesting the responses I get: people are curious, suspicious, defensive, judgmental, sometimes all at the same time. FB has become a pretty big deal, and by choosing not to be on it, I seem to be making a statement. I’m just not sure what that statement is.

How do you feel about FB? How do you feel when people stop using it?

Self-compassion

Suck It Up

Posted on by noemikjames / 23 Comments

Someone close to me, someone it is my job to support, is really struggling right now. She is getting professional help, and working hard to make positive changes in her life, but progress is slow going. One of her journeys right now is trying to find a job that she feels is compatible with who she is and what she wants. The problem is that her parameters are so narrow, I’m not sure a job exists that fits all of them. The low probability of finding her dream job does not deter her, she soldiers on, as she has been for the last 9 years.

I struggle to know how to support her when we get together to talk. There are so many aspects of employment that she seems unable (unwilling?) to participate in. I try to say generic, supportive things, to be empathetic, but it’s hard because my general attitude is increasingly, suck it up.

That’s what we do, isn’t it? We suck it up. When shit is hard, but we have to do it, we suck it up and we get it done.

Now I grew up in a house where this phrase wasn’t specifically employed, but the general sentiment was definitely understood. There wasn’t a lot of coddling going on in my house when we young. Certainly my parents listened when we were struggling and supported us in any way they could; my parents paid for therapy when I was in high school and into college. They never spoke ill of my dependence on SSRIs to get through those dark times. But I could always tell they didn’t understand what was wrong with me, why I couldn’t just suck it up and get over it, whatever it was. I could tell my inability to identify the elusive it that was making miserable drove them a little crazy. And while I could discern how they felt, I appreciated that the never spoke the actual words. They were doing the best they could.

I feel like I’m in that same position now, and I worry this person I need to support can discern that I can’t really understand, that I don’t actually empathize, that what I’m really thinking is, how can you expect to interact with the world when you’ve decided that you can’t actually abide most society’s expectations.

No one likes working a 9-5 job that isn’t personally fulfilling. No one likes having to hustle for your worth, but sometimes you do it for a while to get to the next level. Sometimes you have to pay your dues.

I mean I get it, the wanting to have your job mean something. But I just don’t know if most people get to have a job that means something to them personally, especially not with flexible hours and a decent pay check. But that is what this person wants, and she’s not willing to grin and bear it at any job, even if those hard months or years mean she may some day find something closer to what she actually wants.

I struggle with this at school too, with my students. When do we push them to work through what is hard, so they can learn how much they can accomplish? When do we let them fall back and regroup?

I don’t know. Honestly, the post I really want to write isn’t about this specific person, or my students, it’s about my own now tenuous relationship with the whole suck it up mentality. I am pretty certain that there are times when my insistence on sucking it up has made things worse before they got better, probably unnecessarily so. And yet I can attribute a lot of the good in my life to sucking it up and getting it done, even when I was miserable doing it.

I feel like I need to figure this shit out because I have kids now and increasingly it will be my job to help them walk the fine line between sucking it up and throwing in the towel. How can I help them navigate this ambiguous terrain when my own map and compass are so utterly fucked?*

I really don’t know the answer, and trying to help my friend has reminded me how panicky that makes me feel.

*Accessing compassion, toward myself and others, has definitely helped me in this area but I still have so much exploring to do, so much unknown terrain to cover. You might think that extending oneself kindness would mean the abolishment of “suck it up,” but that hasn’t actually been the case. Most of the time, showing myself compassion helps me see more clearly what I need to do, I just use kinder words as I try to spur myself to do it. I’m hoping that self-compassion will continue act as a compass in these situations when I feel so unsure, but I’m still such a novice, not only at determining what direction I should take, but also at eventually setting out in that direction.

What are you thoughts on sucking it up? How do you know when to do it, and when not to?

Life

Nine Weeks

Posted on by noemikjames / 3 Comments

I can’t believe it’s already April 18th. The first week of April was my spring break, and even though my son crashed all the days I had allotted for rest and rejuvenation, it was still good to be away from work. Last week was a whirlwind of grief and emotional turmoil. This weekend offered some much needed opportunities to slow down and take some deep breaths. And now it’s solidly mid-April.

There are nine more weeks of school. On the one hand, that feels impossibly long, especially after I lost my chance to regroup over spring break, and then I was put through the emotional wringer before my break was even over. There is definitely a sense of, keep-your-head-down-and-just-get-through-this to the coming months. At the same time, after those two months it’s summer break. It feels like just yesterday that this school year started–how can it almost be over?

My daughter only has six more weeks of school–her district ends the year before the Memorial day weekend. She’ll be at camp for four weeks while I finish my school year and those weeks will be a lot less stressful at home. We really are in the final stretch. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s so, so bright.

But it’s still a pin prick and there are moments when it feels impossibly far away. I’m so tired, and I find myself falling back on emotional detachment just to get by. Occasionally something will knock me into my grief and my eyes will well with tears, but the moment is never opportune and I quickly and neatly compartmentalize my pain so I can be productive. I tell myself it’s okay to do this, that there is a time and a place to grieve, and that when I find myself in that space I’ll let it happen. Except When I have the time and space it’s late and I’m tired and I just want to play solitaire on my phone until bedtime. I’m not consciously avoiding my feelings, but I worry it’s happening anyway, and that the results will be the same.

I’m so tired, and there is so much to do before mid-June. I’m working on slowing down, on managing my expectations. There was so much I wanted to accomplish over spring break and now that time is gone and my to-do list remains virtually untouched. And whenever I mentally return to it, I feel overwhelmed.

The weather is nice right now, and the days suddenly seem so long. We have long since left winter behind and already spring seems like a memory. But there are still nine long weeks between me and what looks from here like a salvation of sorts. I just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other it gets here.

 

Life

Sudden and Unexpected

Posted on by noemikjames / 13 Comments

My aunt died last week. She was my godmother, my mother’s closest sister. Our families have always been close.

Her death was very sudden and unexpected. She went to the restroom and her husband found her on the floor. He is a doctor and tried to resuscitate her, but there was nothing he could do.

An autopsy later revealed she had cardiomyopathy–her heart was enlarged and the thickness of the muscles impeded the electrical impulses that must fire between the two sides of the heart. She died of a heart attack. She was 68.

My uncle and my aunt were always very close. They had been married 46 years. She worked as a secretary at his office when the children were older. Their three sons have five children between them. My uncle just retired last year; they had big plans to travel together, to spend weeks and months with their grandchildren.

My mom retires in one year. She had big plans to visit her sister, her best friend, a couple times a year.

Now she’s gone.

My aunt was a really wonderful woman, so caring and so kind. She was always ready to listen, she always said the right thing, and she always wore a smile. I can’t really wrap my head around the fact that I’ll never see her again.

My uncle is absolutely devastated. My mom is a mess. We found out Saturday morning. The funeral was Wednesday. My mom and dad flew out Sunday. My sister and I flew out Tuesday morning.

Tuesday night was the viewing/visitation. The line to offer condolences was three hours long. A lot of people had to sign the guest book and leave, they couldn’t stay that long. It started at 3:00 in the afternoon and we had to lock up ourselves at 10:30pm.

Wednesday was the funeral mass, the burial, the reception, dinner at my uncle’s house.

Thursday morning my sister and I flew home.

Today I’m back at work. I hoped the funeral would bring more of a sense of closure, but I was always between my mother and sister, holding them both up, and I never felt there was space for me to really express my own grief. I suppose I’ll be working through it for a while.

On Thursday morning I ended up in my uncle’s car as he called his home number trying to reach his son. When no one answered the answering machine picked up and I heard my aunt’s voice for the last time.

Grief is a hollow space in my chest and hot tears on my cheeks.

I miss you Aunt Mary. I’m sorry I never got a chance to say goodbye.