Not a Wasted Word

I don’t actually have my new belt yet. I’ll get it next week. But I passed my test! And I did really well. I knew it and I felt good and it was fun. The sparring session was awesome. I feel like I’m finally moving past the plateau I’ve been on for so long.

Remember when I wasn’t sure if I’d even test? I was considering quitting! Or testing, then just not doing much for a while? Well, the opposite has happened. I feel energized by this test prep. I’m excited to spend more time at the dojo. I’m excited to see what I’m going to learn next.

I honestly didn’t anticipate that possibility. I’ve been so stuck for so long, but it turns out spending a lot of time at the dojo, learning and practicing and perfecting got me unstuck. Who would’ve thought? So obvious in hindsight.

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that I got through it and I’m really happy with how it went.

And the best part? I keep thinking I should review something, and remember I don’t have to anymore!

Now that is a great feeling.

Well, I did it! Everything on my big list. Except for picking up meds, because my Rx was never filled, despite ordering it on Monday. The ADHD meds shortage is no joke. I hope it gets filled before I run out.

Today I mailed my last return (I’ve had that envelope in my car for weeks!) I bought pet food (for the kittens and the bearded dragon). I ran on the Great Highway. I had lunch with my husband. I watched my Spanish-language series. I cleaned up my daughter’s room (she took the bus to swimming for me one day, so I told her I’d help her with her room). I ironed my Ki. I wrote out and emailed my one steps.

I feel ready for my test. More ready than I’ve ever been. At this point I just want to get it over with because it’s long and grueling and I want it to be done.

I’m quite pleased with how this Spring Break went. It can be a bummer to have a different break that my kids, but this year I made good use of it. I’m really glad we ended up with staggered spring breaks.

I also wanted to write a bit more about the “time debt” I mentioned in my last post. I wrote this in response to JJ’s concerned comment on that post (I’ve edited it slightly):

The time debt thing is absolutely my own weird stuff that I’m working through. And I think ultimately it comes from a place of trying to be fair. Like if I am asking for a lot during the week, I should try to offer time during the weekend. I know I would want to be offered time during the weekend if I were on all week! And it can help me to ask for my own time when I’m doing more than I normally would. It makes me better at asking for time when I’m giving a lot of it.

The reality is my husband just can’t manage as much as I can – he gets exhausted and eventually moody and sulky if he doesn’t get the time he needs to recharge. So part of what I’m doing is trying to avoid that, because it will happen even if my husband wants to support me. These past two weeks he has been very supportive of the time I wanted/needed to spend at the dojo. But when it came down to his ability to actually manage covering for me, it was a different story. He just can’t always deliver what he wants to offer. So I’m always mindful of what I’m asking for and try to offer opportunities for him to recharge, because he isn’t as good at recognizing he needs to, and making the space to do it himself – this is definitely a big part of it actually, that I’ve practiced recognizing when I need time and asking for it (as a run or drinks with friends) and he has not, or doesn’t have ready ways to make it meaningful.

I do think there was a time, when I felt a lot more resentment about how much more I did, when I did think of it as a debt to be owed. But now that we both are contributing so much, it’s more about me trying to be fair, and safe guard against his burn out. I never feel like he is tallying time or anything, but I can tell when he’s overextended, and needs a change to reset. It happens more now, as he’s managing mental health issues. So I’m really glad he’ll get almost a week in NYC, away from his normal responsibilities and routines. I really hope it helps him feel better.

And with that, I shall hit “Publish,” because I want to get to bed early even though I don’t have to be on the bus until 9:45am.

By the time I write again I will (hopefully 🤞) be a blue belt!

I really hit a wall yesterday. On Wednesday I felt so good. I was so pleased with all I was getting done, with how test prep felt manageable, even fun. On Wednesday I was in great mood.

By Thursday night I was totally done.

It was bound to happen. I’ve been asking a lot of my family, and trying hard to make it up to them. Especially my husband who has been struggling to show up for me in the ways he wants to. My son has been spending hours waiting for me at the dojo, reading and watching shows on his pad while he eats dinner in the hallway. I’ve been driving the kids all over the city, having my son’s meals ready to eat at the dojo. Just trying to make it all work.

And of course there are all the hours practicing. It’s a lot. It’s exhausting both mentally and physically. I’m so tired at the end of every day, I’m in bed as soon as I eat a late dinner and prep for the next day.

I’m very lucky this test is at the end of my break. I don’t think I’d have the mental fortitude to work so hard after long days in the classroom, and then driving the kids for a couple hours each afternoon. Yesterday I got my teeth cleaned by work and just that one commute made the afternoon activity driving a lot harder.

I’ve also felt a lot better about asking my husband to cover the evenings, since I’m covering his usual morning routine. I’m the one getting up with the kids, getting them ready and taking them to school. I know that has helped him have the energy to get them fed and ready for bed in the evenings.

I am definitely focusing on how fortunate I was with the timing of this test. It has been the most enjoyable test prep I’ve experienced, and that’s saying something because this is definitely the hardest test I’ve ever done. I know for sure it’s been a positive experience because I’m not at work this week.

My husband leaves for New York early next week and I’m so relieved that we can do a quick reset on time debt. I always struggle with knowing how long to step up and offer extra help after requesting extra help myself. I think six days away will provide the mental reset that I need to know we’ll be on even footing once he returns.

{Am I the only one who does this? The only one who tries to “make up for” asking for more coverage than I’m normally allotted? Keeping a mental tally of how much I’ve been away and then trying to give that time back to my husband later (which means I never get any time to unwind myself. MORE THOUGHTS ON THIS IN THE COMMENTS.}

I’m going to run today, (I realized that it didn’t make a lot of sense to try to go yesterday, so I pushed it) and then take my son to the dojo for his quick 30 minute high belt class before we both bail. If he stays for the longer general class I know I’ll feel like I should assist and I just need a break from the dojo tonight. I’m going to be assisting every Friday morning forward, so taking this one off makes sense.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be at the dojo at 10:30am. Hopefully the test will be over by 4pm. I may go out for a little celebration after, or I may be too brain dead and just come home.

By 5pm tomorrow it will be done (sometimes they run long and a lot of people are testing tomorrow, but by 5pm it will definitely be done). I just got to make it to 5pm.

By the time I post this my spring break will be half over. So far, I have no complaints. It’s maybe not much of a break, but I’m getting good stuff done. And I’m finding moments for self care. I think I may reach my main goals of feeling good about my test, feeling good about the house, and being ready for the final two months of school. While I may have tried to pack a lot into this week, right not I’m feeling pleasantly productive.

Some self-care highlights:

I ran Monday, and while the fog was rolling in, I did get to enjoy plenty of sun.

I got a one-hour Thai massage on Tuesday and saw my chiropractor on Wednesday.

I’ve gotten so much done! Still haven’t written those personal one steps yet. Blerg – it’s so hard!

I am feeling pretty good about my test coming up. I do think I will be as prepared as I can be, and that is a big win. I’m sure I’ll never feel 100% about a test, but I am confident that I know everything as well as anyone else testing at my level.

I’m about to pick my kids up for their dentist appointments (Wednesday is an early release day for them). Tonight will be a long session at the dojo. Tomorrow I plan to run down by my parents’ house, then shower at their house before my own dentist appointment. Then I’ll run some errands on the way home.

Friday I plan to take it easy, since I’ll be at the dojo testing for 5-6 hours on Saturday. My husband and I will grab lunch (he works from home on Friday), and I’ll putz around. Maybe I’ll even watch a movie (anything streaming I should see?)

After a very busy weekend, I’m officially on Spring Break. I have lists of what I hope to accomplish in four different areas of my life, and every night I plan to look at it and write down the specific tasks I hope to tackle the next day. I hope this keeps me from feeling too overwhelmed, and helps me take a couple of breaks here and there.

As you can see, the Relax+Reboot column is pretty short. I honestly can’t think of much to put there, which should probably be concerning. I do hope to get a massage, which is a very big treat. Part of why I wrote that is because I had so little to write there. I guess that is a happy result of separating tasks, so as to be sure I was taking some time for myself. If I hadn’t done that I probably wouldn’t be trying to get a massage at all.

And of course the test prep list is super long. I have a lot of test prep to do. I cannot wait for this test to be over.

More will be added to the lists too. This is just a first pass. I’m at my allergy shot appointment right now, and I forgot to write that down.

I have a fair number of appointments and errands to run this week, which is partly the result of me pushing things back, knowing I’d have more time whilst not working. It’s impossible to take an hour or two off for an appointment when you’re a teacher, so we tend to schedule things during our breaks. It makes regular weeks more manageable, but it also means breaks are less restful. Oh well.

My hope is to end this week feeling good about how I tested, pretty happy with the state of the house, prepared for the final two months at work, and starting fresh with my list of upcoming errands. We shall see.

I’ve been super in the weeds this week. Thank god I gave myself the grace of doing review games and watching a movie with my 1A classes this week, because even with that I’m way, way underwater.

There is just too much going on. I’m at the dojo all the time. And it’s not the fun, away from home getting my exercise kind of dojo time. It’s the stressed out, how much do we have to know?! test prep kind. I’m realizing that one hard thing about getting ready for a belt test is that not only is martial arts causing a fair amount of stress for me, it’s also taking away my main go-to stress management tool – exercise. The kind of time I’m spending at the dojo is not emptying my brain, or raising my heart rate, or releasing endorphins. But I’m using my workout time to be at the dojo (and then some) so that means I’m never getting to empty my brain and raise my heart rate and release endorphins. I went for a run last Sunday and it felt so, so good. I’m really missing that time right now, and it’s kind of when I need it most.

Having said that, I had a moment at the last green belt class where I felt like I got it, and it was even a little fun. Usually green belt class, which is at the end of the night, is challenging and interminable, but last time I barely looked at the clock and even enjoyed myself a bit. So that is probably a good sign.

But most of the time, I’m just really stressed out. And I know it’s for something I’ve chosen to do, but it’s still hard. Work has been stressful too, because our principal is out (her father just entered hospice) and they are asking us to do a lot of coverage. We also have a ton of high school transition IEP meetings, and I’m going to a bunch because they put a lot of kids with IEPs in my classes (I teach in a way that allows kids with IEPs to be very successful, despite the more academic nature of my elective classes). So I’m giving up prep time to sub and go to meetings, which means I’m getting less done during the week when I was supposed to catch up.

This weekend is busy. It’s 8pm Friday night and I’m just leaving the dojo. I assisted in the kids’ class and then went to open mat to do test prep. Tomorrow I’m at the dojo from 11:30 to 3pm, then we’re seeing the Mario Brothers movie. Sunday morning is Easter at my parents’ house, and then maybe the Cherry Blossom festival in Japantown (though we may punt that to the next weekend).

The only reason I’m not panicking about this weekend is that I don’t have to go to work on Monday. Man am I ready for this break.

I hope you’re all getting a little break some point soon too. And some sunshine. It only rained once this week (today actually) and it was so nice to see some sun.

I’ve been super discombobulated lately. I can’t keep my focus. I can’t complete multi-step tasks, or a series of simple task. I thought it was because of all the brain space my test prep was requiring, but now I’m wondering if it’s something else. I finally learned my form and I’m not thinking about test prep as much, and yet I’m still struggling.

I’m truly a hot mess these days.

The time change is really throwing me too. I’m always thinking it’s much earlier than it is. I’m feeding the cats late. Starting the kids’ bedtime late. Doing everything later than I intend to. It’s been a couple weeks so I’m not sure why I’m still not accustomed to the new time. I wonder if it’s because it’s still so cold, maybe my brain can’t reconcile the fact that we’re still have days with highs if 51 in the spring.

Yesterday was beautiful though. The high was supposedly 58, but in the sun it felt much warmer. Maybe if the sun starts coming out more my body will figure it out.

This week was a little rough. The kids were home for Spring Break. My husband and I got sick. I couldn’t take off (I stayed home on Tuesday to be with the kids so I couldn’t take off again), so I had to just power through. Luckily I wasn’t as bad as my husband. He still feels awful and we’re wondering if he has a sinus infection. We’re also wondering if allergies are playing a part in making us feel shitty, because they seemed to get bad really quickly.

The good news is I am giving myself a break next week at work, and watching a movie with my 1A classes. That just might get me through to Spring Break. Then I have that week at home while my kids are at school, and hopefully I can use that time to do the final prep for my belt test, which is Saturday the 15th. I really want to get it over with.

And I think my back will hold. And my knee (it’s also been acting up lately). I ran yesterday (very slowly, as I still don’t feel great) and neither feels awful now. I really hope I can test in two weeks and move on.

A big thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts on my last post. I think it’s true that I’m feeling overwhelmed and under appreciated right now, and I believe having more discretionary income would ease some burdens. Also, it’s spring and we’re having to make hard decisions about how much childcare we can afford over the summer, and what traveling to visit family can look like. My son got into the much cheaper Rec and Park camps, but we’re putting our daughter in more expensive art camps, in the hopes that more formal training will help her get into the public fine arts high school she wants to attend. People evidently pay many thousands of dollars for private help producing portfolios and we don’t have that kind of money, so a few art camps will have to do. But even those camps cost $500-650 a week. So far camps this summer are running us about $3.5K. And air fare has gone up substantially, at least our flights to St. Louis have. Everything just costs more now, but ya’ll know that.

This weekend was jam packed. Both Saturday and Sunday were sunny! Hooray! I walked a lot Saturday and got in a short run on Sunday. Being out in the sun, even if the air was frigid, helped my mood immensely.

Saturday our son had a long play date so my husband and I went out to early dinner and drinks. We walked to the dinner spot, but we didn’t walk home because it was windy and cold.

Sunday we got to see a sneak preview of the new Dungeons and Dragons movie. We aren’t hard core D&Ders, but we play occasionally and we have been looking forward to the movie since last summer. It was going to be hard to fit a showing in next weekend (it comes out this Friday) but then my husband found a sneak preview showing on Sunday at a perfect time and we went for if! It was a ton of fun. We liked it a lot.

It was a nice weekend, and I had a lot of fun. I also didn’t get much done and am feeling stressed out because of that. But I guess you can’t have both a lot of fun and time to do boring stuff (like chores and grading). So now I go into this week a little less stressed for all the fun of the weekend, and a little more stressed for feeling behind.

Tomorrow I’m staying home with the kids. It’s their spring break but it’s not my spring break. I have mixed feelings about the times when our breaks don’t match up. I’ll probably write more about that later this week.

This past Tuesday, LV summarized the Best of Both Worlds podcast topic for the week as: hiring hella childcare. And I’m struck again by how I don’t quite know where I belong socioeconomically. I read people who seem like me, but have a quarter million dollars saved for college – for each child. I read people who seem like me, but can pay two mortgages while they renovate a new house. I read people who seem like me, but have giant houses with beautiful interiors. I read people who seem like me, but go on incredible vacations to far flung places. I read people who seem like me, but send their kids to expensive private elementary and high schools. I read people who seem like me, but can hire full time child care.

And the reality is, people who have full time child care, especially while their youngest kid is in school, are not my people. I can barely make my own finances work; the thought of providing someone with their livelihood is insane to me. We have always paid for aftercare, which works because I am a teacher and get off early enough to pick up the kids by 6pm. But we had to do all kinds of crazy shit to make mornings work over the years. When my son was a baby, my FIL watched him from 9:00am to 1pm. I taught from 7am to 12:10pm straight (no breaks) and pumped in the car on the way to pick him up. We couldn’t even afford full time care when we actually needed it.

And yes, I know how lucky we were to have someone willing to watch our baby for us (those years are SO EXPENSIVE), but no one was providing full time child care on a schedule that worked for us. I was waking up all night with a newborn, then leaving the house at 6am to teach five classes in five hours, and then pick up my baby at lunch. We were making it work with FOUR HOURS of care a day. My husband got in late to work and left late, which means I was with the baby alone (after teaching full time) from 1pm to 7pm. And I had to get my daughter around 5pm. It was nuts. Once they started school I had to ask for 1^st period prep for years, so I could drop them off at 7:50am and book it down to my job. If I hit traffic I had to call a friend to cover for me. It was horrible. And I spent my prep commuting so I had not time at work to get anything done, which meant I stayed up late every night to do prep work at home. It was awful. No wonder I had no ambition during those years. I was just trying to survive.

And yet. We live in one of the most expensive cities in the country. And we own a house in that city (or a mortgage lender owns one in our name). I suppose that is where the comparisons just seem to fall apart. Our mortgage is 2-3x that of mortgages for a similarly sized house in most other parts of the country. (And our house would probably sell for two times that now). We choose to live here for a number of reasons, and high on that list is grandparents, who do provide support (and provided more when our kids were babies). I sometimes wonder though, if being as house poor as we were is actually worth the grandparent help (it probably is, but only because of how much our house has increased in value). Paying for a full time nanny here probably costs 1.5x or 2x what it costs in other parts of the country. So maybe I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

So yeah. I just don’t feel like I understand where I fit, who my people are. I do fit pretty well with my real-life friends, the ones I know now, which is part of why I think we get along so well. But they all live here and again, I wonder if living in the Bay Area skews things so much that you can’t really compare yourself with people elsewhere. All the metrics are off. I think many of the blogs I read have similar-ish incomes (many have much higher incomes I’m sure, but some I think are comparable), but their mortgages are so much less than mine. If your monthly mortgage payment is cut in half, that’s a big difference in disposable income.

And sure, we get to go to Hawaii this summer, for the second time, but only because a friend invited us. And they get to go because a friend invited them. We could never afford the trip on our own. We went to London last summer, to visit my sister, but only because my parents paid for the AirBnB, and a massive tax return allowed us to cover the air fare. Our other two big trips were to very cheap countries, and we rented our house out on AirBnB to help cover the expenses.

{I forgot to mention we had to rent out a portion of our house for 8 years, just to cover our mortgage – that is why we got the massive tax return, because we took a loss being landlords for so long.}

Yes, we own a house that is worth a lot, but we struggle with basic upkeep, let alone renovating parts of it that we don’t like. We’ve wanted to replace our garage door for 5 years (you have to get out and swing it open manually), but whenever we save up enough to do it, a plumbing or electrical emergency requires we divert those funds. We can’t use an entire room because of water damage from this year’s storms (the walls are COVERED in mold).

We have very little saved for our kids’ college education. We’re considering halting our contributions to our son’s 529 to pay for a house cleaner. (We only just started contributing to his 529 a couple years ago, when we started contributing to his sister’s 529. She is 3.5 years older.)

And yet, I’m assured, we are solidly upper middle class. Are the people who seem to have more, wealthy? Or is upper middle class just such a big, nebulous category that we both exist within it? Or is it again, where we live? Is upper middle class in the Bay Area just look different?

It doesn’t really matter. I’m just trying to understand why my experience seems so different sometimes. I guess I shouldn’t expect to find a lot of similarities with people in the private sector, finance, law or medicine. We are a public middle school teacher and a city employee. Of course it’s not the same.

It’s funny because generationally I feel adrift as well. I was born in 1980, so some articles declare I’m Gen X and others a Millennial. I always identified more with Gen X, but now that Millennials are getting older, much of what I read about their experience also rings true. Again, it doesn’t really matter, but I do find it frustrating that I don’t seem to fit anywhere, that it’s so hard to feel like I belong.

Even with my friends, because I had kids early (relatively, in the Bay Area having a kid at 30 is very, very early) it’s hard to find my tribe. (I think this part of me identifies as Gen X). Most moms with kids my daughter’s age are a full decade older than me. (Sometimes I’m grateful for my DOR because I’m going through perimenopause with them, even though they are 10-12 years older). I can find moms about 5 years older than me with kids in my son’s grade, but that kid is their oldest (and there aren’t many of them). My friends from college have kids 8-10 years younger than mine, if they have them at all (many don’t). And of course in my profession I feel alone, seeing as I’m the only foreign language teacher in my entire district. Even at the dojo I’m one of the only adults over 35, and one of only a small handful that has kids.

So yeah, I’ve just been noticing it lately, as my blog roll whittles to a group of people that I thought I could identify with, but that are actually living very different lives, and managing very different concerns. Maybe most people feel like this, like everyone has it different enough that it’s not really comparable. Or maybe I’m just focusing on the wrong things, because I’m burnt out and other people’s problems seem easier to manage than my own. (Surely the real issue is that I just don’t want to manage my problems, and I’m feeling salty about them.)

I actually started a post about realizing I’m burnt out today, but then I came back to finish this one first. I hope I don’t come off like an ass. It’s really not about people having more than me, because I have so much and honestly don’t need more. I probably couldn’t even manage more, or it wouldn’t make a difference. That’s probably it, because I have more now than I did 5 years ago, but I’m still coming up against the same kinds of problems, so maybe this is just how I operate. (But also, everything costs so much more than it did 5 years ago, I don’t know how much “more” I really, in effect, have. Certainly not as much more as the numbers on paper would suggest.) It’s just about feeling like I don’t really fit in, like I can’t find my people. It would be so nice to meet someone, or read someone and think, oh yes! This person is just like me!

But maybe no one ever feels that way. Maybe I’m just looking for something that no one ever truly has.

How about you? Do you feel like you look around and see people like you? Or do you always feel just different enough for it to be noticeable? Does anyone feel like they belong anywhere?

{Posting this at work, where the internet is back up! – Also, I realized I never thanked everyone for their comments of support, and advice, on my post about my husband struggling. I REALLY appreciated all of them. They helped me feel less alone, and gave me some ideas for how to proceed. Things are still rough, but this past week was better than previous weeks. Just wanted to put some gratitude out there, before this super down post. ::face palm::}

I’m writing this in a Word document! Because the internet it out at our house. At least we have power.

Remember how it was sunny yesterday afternoon? Well, that was short lived. Today it poured all day. And then the wind picked up. We lost power at work again. It came back within an hour, but the internet didn’t. The internet probably won’t be up again tomorrow. At least this time we can make photocopies if we can’t use the computers.

The wind was really brutal today. By the time I was driving home there were trees down all over the place. I counted 11 while I was driving to and from my kids’ activities.

So much driving today. So much traffic. I guess a big rig blew over on the Bay Bridge which meant traffic from that was spilling over into downtown. I got into my car at work at 3:11 and did not pull into my garage until 6:42. I spent all but 15 minutes of that driving (and 10 of those 15 minutes I spent waiting in the car).

Most of that 3+ hours of driving in the rain, wind, and gridlock traffic, I was fuming about work. I found out today, from one of my students, that the high school we feed into is having a Spanish 2 entrance assessment NEXT WEEK. On Wednesday. They have never administered an assessment in the spring like that. Not in the 19 years I’ve been teaching at the school. This year they are, and they didn’t bother to reach out to one of the two middle schools that provides most of their students. I even reached out to them in September, expressing concerns about their ever-shifting Spanish 2 enrollment processes, and they assured me I knew everything I needed to know. I’m so furious at myself for not double checking a couple months ago. They’ve never afforded me the courtesy of an update when they change their process. They’ve never reached out to me one time, about anything. And when I reach out to them, they make it clear that I’m a nuisance they just want to make go away.  

I’m going to look like such an incompetent asshole when I tell parents about this. I JUST sent home recommendation letters explaining how students would be assessed in the fall (this is what they did to students who enrolled in Spanish 2 last year). Now their students will have less than a week to review for a test that I know nothing about. I’m so upset. I feel like no one gives a fuck about me or my program. I feel like I’m left to fend for myself. I feel like a fool for thinking I could manage all this, when no one is willing to support me.

So yeah. Today sucked.

All day, I looked forward to watching something on the elliptical when I got home, but instead I’m writing about my shitty day in a Word document. Sounds about right.