Not a Wasted Word

I’ve been reading some articles lately and thinking, oh my god yes, finally someone is saying what I’ve been thinking.

The thing is, they are saying things that I think a lot of us have been thinking, but we’ve been too afraid to mention them, lest we be cast down by the social media powers that be for being stupid or callous or uncaring or selfish or… well you know can probably guess where this is going.

I’ve been wondering if, when and how we’d ever revisit mask mandates at school. Then I read The Case Against Masking Kids in School in The Atlantic:

Many public-health experts maintain that masks worn correctly are essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19. However, there’s reason to doubt that kids can pull off mask-wearing “correctly.” We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed.

…

Therefore, the overall takeaway from these studies—that schools with mask mandates have lower COVID-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates—is not justified by the data that have been gathered. In two of these studies, this conclusion is undercut by the fact that background vaccination rates, both of staff and of the surrounding community, were not controlled for or taken into consideration. At the time these studies were conducted, when breakthrough infections were much less common, this was a hugely important confounding variable undermining the CDC’s conclusions that masks in schools provide a concrete benefit in controlling COVID-19 spread: Communities with higher vaccination rates had less COVID-19 transmission everywhere, including in schools, and those same communities were more likely to have mask mandates.

I have to admit, while I knew that masks were not required in school in Britain (for students under 12), I did not realize they were also not required in many other European countries. I also did not know that there was so little conclusive evidence that masking in schools significantly reduces rates of community spread.

I have been very thankful that I live in a state where mandated masking in public spaces, as well as in schools, has been part of the public health response from day one. I felt much safer (finally!) returning to in person learning in the fall knowing that my students and colleagues, as well as my kids and their peers, would be masked. But I have to admit I don’t have faith in our ability to follow the science and put an end to masking in schools at an appropriate time.

When I run in a huge open park near my house most of the people that pass me are masked, even though no person or group is anyone near anyone in this huge open space for more than the few seconds it takes to pass someone on the (very wide) ample path. We are clearly wearing masks in San Francisco for reasons other than protecting the health and safety of ourselves and others. The fact that we’ve spent the last year deriding the governors of Republican states like Florida and Texas for banning mask mandates in school (which to be clear, I view as dangerous public health policy), leads me to believe it will be very hard for us to separate mask wearing in classrooms with our political identities as public health-minded progressives. I just don’t think we’re going to be able to make a rational decision about this for a long time.

Which brings me to this episode of NYT’s The Daily from last week, that aimed to be “a statistically sound effort to take the temperature of the American public on exactly how it’s thinking about Covid at this moment that might or might not be a pivot in the pandemic.” The overall argument of the episode was that “when you look at all this, what you end up seeing is that people’s attitudes toward risk doesn’t seem to be driven by rational thought or scientific evidence, so much as it seems to be driven by political belief.”

An exchange from the episode:

Michael Barbaro: Right. What’s interesting about what you’re saying, David, is that it’s not only showing that partisanship is dictating whether people get vaccinated, which I think we did know. It’s also showing that even those who do get vaccinated, who do believe the science that shows vaccines are protective, are still having a pretty high level of fear that suggests they actually don’t really feel protected. And that’s counterintuitive.

David Leonhardt: That’s right. So if you believe the science, you should go get the vaccine, because all the science says the vaccines are very safe and very effective at preventing serious Covid illness. But let’s focus on that second beat just for a second. The science says vaccines are very effective at preventing serious Covid illness. So if you believe the science, it doesn’t argue only for getting vaccinated. It also argues for living your life in a way that reflects that you’ve been vaccinated.

I understand that we’re only just starting to come out of the omicron wave (in some parts of the country), which has put huge strains on hospitals health care professionals. Obviously the most important thing that people need to be doing right now is getting vaccinated and boosted. I do think there were moments in the episode when they put the ideas of “Republicans aren’t getting vaccinated” and “Democrats aren’t acting like they are vaccinated” next to each other like each side was complicit in the same degree of “not following the science.” That is a false equivalency that wasn’t stated but implied, and I think it should have been clarified. The US has a far higher death toll than any other large, wealthy nation precisely because we have so many un- or under-vaccinated people, especially older people who are at high-risk for getting seriously ill or dying from Covid. The unvaccinated are straining our health care system and endangering the lives of others who need medical care for unrelated reasons. They are prolonging the pandemic by keeping hospitalization and death rates high.

But ultimately the vaccinated might prolong the pandemic in their own ways, by pushing for policies that aim to reduce the risk of transmission without taking into account the negative affects to our health and well-being those policies present.

And I think this is very important to emphasize. The steps we have taken to minimize the spread of Covid had big benefits. They saved a huge number of lives. But they also have had enormous costs. And by almost any measure, American society just isn’t functioning very well right now. Violent crime has soared and it started soaring shortly after the pandemic began.

There was just this interesting study out that showed Americans’ blood pressure had gone up. Many people have just been working from their homes. Mental health problems have gone up. Drug overdoses have soared. And so the idea that we’ve all isolated ourselves and we’ve sublimated these normal human interactions, that has had huge costs. And so I think the thing we need to grapple with is at what point do the costs of pandemic precautions outweigh the benefits?

And then, of course, there are school closures and the untold ways they have harmed children. I absolutely believe that we kept kids at home for WAY too long in California, and especially in the Bay Area. We were not following the science, but instead were following our fear, and our children paid dearly for it. I don’t think we’re truly willing to be honest with ourselves about what a huge policy failure it was for students to be in remote learning for 15 months. And if we aren’t willing to admit to our mistakes, we certainly can’t learn from them.

And we need to learn from them, because things aren’t going to get better for a long time. At least, the decisions aren’t going to get easier. Another article from The Atlantic, helped me to understand how messy and unsatisfying the definition of endemicity is. That ultimately it means nothing, and “achieving it” will never be something experts agree has happened, nor will it matter much even if they do, because “reaching endemicity” doesn’t actually help us understand what our future with the novel coronavirus might hold.

Endemicity, then, just identifies a pathogen that’s fixed itself in our population so stubbornly that we cease to be seriously perturbed by it. We tolerate it. Even catastrophically prevalent and deadly diseases can be endemic, as long as the crisis they cause feels constant and acceptable to whoever’s thinking to ask. In a rosy scenario, reasonably high levels of population immunity could bring the virus to heel, and keep it there; its toll would be roughly on par with the flu’s. As coronavirus cases drop from their Omicron highs in the United States and other countries, there’s at least some reason to hope things are bending in that direction. But at its worst, endemicity could lock us into a state of disease transmission that is perhaps as high as some stretches of the pandemic have been—and stays that way.

If the end game of this pandemic is us figuring out how to live with Covid – how to live with the risks of Covid that will always be somewhat unknown – then we have a lot of work to do in figuring out how we’re going to assess risk and live with this. If omicron presents as much, or less, risk to me (as a double vaxxed and booster adult with no underlying conditions) than the flu or an auto accident, does it really makes sense for me to continue avoiding all the things I’ve been avoiding not to catch it? Yes, I understand that we can’t all get sick at the same time; society will come to a screeching halt if there aren’t enough “essential” workers showing up at their jobs. But once the case numbers come down and we don’t have to be so worried about too many people calling in sick for society to function, does it make sense to maintain all these safety measures? And if so, for how long? If endemicity doesn’t guarantee anything, at what point do we start living with the risk? Because it seems like we could be stuck in this limbo for many more years to come.

I’m sure this post will be unpopular. I remember being called “Trumpian” back when I balked at the closure of open park spaces early in the pandemic, so I can only imagine how poorly this post will be received. And I’m sure I did a piss poor job of saying most of this, and that the parts of the articles I picked are lacking in some way. I want to say more but it’s late and I know if I don’t just publish this it will never go up. And I want it to go up because I think we need to start talking about this stuff. So many of us are so unhappy. We talk about burnout and chronic stress and depression and the terrible weight of “no end in sight,” but we aren’t willing to talk about how our current pandemic response is contributing to, or causing, how horrible we feel. We tell ourselves it’s okay to feel hopeless because it has to be, but maybe it doesn’t have to be anymore. Or at least maybe it doesn’t have to be, soon.

I just think we need to start talking, and thinking, about an off ramp. It’s going to be a long time before public health policies change (at least where I live). Maybe if we start the conversation now, we’ll be ready to accept those changes, even embrace them, when they happen. Maybe we’ll even be thankful that they’ve finally been made. Maybe if we start changing lanes now, slowly and with caution, we’ll be ready to approach the off ramp when it’s finally revealed.

I’ve been remembering my dreams a lot lately. Sometimes I will go weeks without remembering a single dream. I’m assuming I still have them during these times, but I don’t remember having them. And then I’ll have a bunch I remember right in a row. I wonder why that is…

Two of my recent dreams were work related. Usually my work related dreams involve me being lost somewhere on campus and unable to get back to my class in time. I spend most of the dream in a frantic state, just trying to find my way back to my students.

These past two dreams were similar, in that a spectacular event was keeping me from work, but they were different in that I was far away, not on campus, while unable to get to my students. In both dreams I realized I should just call in sick so someone else could manage my classes. Once I remembered that I felt a lot better.

It’s interesting because right now I feel like calling in sick is just not possible. We don’t have enough subs normally and with the omicron wave it’s that much worse. But I do think things have quieted down in the last week. I guess if I really needed to I could call in sick. Perhaps my subconscious wanted to remind me of that.

One of the other dreams was even more obvious. I was in a big beautiful house by the water. At first I thought it was a big lake, but later I was sure it was the ocean. Everything was great, and I was marveling at the size and splendor of the house, when suddenly there was water everywhere. The water level rose to the second floor windows and was sloshing into the rooms. I started panicking, trying to figure out what was happening and where my kids were. I don’t remember much else, except that everyone around me was very calm, and kept trying to assure me that it was fine that the water level had risen to second story windows, that it happened all the time. I kept thinking, this is insane, this beautiful house is going to be lost under the water and no one thinks it’s a problem. Why can’t they see that we’re all drowning!

And then I woke up.

Don’t need to pull out a dream interpretation book for that one.

This week is a weird one. My kids didn’t have school yesterday (non-instructional day) or today (Lunar New Year), but my husband and I both had work. So we had to cobble together coverage during the school day, but still had afternoon activities with the kids. My daughter just started boxing with a friend so we’re figuring out how to get her to that 1-2 times a week. And the dojo reopened after a month-long Covid closure (no outbreaks there, they just wanted to be safe) so my son and I are back there a few times a week. I had a staff meeting today and a professional development meeting tomorrow. It’s a lot and I don’t like being this busy.

School is stressful for the next two weeks as it’s essentially the end of our second trimester. It really ends March 4th, but there is an outdoor education week, and a week off in the second half of February so assessments need to happen next week. I keep telling myself that if I can get through the next two weeks, I’ll get a little break.

Except I know those last two weeks of February won’t feel like the break I need them to be.

I wanted to write more but my cat came over and yowled at me until I surrendered my lap and I’ve been typing this one my phone for several paragraphs. I can’t keep this up so I’ll just publish now.

Do you ever remember your dreams?

Thank you all for your comments, which made me feel so much less alone. I especially appreciated when Polly mentioned wondering if what she was feeling were depression, but recognizing that it doesn’t feel the same as depression has felt in the past. I’ve also been going around in circles wondering if what I’m feeling is depression, or the precursor to it, but not feeling sure because this feeling does seem different, even if some aspects of it are familiar.

I have to admit, I’m terrified of facing depression again. Those years were horrible for me and I don’t ever want to go back there. I’ve actually been impressed with my general ability to keep the terror at bay – to just take it one day at a time and not let myself spin out into a panic about falling into a depression that I can’t get myself out of. But I can feel that talking myself down takes mental energy, energy that I don’t really have. Ironically, the fear of depression is another weight that might eventually push me into the hole that is depression.

And it’s true that there are all sorts of very understandable reasons why I feel this way. Why we all feel this way. And all of them are outside of our control. The only thing we have control over is how we respond, but even that feels outside of my control some days. Like I want so badly to just get over it and revel in what I do have. But I can’t.

I’ve been having… butt pain? That seems such a stupid way to say it but it’s all I got. My right glute has been causing me something between discomfort and agony a lot of the time. Standing doesn’t bother it so much, but sitting does and driving is excruciating. I’ve come to dread the hour plus I spend in my car every day.

I went to the chiropractor to see if she could help. I actually ended up going three times in one week, because two days after the first visit I pulled something in my left shoulder reaching up to lather my hair in the shower (probably because my body was so messed up from standing and sitting weirdly to accommodate my right glute). By my third visit in seven days I was despondent. Nothing was helping. It had been almost three weeks and the pain wasn’t going away. I didn’t know what had caused it initially and I couldn’t figure out how to make it better. My chiropractor thought a tight psoas muscle was causing the pain, but none of the psoas stretches I tried were providing any relief. I was freaking out that this pain that I couldn’t explain would never go away.

I was almost crying on her table when she said, “I get it. You feel like you’re doing everything right – you’re coming to the chiropractor, you’re dialing down your workouts, you’re stretching every day – and it’s not getting better. You’re used to getting results, and in this case, they just aren’t coming at the speed you’re expecting.”

And she was so right. I was doing everything I thought I should be doing. I was TAKING THIS SHIT SERIOUSLY. I was doing yoga videos instead of my weight lifting. I was running very reduced miles (and walking frequently), or not running at all. I was stretching for 20-30 minutes every night. I was spending almost $300 dollars, and three hours, at the chiropractor in one week. I was doing what I needed to do and it wasn’t getting any better.

And yes, later that night I saw the parallels with the pandemic, lining up perfectly. I have taken this public health crisis seriously, I have done everything the expects have asked of me, even when sometimes it didn’t make sense (and later it was revealed that it was grossly unnecessary (::cough:: closing county parks where people run and walk ::cough::). I have followed all the rules, and even maintained a more cautious attitude even when some rules were relaxed. And it hasn’t made a lick of difference. The pandemic still rages on, and our response to it probably won’t change (at least not here in the bright blue Bay Area) for a long, long time.

Honestly, I haven’t felt this beaten down by feelings of, but-I’m-doing-everything-right-and-it’s-still-not-helping! since I was trying to get pregnant. And I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to get pregnant lately because the damn rapid Antigen tests we have at home have me squinting for a second pink line in a way that causes me some serious flashbacks.

Trying, and failing (over and over) to get pregnant, despite TAKING THAT SHIT SERIOUSLY from before I even started, sucked. It was awful, and it made me miserable. The political situation and the pandemic are awful and it’s making me miserable. We’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s hard.

I have more to say, but I had a shit evening – including a fight with my husband and a frustrated cry while washing the dishes – and I’m tired.

Tomorrow is Friday. Maybe after the weekend things will seem better some how.

Sorry for not writing all week. I’ve been going to bed early. I’ve been WANTING to go to bed early. Usually I’m annoyed when I have to burn kid-free time going to bed early, but lately it’s been all I’ve wanted to do. I can’t tell if the desire to go to bed early is my subconscious urging me to do what I need to avoid falling into the hole of depression, or if I’m already in the hole and I want to sleep because that what I do when I’m depressed. I think it’s the former. I’m hoping it’s the former. Right now I’m going to go to bed early if that’s what I want to do, even if it means i don’t write a blog post.

Next week at work should be a little easier and I should have some more time to write.

I’m still time tracking. I’m doubting the value of it for my personally, but I’m going to keep it up for a couple more weeks.

It’s a balmy 63* today and we have some low key days planned. I’m grateful for them.

I hope you all have a nice weekend.

As you’ll see on Monday’s time tracking sheet, I’m writing this late. So I need to keep it short. Here are a couple highlights from each day, with my time tracking added too.

Saturday Highlights

My son and I took a trip to Target. I was getting a gift card for a friend whose baby came very early (he’s still in the NICU, but should be home soon), and my son was spending his Christmas gift card. He did a great job! He didn’t get mad when things cost more than he had, and he ended up getting a game instead of a toy. I was really pleased by how it went.

My parents picked up the kids at 3pm and I got to spend the afternoon and evening with my husband. It wasn’t without some bumpy moments, but it was a much needed break. I picked up Chinese food from a place we like and we watched a movie my husband had been wanting to see. It was really good.

Sunday Highlights

It was nice to sleep in on Sunday, though I only made it to 8:30am. My husband and I started the day pretty lazy, with two episodes of Succession and some pizza for breakfast.

I got the baby gifts ready and brought them over to my friend. It was her daughter’s 12 birthday, and I had a gift for her too (her daughter is friends with my daughter). It was nice to see them briefly and give them a little something to celebrate.

Sunday was also my mom’s 70th birthday. My dad, my mom and I went for a walk in my favorite park after the brought the kids home, then we had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants (her pick, but it’s a favorite of mine too). My mom was very happy to spend some time with me on her big day, and she was surprised that I had a present for her. It was nice to spend that time with them, and to know my mom felt she was being celebrated, despite having such a big birthday be ruined by the pandemic.

I spent the evening hosting two of my friends and their daughters. Both have had Covid relatively recently so we haven’t seen each other in a while. It was so nice to just sit and chat with them. The girls had a blast playing video games in the garage too.

Monday Highlights

Monday was supposed to be a pretty low key day, but my son was feeling left out that his sister not only had friends over on Sunday night, but also got to go to a friend’s house on Monday. His best friend was not available on Monday, and when I asked if we should try to find someone else to have over, or just do something fun ourselves, he chose the latter. So when I saw there were tickets to the Art of the Brick, which we’d been wanting to see, I grabbed them for my son and I (my husband and I agreed that he needed some down time so he declined to join us).

The Art of the Brick was a really great installation and my son loved it. We’ve actually taken him to quite a few museums in the past year and we’ve been surprised by how well he does; he’s genuinely interested in most of the art we’ve seen. He’s a massive LEGO fan, so I knew he would be into this exhibit, but I was not prepared for how much he loved it. I don’t think he was either. We both had a great time.

We walked to the Ferry Building after for an ice cream and I let him get two scoops with hot fudge and caramel. He was in heaven. He let me help him eat it and we barely made it through the sugar and cream monstrosity. It was very, very good, and my son proclaimed the afternoon “epic,” which made me quite pleased. It was nice to spend the time with him, and nice to make those memories.

This week is short (hooray!) and without in person marital arts it’s less busy, but there is a lot going on at work. Tomorrow I’m teaching the lesson that I was teaching last year when I had the panic attack on zoom. I’m really not looking forward to it, as I associate this lesson with that horrible day, but it needs to get done so I’m getting it over with first thing.

I hope this week is uneventful. We shall see.

My son is currently participating in a martial arts class. In our living room. On zoom.

It’s truly the worst kind of deja vu.

Honestly, we wouldn’t even be doing zoom martial arts (we’d be skipping it), except my son wants to because he wants to test for his red belt and he agrees that his attendance at zoom classes during the closure might affect his ability to test. I’m trying to focus on his commitment to his own martial arts practice, and his (mostly) positive attitude about taking the class on zoom today. He really has made huge strides in delaying gratification and working toward long term goals the past two years, and I’m trying to focus on that, and not the fact that it feels like we’ve taken a bunch of massive, giant steps backwards in our management of the pandemic.

I’m also trying to focus on the fact that I have an elliptical machine to work out on when it’s clear my body needs a break from running. I’d MUCH rather be running today, but when I woke up it was clear my body needed a break. Every pain point was improved yesterday after my Thursday chiropractor’s appointment, but today I feel the familiar pain in my right glute and I know that while it won’t hurt while I’m running, I will feel it afterward. So I’m on the elliptical while my son takes martial arts on zoom. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday morning. (The cloud cover is definitely helping me feel better about not being able to run.)

Yesterday was an okay day. I had a light day planned in the classroom and I was able to get a lot of work related tasks crossed off my to-do list. That felt good because a few of them had been lingering there a while, as I kept going to bed early instead of staying up to get them done. It’s nice to start the weekend feeling not too behind.

And while I was NOT pleased to have to hit up TWO DIFFERENT Costco’s yesterday, I’m so glad to have that unpleasant task behind me. I actually really like Costco, but it never feels like there is a time when I can assume it will be less crowded there, so I do my best to avoid the weekends and cross my fingers that it won’t be a mad house when I go on a weekday afternoon. Yesterday it wasn’t a mad house but the first Costco didn’t have three things I needed, so I hit up the other one on my way home. That one did have two of the three things (of course kid sized surgical masks was the one thing both stores were out of), so I guess it was worth it. Again, I appreciate knowing I don’t have to go again for at least a couple of weeks.

My husband and I watched The Lost Daughter last night. It was really good. I want to write more about it, but I need to process a bit. I had very complicated feelings about parenting small children, and this movie tapped into my ambivalence in… uncomfortable ways. Olivia Coleman was (for course) amazing and I like Maggie Gyllenahall’s style of storytelling a lot (this was her directorial debut). It not a “lighthearted romp,” but I definitely recommend it.

Today my parents are picking up the kids around 2:30pm and then my husband and I have 24 hours alone together. We REALLY need the time to reconnect, and I think my husband ultimately recognized that and decided our separate needs for a break from the kids, compounded by our shared need to reconnect, convinced him that the opportunity warranted possible exposure in either direction. We are letting our daughter continue with the swimming practice we signed her up for in December (that starts next week), and if we’re going to let her spend 30 minutes in an indoor pool with dozens of maskless kids all around her (because she has been waiting for this for two years and we promised her when she was vaccinated she would get to do this again), letting her spend one night with my parents seems totally acceptable.

{My parents might not be as cautious as we are, but they also aren’t totally careless: mostly they are just less likely to turn down an invitation to eat inside someone’s house or even occasionally indoors at a restaurant. But it’s not like they are doing either of those things frequently. And my mom has mentioned multiple times that right now no one (none of her friends) is doing anything. For the first time we both know a lot of people that have caught Covid, so that is definitely altering their behavior somewhat.}

Before I sign off, I wanted to thank everyone who reached out on my post yesterday. It really does help to hear that I’m not alone. I struggle with deciding whether or not I should write about feeling so done with the pandemic, when I’ve weathered it better than 99% of the people in the world. Ultimately I think it’s worth publishing those posts on occasion, because I suspect other similarly privileged individuals are also struggling, and normalizing those feelings is important. We can have it better than others and still find it really, really hard. My (our) struggle does not dismiss or diminish the suffering of others. It’s important to recognize that.

And here is Friday’s time tracking! I might set myself an hourly reminder to update my sheet today – I have a feeling the weekends are going to be a lot harder to keep track of.

I’m not in a great headspace. I’m not really sure why. I mean I can point to external factors being sucky but it doesn’t feel like any of them should be affecting me as much as they are.

But maybe I need to abandon my ideas of should and just accept that they are affecting me, a lot, so I need to take appropriate action.

Except I’m not sure what that appropriate action might be.

It’s a long weekend and long weekends are good weekends for my parents to take the kids. In fact, my parents were going to take the kids this weekend because we were going to SketchFest shows. But the whole festival was cancelled (sorry, postponed), and I honestly forgot that I’d already asked my parents to take the kids on Saturday night.

I reached out to them about still taking the kids, and they said sure. But when I broached the subject with my husband he got visibly tense and asked what my parents were up to these days. He was assessing the possible risk to our kids. Still. Despite their vaccination status. And after a short exchange he muttered, Well we just feel think differently about these things, like it was a judgement neutral declaration and not a admonishment of my lackadaisical willingness to put our children in harm’s way.

I had actually been more concerned about our kids exposing my parents. It’s my mother’s 70th birthday on Sunday. Shouldn’t that be the concern, especially now that our kids are vaccinated?

But evidently, in the eyes of my husband, it is not.

I went into the bathroom and cried, but only for a few minutes. Then I got angry. I am SO, SO TIRED of having this conversation. I am so, so tired of determining our own personal guidelines, in the complete absence of advice from comprehensible guidelines from actual health professionals.

I give the fuck up. I just can’t give a shit anymore.

I don’t know if we’re sending our kids to my parents’ house this weekend. I don’t know if we’re letting them see friends inside, with our without masks. I don’t fucking know! And right now I can’t care about that because I have to teach in 30 minutes.

Happy Friday.

Today I had a bit of a breakdown. I’m not even really sure why. I mean yeah, being a teacher sucks right now, but I recognize I have it better than most. And yes, being a parent kind of sucks right now, but again I have it better than most. We haven’t had Covid, despite so many people we know getting it. Our live haven’t been upended, despite some close calls. So far, we’ve weathered the omicron wave relatively unscathed.

So why was I crying in the car today?

I honestly don’t know. But I know enough to respect the fact that I’m not doing great and need to give myself some space. My goal is to get to bed early tonight, but so far I’m not on track for that. We shall see.

I’ve added three things I’m grateful for at the bottom of my time tracking. I’ve wanted to maintain a gratitude journal for a long time, and while just typing some stuff out at the bottom of a spreadsheet is an inelegant solution, it’s better than nothing. If I keep time tracking through the month I might even make it a habit.

Today I was thankful that I could run while still “attending” my professional development meeting. Yes, I was a little resentful to spend my running time learning why the term “micro-agression” is being replaced by “subtle acts of exclusion,” but mostly I was happy that I could run early in the day, when I had the energy and “time” to do it. If it weren’t for zoom meetings continuing to replace in person meetings that wouldn’t have been possible.

Our dojo sent out a notice that it will be moving all classes back online for a couple weeks to wait out the omicron surge. It’s not surprising, but still disappointing. I’m tired of couching my disappointment in, “it’s probably for the best.” We were supposed to be spending this weekend at comedy shows, and instead we’ll spend them at home. Again, disappointing, but probably for the best. Again, it sucks and I’m tired of it.

I’m tired of it. And I’m just plain tired. My back really hurts. I didn’t feel it while I was running, but now I do. Even the blissful bath I took when I got home was not enough to keep the pain away.

I really hope the chiropractor can provide me with some relief tomorrow.

Am I the only one who finds Tuesdays to be more tiring that Mondays? On Mondays you’ve stored up some rest from the weekend. Tuesday is the day you really feel the weight of waking up early and getting your ass out of bed before dawn.

I teach three different classes this year, all of them Spanish. I teach one class, Spanish 1A, three different times. I teach the other two classes, Spanish 1B and Spanish Exploratory, once each. The Spanish 1A and 1B classes have some similarities – I teach both of them with a mixture of language comprehension days and language learning days. The language comprehension days are generally more energy intensive for me; on those days I have to guide the class through an activity speaking almost entirely in Spanish. The language learning days are usually less energy intensive; after we learn or review a grammar topic, they will spend some time practicing it on their own.

I try to schedule my weeks so that I’m not doing comprehensible input in both 1A and 1B on the same day. This week, I moved the comprehensible input day for 1A to Monday so that I didn’t have four periods of comprehensible input to teach on Tuesday. This ended up working out rather well, except today I expected it to be an easier day, since my three 1A classes were mostly working on a little art project, and I only had to really be on for my 1B class, but it didn’t feel that easy, and I was frustrated because my expectations didn’t match my experience.

I find this happens a lot, especially at school. I’ll think I’ve planned myself an easier day, almost a recovery day after a more intense set of lessons, only to find that I’m more tired after the supposedly easier day. I think part of why this happens is that I try to cram a bunch of prep into the student work time on recovery days (like today I scored yesterday’s work while the kids worked on today’s assignment). Doing double duty during part of each class period is obviously not actually providing time for recovery. The other issue is that I am not realistic about how much teaching actually has to happen on these days. I still have to explain the assignment, organize the resources they are going to use, answer questions, manage behavior, and oversee clean up. When they don’t finish as quickly as I think they will, I need to scratch the “when you’re done” assignment I had planned, but I also have to come up with something else because 10 minutes is still a lot of time for a middle schooler to kill in Spanish class (but not enough time to do my original “when you’re done” assignment). These are also the days when students have the opportunity to come up and ask about work they need to make up, or can’t find, or aren’t sure about. I end up being “on” a lot more than I expect to be, and sometimes it’s more exhausting than trying to engage them with language they can understand all day.

I think the afternoons can be similar. It’s exhausting to get my ass to the dojo and participate in a martial arts class, so I expect it to be. But it can also be exhausting to find a 30-45 minute stretch to exercise without throwing off the kids’ schedules. The problem is, I DON’T expect it to be. Today I had all afternoon to work out, but I really struggled to get started because my lower back has been hurting and today it was pretty bad. I knew the strength training video I had planned was a bad idea, but didn’t know what else to do. It took me a long time to find a yoga video I thought would probably work, and once I got started I was so glad I was doing it, but getting on the mat was tough.

All this to say, I need to take these realities into consideration when I’m thinking about what is working and what isn’t. If the days I plan as recovery days are just as tiring as the days I expect will wear me out, I can’t really count them as recovery days. Which means I need to find other ways to recover. I guess what I need to figure out is what actually does feel like a light day – a day that fills me up instead of depletes me. Then I have to figure out how to reliably duplicate that kind of day. Or maybe it’s combinations of days that will eventually feel manageable. I hope time tracking will help me to figure it all out.

It’s late now, and I’m tired. I also have some more work to do. So here is my time tracking. Happy Tuesday.