Not a Wasted Word

Thank you for the kind and encouraging words after my last post. Thursday and Friday were really hard days for me. Thankfully, I’m feeling better after the weekend.

I took some much needed breaks from work this weekend. I worked late on Friday and early on Saturday, but then took Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening off. I worked again Sunday night but it felt more manageable after the break.

At this point, I would absolutely change things up to make them easier on myself but I just don’t know how. I don’t know what to give my students except what I’m giving them, and what I’m giving them takes an incredible amount of time to create, push out, and then review. If someone handed me a magic goose that honked out something else I could use, I’d absolutely post those golden eggs all over my google classrooms, but I haven’t found a goose like that yet. I’m really struggling. I don’t know how to make this easier for myself.

It’s so hard to find the time to get everything done, while also helping my own children do their work. I’m basically working on my own stuff, or helping them with theirs, for 90% of my waking hours. It’s not sustainable. Thank goodness we only have eight or nine weeks left of the school year, and my kids have one or two fewer.

This weekend was very much appreciated. We hit up the Great Highway again (third time for me in six days). This time we did the beach, at my daughter’s request.

It was a beautiful day and we stayed on the sand for over an hour. Then, to my surprised, they rallied to scooter too. We went eight blocks total and the kids had a great time!

We also visited the duck pond that has become a weekly ritual, but this time there was a turtle. We got a video of it jumping back into the water, which thrilled the kids.

On Sunday my kids played MarioKart against my sister and her boyfriend in London. They have been wanting to do that forever and were so stoked to finally get the chance.

Then we went down to my parents’ backyard to try out their newly refurbished hot tub. My husband would have preferred we didn’t go, but he didn’t stop me. It’s hard because we frequently have different of ideas of what is appropriate right now – he will not leave our house for weeks at a time, but that would make me go crazy. So I do most of the shopping, and I take the kids out and he stays home. I know the visit was not essential, but we managed ourselves in a way I believe was safe. We follow the shelter-in-place guidelines pretty rigidly, but we also take advantage of special occasions when we can. (My husband parrots the “is it really essential?” line all the time, except when I’m getting stuff for the backyard, which is a project he cares about, so I remind him that we’re all blurring the lines when we it serves our purposes.)

{I’ve been reading a lot of articles about how this won’t end, really, ever, and instead we need to change our mindset to reflect the fact that we’ll be living with this virus, and varying levels of restriction, for years. I think it’s appropriate to start finding ways to make what will likely be many more months of intense restrictions more sustainable both mentally and physically.}

I also got to go on a quick run while my kids were in the hot tub (my mom watched them from a chair) and I saw this llama getting it’s own afternoon stroll.

On the way home from my parents, we stopped at the nearby junior college and rode bikes in the empty parking lot. The kids thought it was awesome to have the entire parking lot all to themselves, and we stayed for over an hour.

It really was a nice weekend. My period is finally over and between the hormone shift, the time away from work, and the time outside, I’m feeling a lot better. (I’m also just not letting myself think about the next school year, at all.)

How was your weekend?

Wednesday was a great day. I went to work in the morning to grab some stuff I needed. Driving to work always lifts my spirits, maybe because it’s a familiar set of actions that I miss dreadfully. Being in my classroom is always bitter sweet, as I miss that space more than I ever would have anticipated, but all in all, a trip to work feels good. I also got to miss the chaotic morning routine. Any time by myself is greatly appreciated these days.

At noon I had my martial arts class. This is the short, super intense workout that is more like a 30 Day Shred than a regular martial arts class. It gets my heart rate way up and keeps me strong.

High off the endorphins of that class, I went into the backyard and filled 10 bags with the stuff we had cleared on Sunday but couldn’t bag (because we were out of bags and Lowes was closed for Easter). We’re at a place where working in the backyard no longer makes me anxious, but I can only work back there if I can shower immediately afterward because something in that yard makes me break out in a rash. Wednesday was perfect because I had to shower anyway, and it was a beautiful day.

After I showered I took the kids to the Great Highway to ride bikes. The fog had rolled in, but we still had a great time. I’ve been trying to get them on their bikes since the shelter-in-place started and it felt good to finally do that. The Great Highway is the perfect place for them to ride; my goal is to ride there once a week while it’s closed to cars.

If you’re wondering how I did all of that on a work day, well, that is a fair question. I ended up working well past midnight that night to make up for all the time I’d lost during the day. I’m still not sure if the positives of doing all that during the day was worth how late I had to work, and how tired I was the next day. I’m struggling to determine if I feel the trade offs for the positives are worth how hard I get hit afterward.

Wednesday was such a good day, that I didn’t even get that upset when my principal called to give me some bad news. It wasn’t until I went to bed that I started to dwell on it, and things went swiftly downhill after that.

Next year I’ll be at the other middle school again. They missed the March 15 pink slip cut-off so the teacher must have left of her own accord. They aren’t trying to find someone new because we’re in a budget crisis (huge loss of earnings from programs that aren’t renting our facilities now, or over the summer). So next year I’ll be commuting between the campuses again. And honestly, it sounds like that is their plan long term.

The idea that I’ll be teaching at both middle schools again makes me deeply depressed.

I understand that next year will probably look VERY different than a normal school year. There is talk of staggered schedules, where kids only come on certain days, or where half the kids come in the morning and half come in the afternoons. I’m not upset about next year specifically (though it’s not fun to know I’ll be back in a situation I hate again). It’s the realization that this is most likely the situation forever that deeply depresses me. I finally got to a place where I am content at my job, and I didn’t think about leaving anymore. It took me YEARS of hard work to get to that place. And this past year I was pretty happy. And now I’m learning that my position will be at two campuses in perpetuity, and I know I can’t manage that in the long term. Commuting between campuses, sharing a classroom at one school, reconciling the schedules when they change, it totally depletes me. I don’t feel like I belong to either community when I’m traveling between them. It makes me miserable at my job.

I can do it for a year. I can’t do it forever. So Wednesday I was effectively told that I will need to find a new job. And the idea of that makes me so, so sad.

I know there are a lot of unknowns here, but I also see the writing on the wall. And yes, I recognize how incredibly lucky I am that I haven’t lost my job already. One of the reasons I stayed in my job was for the security that I’m now so grateful for. It’s knowing that I have to give that up eventually – or be miserable – that is making me so depressed. But yes, I get that I am incredibly lucky that I’m not out of a job right now.

Thursday was a hard day for me. I felt awful. I cried constantly. It felt like I’d spent all my serotonin the day before and now I was nursing an emotional hangover. In the afternoon I got my period and was so relieved to know that the feeling of dread that had settled was at least partly due to shifting hormones. It’s Saturday and the feeling hasn’t really lifted. I hope it gets better soon.

I’m trying focus on the here and now. There isn’t really anything else to focus on. I can’t distract myself with summer plans (Camp Mather was officially cancelled, which has me coming to terms with the cancellation of everything else this summer). There is just right now. Except that right now I’m always working, I’m always tired, I’m always stressed and frustrated, and sad. Right now is hard. But it’s all I have. So I guess I just got to open up to this pain, instead of running away. I guess that is the goal right now.

I’ve been drowning this week and I feel like I barely have time to come up for air. This set of texts I sent my friend late last night sums it up pretty well.

So yeah. That is where I am at right now. Maybe I’ll have time to write more later.

I would say I’m so glad it’s a Friday but I’ll be working straight through the weekend. At least the kids won’t have work to do.

I heard that The Great Highway was closed north of the city line last week, when I learned that Ocean Beach was being closed along with the last of the open spaces in San Francisco. I assumed that closing The Great Highway there was an attempt to really drive home that Ocean Beach was closed; it’s a sprawling beach that can be accessed by crossing The Great Highway for a couple miles. I didn’t think the strategy would be all that effective, as it’s the street parallel to The Great Highway that people park on to go to the beach, but I assumed it was the best they could do to close a massive beach that has infinite points of entry.

Yesterday I was determined to run as I recognize I need some outdoor exercise at least once a week and Mondays is a good day for me to get it. I was trying to think of a spot where I could run, knowing that almost all the trails I usually frequent are closed. Then I remembered there is a path that runs between The Great Highway and the neighborhood to the east of Ocean Beach, and decided it would be impossible for them to close that off. I decided to give it a try, knowing that if somehow they had closed it, I could always run around Lake Merced again, which I knew for sure was open.

Driving over to that area, I saw that the Great Highway really was closed, as my friend had shared with me. Again I tried to determine what they were hoping to accomplish by closing such a long stretch of highway when that wouldn’t effectively keep people away from the beach.

When I got there, I was shocked to see people running and biking on the Great Highway. Was that why they had closed it? To give people more space to be outside? It’s the perfect stretch of road to close as no other roads intersect with it for a long, 2+ mile stretch between the zoo and Golden Gate park. You can close it to traffic without diverting many cars, and there is an easy detour in the street parallel. The idea that they had closed The Great Highway to give people more space to be outside, after closing almost everything else, made me so happy.

I ran right down the middle of The Great Highway yesterday, even though the path was also open. I did it just because I could, and because I probably won’t be able once the shelter-in-place is over. Getting to run down one of the most beautiful highways in the state is a special perk right now.

• 

I’m going to be bringing my kids there tomorrow to ride their bikes. It’s a flat stretch with two lanes open in either direction, which makes it the perfect place for them to ride. After a week spent entirely on our property, it’s invigorating to know we have a new outside space to explore.

It looks like they are no longer attempting to keep people off Ocean Beach either, so that is another place we can go. The parking lots are closed to keep the crowds down, but I saw people streaming past a parked police car and two rangers, so they clearly are okay with people being on the beach in some capacity. Perhaps they only ride up and down now to enforce social distancing. I wonder if they realized it was better to give people that huge space where they can be outside and safely social distance, or they just couldn’t enforce the closure of such a massive beach with so many access points.

I know there are important reasons to close the outside spaces, and I know most people accept their closure without giving it a second thought. I have definitely been struggling with it more than most people I know, though I have enough friends who also panic at the idea of only walking in a short loop around their house to know that I’m not totally unreasonable in my despair. My friend, who is from Chicago, said she thinks us Californians, who prize our outside spaces and live in high COL areas partly because of the beautiful outside areas and the mild weather that lets us enjoy them year around, find it especially hard to stay inside for weeks at a time. In Chicago people are used to staying inside for the better part of the winter, but here in San Francisco we never have to shelter from the cold like that. It feels very foreign to us to stay inside for weeks, or months, at a time.

At the end of yesterday’s run I felt better than I have in weeks. Moving my body under the sun, and in the fresh air, reinvigorated me after so many days spent hunched over my computer at home. I know we need to do everything we can to stop the spread of this horrible virus, and I very much appreciate that the city has given us a place to stretch our legs safely, away from others. For once, I was so happy to see that “Closed” sign.

It’s been a busy week back at work. Having said that, I think our new “block schedule” is going to make everything more manageable. I only have to post new work on two days, which means I can only grade and input work on two days (unless I want to revisit all the assignments a second time to score again after the procrastinators finish). I’m supposed to be posting two days worth of work on each day, but I’m finding that the block schedule helps me keep my expectations reasonable. I was definitely giving too much work before the break.

I’ve spent some time doing a broad map out of my two biggest classes, and will map my wheel electives this weekend. I’m still not sure how I’m going to follow up with the MANY 6th and 4th graders who are not doing anything in my class. I have 96 students in those four classes (two classes of each grade) and it’s way too much for me to follow up with all of them. I’m still working on that. It feels good to have some general information for myself written down somewhere.

My kids district evidently wasn’t really back in session this week, as teachers were given yet another week to determine how to deliver distance learning (they didn’t actually provide any distance learning the first two weeks either, they just sent students home with packets to work on, but there was no contact with teachers). This was mentioned, non-nonchalantly, in an email sent by the district on MONDAY AFTERNOON. We’ve received nothing from our kids’ school admin, though we have gotten some texts from their teachers (none announcing there was another week without distance learning though!)

As a teacher myself, I’m astounded at how badly SFUSD has handled this crisis, and I always have exceedingly low expectations of the district as whole. Luckily for us, our daughter got one of the awesome SFUSD teachers and she’s had a great week of learning. I am SO THANKFUL we ended up in her class because my friend’s daughter is in the regular 4th grade classes and it hasn’t been going nearly as well.

I’m picking up a packet from their school today for my son, who’s in Kindergarten. (Why could they not send these packets?!) I don’t really expect them to do much on zoom or other apps, but I do hope we’re not just given some paperwork and left to our own devices. I don’t really understand how teachers can expect to be paid if they are doing nothing after dropping off a packet. I understand these are hard times, but there are ways to do things, here and there, to help kids feel connected. We shall see.

{I have a lot more thoughts about teaching right now, but it feels like I should save them for another post dedicated to that topic alone.}

I haven’t left our house in a week, and it’s starting to get to me. Now that everything is officially closed (they even closed Highway 1 north of the city/county line and have rangers patrolling Ocean Beach to keep people away), it just doesn’t feel worth walking around our neighborhood. We are getting out into our backyard – but that space causes me profound anxiety so it’s not helping to alleviate my stress, though I do appreciate the time outside and working with my kids. I’m going to try to schedule a solo run once a week so I can enjoy the outdoors with out my kids (I tried to have them scooter with me last Friday and I ended up pulling their scooters for half of the four mile circle, which was a great workout, but not very fun). I will also be better about making them go on walks this weekend (it rained all last weekend which is part of why we didn’t make it outside).

I have done NOTHING for Easter and my kids keep talking about how excited they are for Sunday and I’m very close to freaking out. I have a couple of stuffies for them, but no candy and I can’t even find my eggs. My mom is going to bring me some stuff tomorrow (we usually do Easter with them) so hopefully it will work out, but they won’t get to dye any eggs. You can’t forget shit until the last minute and get it delivered these days. I guess I could brave Target for some stuff… but ugh, that sounds awful.

How are you doing today? Any plans for the weekend? 😉

I read the “grief” article that was circling a while back. It’s popped up in my reader a lot since it came out. Mostly people feel very validated hearing that the complicated range of emotions are, at least partially, rooted in grief. Naming an experience definitely helps us manage it. When I first read it I mostly nodded along, appreciating a way to better understand what I was feeling.

The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.

That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief, Havard Business Review

Almost immediately I read a different response to the article, and I have to admit, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. This response felt the article cheapened the very real, very deep experience of true grief and suggested that the reasons Americans are suffering so greatly is due to the expectation of freedom and prosperity that we have is so prevalent in this country of such wealth and political stability.

They do it because it’s easy and because grief, like pain and suffering, is considered noble. You’re not a hyperventilating hot mess, frazzled from too much time at home with the kids in between videoconference meetings,  pouting because your fun that involves travel or socializing has been postponed indefinitely. No, you are feeling “anticipatory grief.” Gimme a fuckin’ break.

Lovecraftian Times, Xykademiqx

I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thing. On the one hand, I do believe that what many people are experiencing is a form of grief. On the other hand I also believe that many Americans (surely the intended audience of that particular article – and definitely me) have come to expect that life will look the way they want (or at least expect) it to look, because they have lived relatively sheltered lives in our wealthy, stable country.

We have never, as a nation, suffered a common natural disaster. We haven’t fought a foreign entity in a war on our soil since the Revolutionary War (which doesn’t really count). We’ve experienced very limited acts of terrorism within our borders. Our government has never been overthrown by our military. Our society was built on the tenants of personal freedom, even at the expense of others. Sacrificing for the greater good is a decidedly not a fixture of our cultural norms. It makes me wonder, does the segment of our society that the “grief” article was meant to console (again, definitely me included) lack the grit and resilience necessary to get through a challenging time without naming our difficult emotions as grief? Is grief really the right word or is bewilderment, as Xykademiqx names it, a more appropriate word.

What you’re feeling isn’t grief. Please, don’t cheapen grief. It’s bewilderment in the face of the unknown because you’ve spent your whole life able to count on stability and prosperity. But that’s not a feature of most societies, and even when it is, it’s never for more than a few uninterrupted decades.

Lovecraftian Times, Xykademiqx

I’m really not sure what the answer is. I don’t disagree with either article, and I’m still trying to figure out where I stand (which I recognize will probably be what best serves me and my immediate needs). I’m really curious what your take is on these two differing views.

Do you believe what we’re feeling about the upending of our lives is grief? Or do you believe calling it grief is inappropriate, and cheapens the word?

My husband and I had a conversation today that made me realize why I’ve been having an easier time working from home with our kids around than he has.

My husband is used to his work day being a protected entity. His familial obligations only rarely infringed on his professional time. I, on the other hand, have always worked less than I would ideally work, and that discrepancy has always been for the sake of our family. I always leave school earlier than I want, with more tasks on my to-do list than I can get done in the time I’ll have the next day, because I need to pick up the kids. I’m used to finishing prep work during one class, with students all around me doing something else, because I didn’t get it done the night before. I’m used to being a few steps behind, of prioritizing tasks and reorganizing plans because there just wasn’t time to get it all done. I’m used to getting my job done in far fewer hours than I need to do it well, or at least as well as I would like.

My husband is not used to any of these things. His work day was always a sacred space, and now it’s being infiltrated, and he doesn’t know how to manage that.

I’m trying to offer him so much time away from us, because I know he needs the long stretches of uninterrupted time more than I do. I can get stuff done in 15 minutes chunks. My husband cannot. So I offer him huge swaths of the day downstairs where no one interrupts him, while I mute my Zoom calls to help my kids with their math, or negotiate about what they can and cannot do next (yes, they should know what they can do next, no they don’t want to remember that because what they CAN do next is never what they WANT to do next). I also have a better idea of what they are working on academically, and what they should be working on. So it makes sense for me to be upstairs with them for the bulk of the day. I have fewer calls to make, fewer moments when I have to be available at a certain time. My work is more asynchronous, while his is more synchronous. Even while he’s working from home during a fucking pandemic, the city if riding the 9-to-6 work day. It’s crazy how hard it is for people to let shit like that go.

I understand that nothing I can offer him will ever be enough, that it will never equal his uninterrupted, six-hour work day. But it really sucks when it’s not even appreciated.

I wonder how many men around the world are witnessing what it’s always been like for their spouses, and yet still not really seeing it. It’s crazy how hard it is for my husband to see something that is directly in front of his face.

I guess it makes sense – witnesses never accurately recount what happened. I shouldn’t be surprised that my husband can’t either.

Yesterday it was raining and for some brief moments it felt like it probably would have in the rightside up*. I would have felt a fair amount of dread about going back to school the next day (going back after spring break is always hard because there are no more breaks until the end of the school year – and this year that was an 11 week stint). I would have felt under prepared for what was coming, and I would have regretted squandering what I had. I would have chided myself on the state of the house, disappointed that I hadn’t purged all the shit like I’d planned to. I felt all the things I normally would have felt, and even though they were mostly negative feelings, I kind of reveled in them. Truly, I felt almost normal.

But there was a competing feeling, that voice whispering a futile reminder: you were supposed to be going back tomorrow, the shelter-in-place was supposed to be over. I can still go back and feel the shock of confirmation that we were missing just two simple weeks of school. It felt unfathomable. And now we’re officially out for four more weeks, and everyone is talking like we won’t go back at all, even though our district is too cowardly to make the official announcement. (Internally we are speaking like is has been formally ordered – per the governor and state superintendent’s announcements – but parents have not received that messaging yet). It’s crazy to think that three weeks ago the suggestion that we’d never go back would have been met with total denial. Nobody would have believed it. And yet here we are. What a difference three weeks can make.

{And I suppose that is why our district is not saying it outright yet – because they want to give people time to digest the fact that we’re out four more weeks before they bring the hammer down on hope for the remaining seven.}

I’m struggling with what to do with my kids during this time. I’m not so stressed about the schooling they will miss – I know they will be fine with their post-bachelor-degree parents and the copious resources at our disposal. But I hate the idea of them sitting in front of screens all day. And yet, what else do I offer them? It’s one thing to request imaginative play a couple of hours a day, but for its entirety? For a week? For a month? And now that our outside adventure time has been whittled down to a mere hour spent wandering the neighborhood (where the only adventure is avoiding the dog shit that suddenly is EVERYWHERE – I guess pet owners don’t need to clean up after the dogs in the times of coronavirus) there are even more hours every week to fill.

I don’t know how we’re going to get through this. There are SO MANY HOURS before then and now. My son is already struggling so much.

{And as a teacher, I’m terrified to go back to school in the fall and try to engage students that haven’t sat in a desk for six months – many of them facing food scarcity and getting no breaks from the trauma of their home life.}

So yeah, just trying to reconcile the two different feelings, one of almost-normalcy and one that feels like things will NEVER be the same again. I’m sure the latter is closer to the truth, and I’ve mostly accepting that. Which is probably why I feel so bad right now.

*I’ve taken to thinking of our new coronavirus reality as the upside down, mostly so I can refer, in my head, to what I think of as my “real life” as the “rightstide up.” The parallels aren’t really there, I know, but it’s working for me right now.

I’m really struggling right now. My focus has been decimated by all this. I can’t get anything done. I’ve lost hundreds of dollars worth of things – important things – over the past few weeks (my Rx glasses, my nice sun glasses, my earpods). I wander around getting nothing done. I burn food on the stove because I forget I’m cooking it. I wander around with something I’m supposed to put away, but just set it down in another random spot. Not only am I not accomplishing anything, but I’m making a lot of things worse. I am a mess.

My marriage feels like it’s falling apart. I know it’s not, but that is what it feels like.

My kids are having a hard time. The excess Switch time (for Spring Break) is coming back to bite us in the ass. It’s harder to get them outside for a long enough stretch that it resets them now that most of the spaces are closed (though a city just south of us is leaving their beach open and that day was amazing). Yesterday I couldn’t convince them to leave the house at all, when all I had to offer was a walk around the block. (Yes, they lost privileges for making that decision, but they preferred to lose those privileges than to go outside.)

Our spring break is ending and it’s back to the distance learning grind on Monday. For all of us. My principal was so desperate for us to take an actual break that she wouldn’t even entertain the idea of us collaborating on the new schedule until our “work days” this coming Monday and Tuesday. So I’m not sure what will be expected of me once we start distance learning again and I can’t really plan what I’m going to do, which is driving me crazy.

{Before we were pushing work to kids on a daily basis, but that workload felt unsustainable for most of us. We also want to start zooming with our kids on a more regular basis (our students could not access zoom with their school accounts until the end of last week so we weren’t all teaching that way regularly yet), which presents scheduling challenges at the middle school level where each students has six or seven classes/teachers. So we are considering block schedule-like alternatives where students only zoom with, and get work from, certain teachers on certain days. But we haven’t talked about what that might look like at all, and as an elective teacher who teachers four different grade levels, there is a lot of uncertainty for me.}

We get almost no communication from our kids’ school, which has such a large population of free-and-reduced-lunch families that they don’t even have a way to email parents in situations like these. I keep hoping for something in the mail but it doesn’t come. So I have no idea what they will be expected to do starting Monday, and I doubt I’ll receive any clarification, which means their distance learning will be up to me, at least for a little while, probably for the duration.

{There have been multiple articles about how varied the distance learning situations are across districts in the Bay Area. I’m definitely teaching in a district that is providing more than most and my kids are at a district – and especially at a school – where they are doing less than most. It’s… interesting to see the differences first hand.}

My house is a perpetual mess. I’m trying to declutter but, well see the first paragraph.

I’m trying meditation. I’m trying to “stay connected.” I’m trying to get good sleep (my son wakes up with bad dreams every night so that makes it hard). I’m trying all the things I’m supposed to be trying to make things better. It’s not really working. (Or maybe it is, but not enough to make me feel better?) I’m hoping that with my husband available this weekend (he’s been working his normal hours this week – he doesn’t get a spring break), I’ll be able to get caught up on a couple of projects and things will start to feel more manageable. Because right now, nothing feels manageable. At all.

Thank you for educating me on the necessity of these steps. When I went to the beach, it looked like this.

But clearly that is not the case elsewhere. Just because I have not seen the behavior that warrants an action doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I do believe officials are making decisions based on our overall well-being in these impossible times. I will remember that moving forward.

The reality is that our mental health cannot be a concern right now. It just can’t. And of course protecting our physical health is the main goal.

…

The state superintendent of California announced today that we will not be returning to school this academic year.

I am gutted. I expected this decision, but somehow the confirmation has totally leveled me. I can’t stop crying.

I’ll never see my 8th graders again. Not in real life. I won’t get to see them graduate or hug them after they’ve walked. The grief they must be feeling… I can’t imagine.

I haven’t told my kids yet. They will be devastated.

I need to change my mindset and start taking this one week at a time. If I look ahead anymore than that, I won’t be able to keep it together.