Not a Wasted Word

As of 12:01am this morning, the Bay Area is officially instructed to “shelter in place.” We are only allowed to leave are home to buy food or medicine, or to care for others. I guess if we’re caught not doing this, there could be legal consequences.

I am going to work tomorrow to grab some materials I need to provide distance learning to my students. Evidently schools are considered critical service providers and teachers are critical personnel (phrasing?) so I’m supposed to say that if I get pulled over on my way there. (?!) So I don’t get arrested?! This is absolute insanity.

Today was the first day I was expected to provide distance learning for my students while guiding my own children through theirs. It… did not go well. I do think it will get better as we have fewer zoom meetings as a staff, and I don’t have to write so many “this is how distance learning in my classes is going to go” letters to students and their families.

It’s a lot. It’s so, so much.

I suppose with shelter in place we’re not supposed to go outside for any reason, but I will be taking my children out at least once a day. We’ll hit up big open spaces where we won’t cross paths with people. Truly, if we get arrested, so be it. I just can’t stay locked in my house without seeing friends or extended family for three weeks and keep my sanity.

{My husband, who works for the city, just assured me that recreation is an essential activity and that we are allowed to spend time outside as long as we practice social distancing. Yay!}

I feel like I should have more to say, but right now I have to write plans for my students for tomorrow. It’s going to be a really long three weeks, after which we may learn that we’re not going back for the rest of the school year.

I suppose we’ll see. Everything now is uncertainty.

When I got the comment asking how the COVID-19 outbreak was affecting life in these parts, there wasn’t much to say. It was Thursday morning and the only changes to my day-to-day life were increased hand washing, our dojo being closed, and an extremely light commute. By Thursday afternoon there were rumblings that things might change in the next day or so, and by Friday morning SFUSD, where my kids go to school, officially announced it was moving to distance learning for the two weeks before spring break. My own district followed suit on Friday, but we’d been told to be ready to send home materials the day before.

So Thursday night I taped the spines of 30 new graphic novels so my 7th graders could read and work with them at home for the next two weeks, and decided what to plan for my 8th graders. I knew I had time to figure out my lower level elective classes later. I also started thinking about how I would structure my days with my own kids at home, while I was supposed to be providing distance learning to my students.

This morning I went to Costco and experienced first hand the insanity that is the world right now. It was crazy there, but there was also plenty of everything (Costco is implementing a one-per-membership on toilet paper, paper towels, and water). I found everything I needed, and while it was hard to maneuver in the over-crowded line, I got out of there relatively unscathed.

And now I guess we wait, at home. My son has a stuffy nose and slight cough (both appeared last night before bed) and my daughter suddenly has a sore throat, so we’ll definitely be staying home exclusively for at least a week.

I will say, since schools have closed I feel very differently about “social distancing.” Before it felt like things were pretty much business as usual, since I was going to work where I had contact with hundreds of kids throughout the day. Canceling face-to-face instruction is a significant step, and now I feel very differently about being out in public. Mostly we’ll avoid it unless absolutely necessary. We definitely won’t be seeing either pair of grandparents any time soon.

My husband works for the city supporting night life industries and he’s spent the last two weeks fielding calls from the owners of music venues and other entertainment industries that are having to lay off their workers and are worried about losing their spaces, or their businesses entirely. We’re going to be seeing the repercussions of this in the economy for months, and years, to come.

Thank you for listening to me wax philosophical about what I want and need. I’m sorry if those posts are super obnoxious. I probably read more about that specific topic than most people (::cough:: minimalism blogs ::cough::, so I’m always asking those questions, and I’m frequently struck by how few answers I can find. I can’t tell you how many posts I’ve read that follow the same basic structure of: (1) Had too much clutter (stuff and schedule) (2) cleared clutter (3) determined what mattered most to me (4) made all future decisions based on this newfound clarity about what I actually value.

My story has not been so linear or tidy (ha!). I’ve been pursuing minimalism in some form (if even just the mindset) for years and I’m still stuck somewhere between 1 and 2. I never seem to determine what really matters and I certainly can’t use that clarity to make better decisions moving forward.

Maybe my ADHD brain can’t focus long enough to figure any of this out.

I guess there is a reason that I’m not, nor will I ever be, selling my brand. My brand is clearly “fumbling through life,” and I suppose that is most people’s brands, which is why we all flock to the Instagram accounts and blogs of those who have it more together.

I tell myself it’s still valuable to ask, even if I’m never quite sure of the answers. Who knows, maybe if I keep asking, I stumble across them one day, seemingly by mistake!

Do you ask questions you can’t answer? Why do you keep asking them?

Space is something everyone in San Francisco is looking for more of. It costs so much here that we don’t generally have much of it to live in (let alone for storing our stuff). You might be surprised what a person can do with a room here.

I read a post recently about how a real estate agent advised home buyers to choose a house in which they’d use every room every day. I laughed so hard when I read that, that I choked on a gulp of water. Space is at such a premium here that there isn’t a square foot I haven’t agonized over. We sleep in what is supposed to be our living room, and eat in a water damaged room behind our kitchen so that our proper “dining room” can be the living room. We use every single square inch of space in our house every day. The idea that an entire room might not be taken advantage of on a daily basis is kind of baffling.

Then I thought about moving downstairs and making it our “master suite.” If the kitchen downstairs didn’t have the stairs we going to build into it, we wouldn’t use that room. It will basically be a stairway when we’re living in the entire house (but we want to keep some kitchen functionality so that it could once again serve as a separate unit if our kids, or parents, want to live down there some day). And will we really use the all of that “master suite” every day? Is sleeping in a room every night enough to say we “use it”?

My son had his first friend over to spend the night this weekend and at 6:30am on Sunday (so really, 5:30am as far as my body was concerned) he and his friend tiptoed loudly into the living room to turn on the Switch. At that point the idea of sleeping downstairs was amazing, but those mornings are random and rare. Does that experience mean we need it?

I’ve been trying to think a lot about what I love about my house and what I don’t (the parts I have control over, not the over all quality or aesthetic of the actual house). When we move the rooms around I want the layout to be well thought out and purposeful. I spend a lot of time considering different options, and not just because it’s an easy escape from the day to day – I want to be aware of how much power I really have in crafting a space I love, and to exercise that control whenever possible.

That purposeful eye has been trained on my days as well. What in my schedule serves me? What could, or should, be cast aside? This weekend we got an email explaining that our dojo is closing for two weeks in accordance with the city’s recommendation that all non-essential gatherings of more than 50 people be cancelled. Since there is even more person-to-person contact at the dojo than at most “gatherings,” they really felt they should comply and so now we have two weeks without martial arts practice. I have to admit, my first reaction was relief. That is 4-6 classes (between me and my son) I won’t have to maneuver into my schedule this week or next week. I was mostly glad to get a break.

Those moments make me think a lot about what I really value in my life. The thing is, martial arts brings a level of meaning that I don’t have in a lot of other areas of my life. I am learning so much and it feels great to stretch my brain and body to the brink a couple of times a week. It’s also stressful to arrange pick up and childcare on those days – to negotiate the time away from family. I really do feel that my martial arts practice enriches my life and increases my overall well being, so why am I relieved when it’s non-voluntarily taken away from me?

I wonder about these things a lot. I read enough about minimalism that I’m constantly nudged to look at my life more purposefully, but I still struggle for clarity when I think about what is worth my energy and commitment and what I should jettison (both with things and commitments). I’m thinking about it at work a lot too. What do I really want to accomplish in my classroom? What do I want my students walking away with every day? Here again the end goal can feel like it conflicts with the day to day. I want them to succeed in Spanish II as freshman (if that is their choice) so they need to know how complete rote grammar activities accurately, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time on that kind of work in my classroom (and I certainly don’t want to score it). How do I meet these seemingly conflicting goals?

How do I train at the dojo in a way that feels satisfying, without feeling like my evenings are crammed too full with commitments?

How do I organize my house so that my family has adequate space to gather, and to decompress?

A friend from the east coast was recently in town and we spend the evening together. She is originally from the area and her family still lives here, so I sometimes ask her if she thinks she’ll ever be back. She used to be sure that some day she would be, but this time when I asked she said she didn’t think so. She likes how far her money stretches where she is. She doesn’t think she’ll ever move back to the Bay Area or the big city where she spent her mid-20s – she just doesn’t value the area enough for her money to stretch so thin. My friend earns 135% of what I do, and her husband surely earns at least as much more than my husband does. They live in a house that is three times bigger than ours and costs them half as much. When I think about how much more money she must have than me, just sitting in her back account, or being siphoned into 529s for her kids, I wonder why we stay here, where our mortgage devours such a massive percentage of our monthly take home pay. I can list off the reasons we live here with ease, because I repeat them to myself almost every day, but I’m not sure if any of it means anything. I’m also not sure that having all that money to put aside means anything either. That is my point – I don’t know.

I wonder sometimes if I ever will know, at least for me. I recognize that I spent my 20s and 30s sprinting through life with little thought to the choices I made and how they affected my overall well being, so I suppose asking the questions is a good place to start. Maybe some day I’ll have the answers.

Sorry I was away this week. (And last week?) I couldn’t seem to pull out of a spiral of distraction and was really struggling just to get through the days. By the time evening rolled around I just wanted to curl up and read my book or play Blockscapes.

Part of why the week was busy was because I was getting ready to go to Seattle! Without my kids! And with my husband! My flight leaves in an hour!

I can’t remember the last time my husband and I got away like this. It’s been at least five years. Maybe longer. We travel with the kids, and sometime alone to see friends (he also has conferences, which is what this is – I’m tagging along for the first time because flying to Seattle is so cheap), but we haven’t spent a weekend together in ages. And we haven’t stayed at a hotel alone in even longer (maybe a decade?!)

I am so excited to get away. And equally excited to spend time with my husband. We’re on separate flights (I didn’t get mine in time) and he has some conference obligations here and there, but we’ll get to spend lots of time together. And honestly I’m very excited to have some alone time as well.

I hope to use some of my alone time to write, but I can’t make any promises. I hope you all have a great weekend!

When we bought our house I wanted very much to incorporate the lower unit into the bigger whole. I wanted a real bedroom and a second bathroom. I wanted a living room and a dining room, and a wall between where I slept and where the family hung out. When I think of how different mornings would have been with a baby and toddler with that downstairs space it makes me kind of crazy (they would have been very much improved).

But now, 7.5 years later, I’m not sure sure we need those extra square feet. Yes I still want a real bedroom with four walls, and yes I still very much want a second bathroom (even a half bath would be so great), but I don’t want that space as much as I used to. I wonder if the space we have is enough.

It’s hard to get a grasp on what “enough” looks like in America, where our perception of it has been distorted by the “bigger is better” mentality that has dominated our cultural narrative since, well, the founding of our country.

I find what enough feels like for me changes with the company I keep. Most of my friends are in a similar economic situation to me, but one bought her house with her MIL’s help (her MIL lives in a unit below) and it’s much bigger and nicer than mine. I find that when I leave her place, I am much more inclined to believe that we need the “master suite” our downstairs unit will provide. I was recently at an old’s friend’s house which is probably twice the size of mine, and has been totally renovated in a very chic, modern style, and I went home hating pretty much everything about the house I live in.

But I read enough minimalist blogs and articles to recognize that I don’t need the space and stuff that most messages would lead me to believe. I also know that I’ll never be content if I let what others have affect my appreciation for my own life. The sheer amount of space, and stuff stored in that space, that our house already provides for four people (two of whom are children) is totally insane. There is no way four people need what we already have, and we’re going to borrow a ton of money to utilize more?

But otherwise that space will just sit there. Which certainly informs our decision. We would rather rent it, but we’ve been burned so badly that we’ll never feel comfortable doing so again. Does that make it okay to take more than we need?

This idea of enough has been permeated a lot of different lines of thinking. How many nights a week of down time are enough? How many hours at the dojo are enough? How many months of swimming lessons are enough? How many field trips chaperoned are enough? How much money raised for the PTA is enough? Enough means something different to everyone, but it feels like right now I have no idea how to answer the question for myself.

I’m trying to be more aware of these questions, so that even if I can’t answer them, I’ll get closer to a resolution. I may never know how much of something is enough, but maybe I can narrow the field so that the different possibilities feel manageable.

How do you define and determine enough?

So I’m on week two of a total news fast. I’m not looking at anything, not even reading headlines. I have no idea what is going on in the world. And since I’m not on social media, I don’t even know about the cultural touchstones that bring people together. This past weekend my husband I watched Parasite (SOOOO GOOD! DEFINITELY SEE IT!) and I mentioned that it was a big deal that it had been nominated for Best Picture and that if it won it would be first non-English movie to win Best Picture and he informed me that the Oscars were actually last weekend and that it had won. I had no idea that I even missed it, or who had won anything! (So happy Parasite won – that is awesome.)

And I have to say, after I grappled with the fact that I’m so isolated at my job that I don’t even happen to participate in conversations about the Academy Awards in the week after they happen, I realized I don’t really care that I’m missing even the fun stuff, and I am even more intent on staying away from the news, at least for a while longer.

I don’t know what it is about me that I can’t handle social media, or I guess any media, while others thrive participating in it, but I guess it’s who I am, and I believe if I accept and honor who I am, I will be happier for it.

So I’m not planning on returning to the news anytime soon. Right now I’m content being ignorant. Maybe after a more time away I’ll be strong enough to read a little something here or there, but right now I need to take a break. And I’m honoring that.

I’m super depressed about the state of things right now. The Republican party, after acquitting a president that openly asked a foreign power to meddle in our election, is more popular than it’s been since 2005. The president himself is more popular than he’s even been during his presidencu, with half of the population saying he should be re-elected. The Democrats are flailing around trying to find someone to unify their base, while admitting that’s all but impossible when they don’t really have a base, but many different groups that identify as Democrat for different reasons. Trump is almost certainly going to be re-elected this year, with a strong economy and record-low unemployment rates. The past four years, in all their misery, will ultimately be looked back on as not that bad, because Trump will surely unleash untold horrors now that he’s been acquitted, and especially after he is re-elected.

All of this feels almost certain. A part of me knows I shouldn’t think these ways, that I should be hopeful for a different outcome. But another part of me wonders if that hope will just make the fall that much harder when it happens. Will I be more prepared for the nightmare that is Trump being re-elected in November if I assume it will happen? Or will the bleakness of that assumption make it harder to face the reality once it’s come to pass?

In the meantime I’m disengaging for a while. No more TPM. No more NYT. I just need to step away, because reading about it makes me so incredibly depressed. I haven’t felt this bad in ages. This kind of hopelessness is a dark, deep hole, and I don’t know how to get out.

All this winter, I’ve watched my students be out of school for a week or more and come back looking like death warmed over. Some years everyone’s coughing all winter, some years everyone’s blowing their noses for months, but this year seems to be all about the really, really, bad bout of something.

I have thanked the forces that be that my family was making it through the winter relatively unscathed. No one had even missed a day of school for being sick yet! (Only my husband had gotten anything that required he stay home.) Then, this weekend, it finally hit us.

My son was fine Sunday morning. In fact, I was planning a biking riding get together at the local park when he suddenly said he didn’t feel that great. An hour later he was in bed with a fever.

That fever hit 103.5 and stayed around there for THREE DAYS. He had a cough and stuffy nose right away. He didn’t start throwing up until 24 hours into it.

I already had a cough when he got sick, but it got so much worse on Sunday evening and by Monday I felt awful. I never had a fever or threw up, but I still have an awful cough. I haven’t been able to take time off of work yet, we’re short subs and I’m about to lose my 7th graders for a week (before a week off after President’s Day – so for two weeks), so I need to be at school right now. Luckily today I almost felt normal.

My husband took care of our son for Monday and Tuesday and he was amazing. I’m very lucky he can take time off so much more easily than I, and that he’s so good at comforting our kids when they are sick. My son has been calling out for his dad every night this week when he wakes up (though he doesn’t mind if I go in to help him).

So far no one else in the family has whatever horrible bug my son got. My husband isn’t feeling great today, and is very nervous he got it, but I’m hoping he just has my cough and not the awful that my son had. But even with only my son sick, and my husband able to stay home to take care of him, this week we’ve all been in survival mode. Every day I’m literally counting the hours until I can go to bed.

I hope by this weekend we’re all well again. In the meantime…

Wash your hands everyone. Wash. Your. Hands. Whatever is going around this year is ROUGH.

Thank you all for your thoughts and ideas about living abroad. The summer option is obviously a good one. We spend some time with my extended family in St. Louis every summer which is very important to me because it’s our kids only experience with extended family and I want their cousins to be important to them. But even if we still went to that we could probably manage four weeks every summer. While the cost of flying internationally on a yearly basis feels daunting it’s obviously less than the cost of losing my position and making much less somewhere else when I come back. It also negates the need for my husband to take a leave from his job, which he’s not super interested in doing. It’s definitely a start.

We can’t travel abroad this summer and probably not the next, but maybe then we could start. My daughter will only be 12 at that point so we’ll still have quite a few summers left. And while four weeks a year will never be as effective as one entire year for my fluency, it’s certainly better than nothing.

And yes, I recognize money isn’t everything and no one looks back and wishes they had made more. But I sometimes wonder if people don’t wish they had picked a job with more earning power. Living where I do, with the cost of living as high as it is, I definitely wish that most of the time. But maybe I’ll feel differently at the end of my life. Maybe by then what I earned will feel like enough, plenty even.

I was in a funk this week. I couldn’t manage to show up here, even though I tried. Yesterday was especially hard. I spent a ton of time putting together a set of stations for my block day and my second class shit all over it. I left school feeling like a failure and wondering why I keep trying to do this when it never seems to get better. It was demoralizing.

I was supposed to go to martial arts last night but I also had to take my son earlier so he’d be ready for his next belt test. By the time I got them both home and fed I really didn’t want to go back to the dojo for a 7pm class. Without my own test coming up it was easy to tell myself I could skip it. In the end, it was only because I can’t go to my two classes on Saturday that I pushed myself out the door.

And of course I was glad I went. We practiced all the new green belt techniques I am so excited to learn. And it was nice to focus on myself during class and talk to other adults afterward. I even had a conversation about my day where I recognized that I’ve had far fewer days that feel demoralizing this year, which was part of why it was hitting me so hard. I left feeling better about everything.

All that to say, I was reminded again that I’m almost aways glad when I go. And I supposed I’ve learned that lesson enough times that I rarely let the voices that urge me to stay home win over. Instead I’m more inclined to listen to the voices that tell me to just go.

Just go.