Not a Wasted Word

I am listening to Atomic Habits. I really like it so far. It has me thinking a lot about the good habits I’ve created, and the good habits I have never been able to stick to, despite numerous attempts over many years. It also has me thinking about the myriad bad habits I would like to break.

I really like how the book frames habits, not as necessarily good or bad but just the answers we found for problems over the years. I was lucky enough to realize many years ago (my sophomore year of college) that I needed to exercise regularly to manage my depression and anxiety. I had a problem (a tendency to be depressed and anxious) and I found a solution (if I exercised I felt less depressed and anxious). Since then I have exercised 3-4 a week, except due to injury or illness. I am very lucky that I made the connection between exercise and improved mental health. If not, I would probably not make exercising the priority it is today.*

I also must have made a lot of other decent habits, because I made it into a competitive university, graduated, got a teaching credential and a job, then got a graduate degree. I also managed to find someone who was willing to marry me and have kids.

But there are so many good habits I still want to create. I want to make it a habit to pick up around the house every night for 5-10 minutes. At this point I think the best way to do that would be what the author calls “habit stacking” (plan to pick up the house for 5-10 minutes before brushing my teeth – which I do every night). I could also tell myself that I can’t do another thing I want to do until I have picked up the house. I think setting an alarm on my phone for the first week would help me with this, especially since I’m not eating after 7pm so I’ve been brushing my teeth early to ensure I won’t eat again (there are few things I hate more than having to re-brush my teeth). I wonder how many weeks with the alarm I’ll have to complete before this becomes a habit? Hopefully the reward of having a neater house will motivate me. It would be even better if I could remember to have the kids help too, before they brush their teeth but that feels like a much loftier goal at this point.

At the beginning of the book the author talks about 1% gains and how over time they add up to something incredibly significant. I am definitely someone who wants to see improvement, and the idea of striving for 1% gains feels difficult for me. But I also know that I am very motivated to maintain something I have achieved (another reason I am so good about maintaining my exercise regimen despite my busy schedule – I don’t want to lose the definition it’s taken me years to achieve). I don’t know why keeping the house neat is a habit I’ve never been able to maintain – probably because organizing my stuff is especially challenging to me and I’m lacking some of the skills that would make this habit easier to implement. But if I work on it every day maybe I’ll make some head way.

I could write a whole post about the many “bad” habits I want to break, but not today. 😉

What is one habit you are happy to have? Do you have any new habits you hope to form?

In SF we call it Indigenous Peoples Day. In most of the country it’s Columbus Day. When my school district started taking it off last year it was simply marked as Local Holiday. I guess they didn’t want to bother with the politics of it. No matter what it’s called, I’m very happy to have it off.

Saturday I assisted in my son’s martial arts belt test, then went to my own martial arts class then joined the dojo community for forms on the beach.

Yesterday I met my mom at the area Amusement Park with my daughter and her friend and my son and his friend (my husband was supposed to come but he’s on day five of a man cold). I spent the day with the boys and my mom went with the girls and everybody had a lot of fun. The amusement park really goes all out for Halloween so it felt different than all the times we went this summer.

Next weekend is my son’s birthday party and the weekend after my husband is out of town and I have an all day professional development. Today we have nothing planned and I am very much looking forward to lounging around all day. I even did most of my grading on Friday night. All I have to get done is some cleaning and some laundry.

I am very much looking forward to today.

Are you off today? Or is it a regular Monday?

This week was a hard one for me. I ended up being summoned for jury duty on Tuesday (in SF, you are on call for an entire week and every afternoon you have to check and see if your group has been summoned). Luckily I had left my classroom prepared enough to write some sub plans to cover the minimum day without going back when I found out (at 4:30pm). I missed two important conferences but left notes for the other teachers to share on my behalf.

Unfortunately we ended up being brought down to a courtroom almost immediately for jury selection. I was never called to the box, but I spent six hours listening to other people answer questions with the only outlet being my phone (which I wasn’t supposed to be looking at). For a girl with ADHD, it was pretty brutal, especially as I was constantly worried I would get called to be a perspective juror. It was the worst combination of anxiety and boredom. Restless does not even begin to capture how I felt.

They didn’t finish jury selection by 4:30pm so we were sent home with instructions to return on Thursday (Wednesday was Yom Kippur so there was no jury service). I appreciated having a day at work to prepare for yet another day away. I also appreciated going to martial arts on Tuesday night, instead of back down to my classroom.

Tuesday was really frustrating for me, and I struggled to figure out why I was so upset by the whole thing. I realized another stressor was waiting for our tenant to sign the buy out agreement we gave him almost two weeks ago. Despite multiple emails inquiring as to when we might expect him to return it, we heard nothing. I felt so powerless and everything felt so uncertain. I realized I felt the same way about jury duty, sitting in a florescent lit room waiting for my name to be called arbitrarily and the next few weeks of my life made immeasurably harder.

So yeah, I handle feeling powerless and being out of control badly, but there was something else at play, and then I finally put my finger on what it was. It’s one thing to manage uncertainty, but I become enraged and resentful when I feel that uncertainty is being caused by someone who I deem unworthy of having power over my life.

I believe our justice system is fundamentally broken and that the jury selection system causes undo stress and hardship to the small percentage of people who actually show up. The system is flawed and unfair and I am resentful that it can turn my life into chaos with no regard for the fact that I am trying my hardest to be a productive, law abiding member of society.

I could write a novel on my thoughts about the unfairness of the tenant rights situation but everyone’s time is best served if I don’t. Needless to say, I absolutely resent the power our tenant holds over us, when we have been responsible, fair landlords and he has not upheld the spirit of our lease agreement dozens of times over (I say spirit because it would be impossible, in a court of law, to prove he broke our agreement). The fact that we are at the whim of his inability to make decisions and commit to his agreements is infuriating to me.

So yeah, it was a rough week, and I’m working through my anger and resentment about it all.

Wednesday night I was up late writing sub plans and Thursday morning I was back at the “Hall of Justice” expecting to sit through another brutal day of jury selection. Imagine my surprise when the judge came in to tell us that one of the lawyers had a family emergency and he had granted a mistrial, which meant we were all excused from jury service. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be a massive understatement. I initially considered driving to work but I had spent so long writing sub plans that I decided to take the day for myself.

On my way back to the bus stop my husband called to say that our tenant had finally responded to our emails. He wants more money than we agreed upon (after weeks of initial negotiations). I wasn’t surprised. He has a long history of agreeing to something only to decide that he doesn’t actually agree to it a few weeks later, after we’ve already taken costly action. We immediately changed the contract and put it in his mailbox, communicating that if we didn’t find it there signed by Friday at 11:59pm we would be withdrawing from buy out negotiations. Even if he does sign we have 45 days of uncertainty ahead as he is granted that long to opt out of the contract without penalty. We’re hoping that if he does sign his habits of procrastination and inaction will finally be working in our favor.

If he doesn’t sign we are in for a long and costly legal battle that we may not even win.

I am trying to see the nuance of both the jury selection system and the tenants’ rights situation in San Francisco, as I know they both exist for good reason, reasons I can support when they aren’t wreaking havoc over my personal life with seeming reckless abandon. Getting an impromptu day off is definitely helping.

September was brutal this year. It felt very busy – lots of meetings and events. I suppose it always feels this way but this year it seemed to drag on forever. I was VERY happy when it was finally over.

I am relatively happy at work right now. I am SO GRATEFUL to not be commuting to the other campus, and the 4th grade class is very low key. They are squirrely and hard to keep on task but they are also enthusiastic and appreciative. It has definitely been a positive change for me.

I’m creating a lot of new stuff for work, which is my favorite part of my job. Most of it was inspired by the two-week professional development I did over the summer. We have first follow up for that later this month and I’m excited to share what I’ve done.

It’s officially fall which means HEAT WAVES in the Bay Area. September, October, and November are generally our warmest months. We are getting stretches where the mornings are cool enough to warrant slippers (at least in our poorly insulated house), but we’re also getting lots of 80* days (in the city – it’s generally 90+ on the peninsula on those days). This weekend it’s really warm, but by now we all know this is par for the course in our area.

We even had a short but intense earthquake on Saturday. I feel like those tend to happen in the fall, but maybe I’m just imaging that.

It’s also Halloween costume and planning my son’s birthday time. My kids both know what they want to be and I’ve purchased their costumes (mostly). My son is having his first birthday party and we’ve booked the park and bouncy house (and changed the bookings for both of those when most of his friends couldn’t make it on the original date and time). I definitely enjoy October and Halloween (and I LOVE teaching Day of the Dead), but this year I’m having a hard time finding the energy to decorate. Maybe next weekend, when we get Monday off.

The kids are fully transitioned into the new school year. They both like their teachers and classes. My daughter is in a 4/5 class at her school and initially I was really nervous because the teacher is new (this is only her third year teaching and her first with an actual teaching credential) and split classes can be challenging, especially in a school with so many students who are not at grade level. But the teacher ended up being awesome and now I know she’ll have her again next year which is a big relief because the straight 5th grade at her school is up in the middle school hallway and has been plagued with teacher turn over and other issues that have had me contemplating pulling her for her last year of elementary school. Now I don’t have to deal with any of that. My son has my daughter’s K teacher, and we love her, so I know he’s in good hands. After a year away from an immersion classroom his Spanish is flourishing. I am so glad my kids are at a Spanish Immersion school.

Martial Arts has been going well. I plan to test for my green belt before the new year and I’m getting myself to the classes I need to adequately prepare. You start learning a whole new kind of movement as a green belt and I am so ready to move past the straight-line punches and kicks I have (mostly) mastered to the elegant curves and hooks learned at the higher belt level. I continue to be invigorated by sparring; I find that I learn more about myself in sparring than anywhere else in my life right now.

Not much else to report. I want to say I think about writing here a lot, but that is actually the problem – I don’t! Well that’s not entirely true. I think about it during the day when I have no time to write, but I never remember at home in the evenings when I could actually sit down with my computer. It’s just not a habit for me anymore, and I doubt it ever will be again. I must admit, when it comes time to pay for this space again I think it’s likely that I won’t. I just don’t feel the pull to write here anymore, and throwing money at something I don’t love is hard to justify. We’ll see.

My grandmother passed away today. She was 93 and had severe dementia. We have all been waiting for her to slip away for so long – it’s been her time for a while now. Still, I’m sad. She was my only grandparent growing up and now she’s really and truly gone. I honestly thought, with all the time we had to prepare, that it wouldn’t be that hard. I guess loss is never what you expect.

Most of us grandchildren will need to fly in for the service, and the aunts and uncles aren’t in a big hurry to make it happen. Eventually we’ll come together to remember her life, but not for a little while. I appreciate that.

Goodbye Nai-Nai. Your favorite oldest granddaughter loved you a lot.

My husband is about to go away with friends to a music festival in Memphis from Tuesday to Sunday. It also happens to be book fair week at my daughter’s school. It’s going to be nuts to be sure.

My husband is actually going away for a week each month between now and November. While one is work-related he doesn’t have to go for work, he was just invited in his work capacity and wants to go because it looks good on his CV. Oh, and it’s in Australia. The other two are strictly fun trips with friends.

I am going no where.

But he “feels bad” and we “talked” and I told him that I was going to be asking for the time to train for my green belt test, which will be a challenging test and will require some extra time at the dojo. It was important for me to ask for that specifically because I got a lot of push back from him about the two weeks I needed to get ready for my high yellow belt test, which coincided with my summer professional development. I hope now that I explicitly tied that time to his time away he will handle my requests better.

I’m also taking some me time this weekend. Yesterday afternoon was spent at my old work colleague’s Oktoberfest party (the one who left last year), after which I spent the night at my parents house (my old colleague lives very close to them) and this morning I’m staying at my parents’ house getting shit done since it sure as hell isn’t going to happen next week. My husband always offers me time to get caught up on work during the weekends but if I’m home it’s hard. I’m excited to have uninterrupted time today

My husband is never thrilled when I ask for what I need, but even he can’t sulk when he’s about to go away for a week. I’m getting better at asking for what I need, regardless. Yay for a me weekend!

As I mentioned last year, we found someone willing to be president of our PTA. This year I am vice-president, in hopes of helping the new president through her first year. At the end of this year, I do plan to step down as vice-president (which is not a position that needs to be filled for the board to continue).

The problem is I’m evidently horrible at delegating, and even worse at passing along responsibilities entirely. So far I’ve done an absolute shit job of handing over the reins to someone else.

I guess it’s not surprising, since at my job I’m basically a lone wolf who is free to decide what I want to do and then executes those ideas all on my own. I’ve only rarely had someone to collaborate with and even when I did, I’m realizing looking back that I did a shit job of it there too. I like to do things by myself, and when I’m motivated I can get shit done like gangbusters.

I did basically no prep work this summer to hand over the “presidency” of the PTA to my predecessor, who is an incredibly smart and capable woman. I’m sure she could handle the ins and outs of this role herself, if I’d just give her the information and tools to do it.

Instead I spent much of August and the beginning of September doing everything I used to, while only peripherally involving the new president. I realized pretty quickly that I was failing miserably at stepping down from old role, but as I recognized how much work I’d need to do to effectively step down, the idea of doing so felt more daunting.

I finally met with the new president this weekend and officially handed over two major responsibilities. When I articulated her role in an effective way she immediately took concrete steps to assume those responsibilities. It’s clear that she DOES know how to create systems that will allow the passing of the torch to be much simpler moving forward.

The good news is, I have way less motivation to do anything PTA related than I thought I would. I’m pretty much burnt out. So I’m having less trouble not taking on the stuff I used to do. And the reality is I can’t copy fliers anymore (my work gave us “copy codes” at the end of last year and can now track how much we are copying so making 500 copies for the PTA every week or so just isn’t going to fly anymore – even if I’m buying my own paper which I’ve always done). Since fliers going home in folders is our school’s primary way of communicating, we need to figure out something else. The fliers have never really been effective at producing the parent participation we wanted anyway, so it’s easy to let that fall by the wayside as we explore more effective options for communicating with parents. Anyway, it’s been nice to say, I can’t design/print/copy/sort the fliers anymore and also be okay when that means it just doesn’t happen. I feel the tendrils of this position loosening their hold on me. Now if I can just hand over the reins, I can really step into the background.

The book fair is at the end of this month and then October is pretty light. That is when I hope to fully let go of grasp on the position of PTA president. I am so grateful that my predecessor is capable and that I feel confident in her ability to take on the role. I just wish I had done more in the last two years to delegate responsibilities, so I didn’t have so much to hand over.

The beginning of the school year is always busy and stressful for me, as both a teacher and parent. This year was especially so. This last week I had three Back to School Nights in a row and today I am done. Just done.

I want so badly to come back here and to write, but I struggle to get inspired. There are topics I think it would be interesting to tackle, or posts that I think people might want to read, but ultimately I don’t seem to care enough about writing them. It’s so much easier to consume than to create.

I did take the news app off my phone which has helped me to take back some of the time I’d lost to mindless scrolling. BuzzFeed listscicles definitely were my Instagram or Facebook-equivalent black hole, and they are no longer a part of my life. I haven’t actually missed them at all, which I find surprising. Instead I’ve played more Wordscapes and read more or my book. I also replayed the first The Room, which is a great game.

We gave our tenant ten days to respond to our buy out offer. He was supposed to let us know by today if he was interested. He hasn’t made contact yet, so we’re determining our steps forward. I’m frustrated that he’s just freezing us out, and will likely push us to legally evict him, which will be a protracted and incredibly expensive course of action. At this point I just want it to be over, but it won’t be for a long time and it makes me so frustrated and infuriated. It causes me an incredible amount of stress.

Not much else to write about right now, at least nothing to tack on to this post. I just wanted to say that I’m still here, and I’m still alive, and I’m really thankful that it’s a three day weekend because I’m already exhausted and burnt out and the school year hasn’t even really started.

I have mugs with pictures of both my kids: One of my daughter with various pictures I took in her first year and one with my son’s newborn photo shoot shots. I love using those two mugs, and I look at the pictures every time I drink out of them.

I love them so much, that when I got back from Colombia last year I decided to make a mug with pictures from that trip. Last year I drank out of that mug a ton; every time I remembered a moment from our trip.

I already made a new mug with pictures from La Paz. I dream of one day having a dozen mugs in my cabinet, each one of them with memories of an amazing adventure.

Right now I feel so, so lucky to have these two.

(I have a La Paz post mostly written so I do think I’ll get up one of these days – hopefully soon!)

Today is my kids’ first day of school. My daughter is now a 4th grader and my son is in Kindergarten. And for the first time ever, they are AT THE SAME SCHOOL.

Just one drop off. Just one pick up. I am SO EXCITED.

I only get this for two years, if that, so I’m going to try to really appreciate it. (I also plan to let my daughter get herself to and from school starting in 6th grade so hopefully my days of dropping off and picking up in two spots is really and truly over. We shall see.)

Of course, I’ll be doing all the dropping off and all the picking up again, despite SO MANY conversations with my husband about how unfair that is, and how it makes me resentful and angry. We may be able to swing it so that once a week he does pick up, but right now that is the most I can hope for. I really hope that eventually he takes over one drop off too, but I’m not holding my breath.

{For all the people who just need to tell their spouse that they need to take on more and they do it, YAY FOR YOU! But please remember that some of us aren’t married to people like that, and I promise you, we ARE trying to change things. I am trying so, so hard but the progress is so, so slow.}

I will say that I am SO READY for the school year to start. I’ve had a LOT of quality time with my kids this summer, especially my son, and it hasn’t necessarily been pleasant, so I’m ready for us to get some time apart. I also think that a lot of my son’s “attitude issues” this past month are an expression of his unconscious anxiety about starting at a new school, and I’m REALLY hoping that a week in the classroom will help him process some of that, because I’m am SO TIRED of being yelled at and hit and kicked and having stuff thrown at me. I AM SO, SO DONE.

Students are back at my district on Wednesday so I have a couple more work days to get prepared. I’m no longer commuting between the two middle schools in my district, which is AMAZING news. Now I just have to teach one 4th grade class at the upper elementary school that shares a campus with us, so it’s just a walk away. The students will actually be coming back with me to my classroom, so I’m teaching all day in my own space. Woot! (I really do think sometimes that employers make life miserable for their employees so that returning to the status quo feels like a luxury.)

I really am happy with my schedule this year. Things aren’t necessarily in the order I would have preferred, but I like everything I am teaching and I got first period prep so I don’t have to worry about being late to work after drop off four days a week so yeah, I’ll take it happily.

Good luck to everyone that is facing the first day of a new academic year, be it on the parent-of-student(s) side or the educator side, or both! I hope you and yours have a fantastic year!