Not a Wasted Word

I got some upsetting and stressful news today (will share later, just don’t have the time and emotional bandwidth to write it down now), right at the end of 1st period.

I was VERY distracted, after the fact. I struggled mightily to reorient myself in my regular day. I actually had my 2nd period watch a movie, because I just didn’t think I could manage teaching an entire class. I also needed to get my grading done once and for all (grades are due tomorrow), and I needed to show the movie at some point anyway, so it was easy to tell myself I had good reasons for throwing my lesson plan out the window and turning on the TV. But really I just couldn’t pull my shit together and teach.

I did manage to get my act together by 3rd period though. I toyed briefly with the idea of having that class watch a movie too, but I knew it didn’t make as much sense for them, so I stuck with what I had planned. And I pulled it together, and switched gears, and re-entered my regular life.

And then I got some great news at the end of 4th period (more on that later as well), and I was super stoked, and I didn’t let the other shitty news taint my elation.

I’m still handling the upsetting and stressful news well too. When I tell myself that there is nothing I can do about right in this moment, so there is no use in running through a litany of what-ifs when all it does is make me miserable, it actually helps me to put the worry down and walk away. I think I’m finally learning how to let the voice of reason prevail. Or maybe it’s just my anxiety is not as intense for some other, totally unrelated reason, and that is allowing me to break out of harmful cycles of unproductive worry. Either way, I SO APPRECIATE being able to manage this is a way that feels appropriate and comfortable (I mean, yes, I’d much rather NOT be dealing

I always assumed I’d be a much happier adult than teenager or twenty-something (those years were ROUGH for me), but I never considered that I would just keep feeling better, more comfortable in my skin, more able to manage difficult situations. I am actually learning from my experiences, and changing in positive ways as I gain perspective. I think my 40s are actually going to be pretty great.

Quick thoughts on a Sunday / almost technically Monday.

My daughter got into the drama camp, but not the tech camp she really wanted. She was super bummed. I looked into tech camps afterward and they start at $1200 for the week! Um, I’m sorry but I can’t afford that (oops, sorry, I don’t prioritize that). I guess she’ll just have to keep dreaming about her first encounter with a 3-D printer.

It’s expensive to buy summer camps for two kids ($2K for only three weeks total for each of them), but not as expensive as having to pay for full-time childcare i didn’t need to save my son’s spot between school years.

I ended up finding decent flights to St. Louis after worrying I’d have to pay significantly more than last year. They are not great times (super early) but are non-stops and it’s Southwest so I won’t get screwed by checking bags. I’m pleased to get that out of way.

I really want to know what our tax situation is. Badly.

I saw Captain Marvel tonight and it was awesome. So exciting to see another kick-ass woman super hero story. I doubt it will happen but I’d love to see Black Widow star in her own stand alone.

I took the kids to Adventure Playground again and the weather was so beautiful. It was a really great day, and I was reminded yet again what a difference some sunshine can make. Honestly, I was miserable before and I didn’t realize the extent of how bad I felt until the rain stopped and the weather got warm. My mood has improved drastically.

We hit stand-still traffic on the bridge coming home but these pictures almost made it worth it.

Not a bad looking city if I do say so myself.

{Also, this new phone takes damn good photos.}

This morning, at 10am, I will be playing the Rec and Park summer camp lottery, hoping to get my kids into a few camps they want (or for my son, the only ones available for five year olds). In the past I spent weeks combing over the catalogue, attempting different configurations that fit into our summer schedule.

It can feel a little complicated because my kids are out of school almost two weeks before me, and our St. Louis dates are largely out of our control because the “farm” weekend is planned many months in advance. And since many of the camps are impacted, I always need to have a plan B or C in case we don’t get into our first choice. So yeah, it takes a lot of time and requires a lot of foresight.

This year though, I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to start looking. I finally opened the catalogue earlier this week, found a few camps I hope we get into, and put them on my wishlist. The only two my daughter wants are hugely popular and I don’t even have a Plan B for the two-week arts camp that happens when I actually need coverage. I guess if we don’t get in there I’ll have to find an option outside of Rec and Park.

Getting ready for the summer camp registration forced me to think about a trip abroad with the kids. I haven’t really broached the subject with myself because I’m so terrified of our possible tax situation that I haven’t let myself even consider it an option. Also, our St. Louis flights will be much more expensive than last year, so I don’t know if it’s really worth it.

I also had to calculate how much we made with AirBnB, and then how much we spent on cleaning services (for our taxes) and honestly I don’t know if it’s actually worth it for us to do it again. After subtracting the small business and short-term rental licensing fees the city requires, plus all the cleaning services, we barely made enough to cover one set of flights last summer. I mean, it’s not nothing, but it’s also a crazy amount of work and I don’t know if (here in San Francisco) it’s actually worth it. Especially when my husband and cat have to be displaced, and neither one enjoys that.

{Really, what it will come down to, is if the possible money we could make would be enough to make a trip possible, and my guess is no, it won’t provide enough to fund an international trip. Since we’ll definitely be out of town for St. Louis I’ll have to decide if we want to rent out our space then.}

So I guess I’m feeling pretty blah about my summer. I keep reminding myself that it’s all about priorities. We bought a great car (earlier than we anticipating needing to) and that has stretched us thin on the financial front, and there are consequences for making that choice. Who knows, maybe our tax situation won’t be as dire as I’m fearing and we can still make something work. And if not, it’s okay. A low key summer at home could be really nice.

Wish me luck with summer camp registration! Only 10 minutes until it opens!

What do you have planned for this summer?

As I explore my values, I recognize more and more how important service is for me. I am a very privileged person who has so much more than so many people. Being of service to others is important to me. And I do this not for external recognition, but for my own internal reasons. Recognizing this has helped me manage my expectations on the PTA front, and I feel a lot better about the time and energy I put into those projects. This is a good thing, because the spring carnival is in one month which means we’re officially in crunch time. I’m going to be spending a lot of time on it, but that’s okay because being of service is important to me.

It doesn’t hurt that a few staff from my daughter’s school have reached out to tell us how thankful they are to have a PTA that puts on events and supports their school. It really can be challenging to teach at a school with very little parent involvement and so many socio-economically disadvantaged students. These teachers are fighting against a system that has set them, and their students, up to fail. Many schools like my daughter’s have no PTA and no school-wide events. We provide something that teaches can feel good about at their school, and the ones who recognize that and communicate their appreciation definitely help remind me that the service I am providing is actually worth while. As long as I am confident my efforts are making a difference, I am okay with the doing the work.

It’s funny how a change in perspective about something can totally transform the experience.

It has rained A LOT in Northern California this winter. A lot a lot. Like almost every day for months a lot. I know we need it, and ultimately it’s a good thing, but man it was starting to wear.

This week the sun is finally shining and the temps are inching into the low 60s. It feels so good to be outside.

The sun and blue skies almost make up for sprinting forward on Sunday.

Almost.

One of the activities the Designing Your Life book and workbook require you try is to track your energy and engagement during various activities (at home, work, and everywhere else) over a 3-4 week period. Throughout the day, you are supposed to look back on the things you did and determine your level of engagement (how interested you were in the activity and how quickly time seemed to pass while you were doing it) and your energy level, both during and after the task. I’ve been doing this, and I’m recognizing a phenomena that so far the book has not mentioned. A lot of the activities I really enjoy – they provide a lot of engagement and leave me feeling energized – are challenging enough that I don’t necessarily look forward to them.

Take martial arts for example. I am really enjoying martial arts right now. I finally got my yellow belt which means I’m learning new kicks and hand work at almost every class. I’ve also finally started sparring, which is intense aerobic exercise that requires incredible mental focus. I am constantly moving, anticipating the other person’s moves while also planning my own. It’s all-consuming, and at the end I’m both exhausted and exhilarated. My usual runner’s high can’t hold a candle to how I feel after sparring.

And yet, sparring is rigorous exercise – both mental and physical. I don’t generally look forward to it. Even though I know I’m going to feel great after the fact, I also know how intense it is in the moment. It’s not that I dread sparring or anything, but knowing I’ll be doing that instead of just lounging around at home on a Saturday at noon, is a bit of a weight. So yes, the actually activity is the epitome of engaging and energizing, but the anticipation of the event can have the opposite effect.

The same goes for assisting at the dojo. Our dojo is a non-profit that relies heavily on volunteer support. I am there every Monday while my son takes the class for 3.5-5yos and my daughter takes the other class for kids. I’ve recently committed to assisting during those classes every Monday, after providing inconsistent support in the past (some weeks I would assist and other weeks I’d sit in the hall and get work done). I really enjoy volunteering at the dojo – the kids are awesome and I am supporting a community that I value – but there are days when I’m tired after teaching for six hours at work and the last thing I want to do is manage other people’s children for another 1.5 hours before I go home to manage my own. I always feel really good during and after my volunteer time at the dojo, but sometimes I don’t look forward to having one more commitment on my time and energy, especially when I feel behind at work.

So yeah. I’m not sure how to feel about these activities. If I just look at how they engage and energize me in the moment, and after, it would make sense to spend time doing them every day. And yet I know if I did I would be overwhelmed, because they take a toll on my general well being by being so engaging and energizing.

I don’t know if this makes any sense. I hope as I continue to track my activities, and how they make me feel, I will be better able to incorporate these realizations into a coherent understanding of which activities make me feel good, and which make me feel “meh.”

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Do you know which activities engage and energize you? What are they?

Ugh! I come here and I try to write! I really do! I even have ideas of things to write about. But it feels so hard some days. I’m just so tired, so sick of… producing… you know?

But I wanted to write something. To say that I’m still here. I’m still working on stuff. I’m still trying to identify my core values. I’m reading Designing Your Life and working through its workbook. It’s been interesting, but I’m only just starting and don’t feel like I can write about it yet. I’m spending the next three weeks tracking my activities to see how engaging and energizing they are. Maybe at the end of those three weeks I’ll have some insights.

I’m not rushing this because I want it to work. I am tired of feeling unfulfilled in a life that could absolutely be fulfilling. I believe that a change in mindset, or possibly a bigger change in how I spend my time, or even earn my living, could be a game changer for me. I believe that I have the opportunities available to make a real and lasting and positive change, if I just knew what change to make. So I will take my time, and read, and talk, and write, and hopefully I will figure it out.

And if I don’t, well at least I tried.

My daughter is only 8.5-years-old but I swear she is already flirting with tween-dom. Recently her obsession is having her own phone. As far as she is concerned, ALL her friends have one, and we are depriving her by not getting her one of her own.

I’ve told her many times that it will be a while before she has a phone that can be used out in the real world. And when she does get one it will be a cheapy flip phone that makes calls and simple texts, because my daughter has inherited my penchant for misplacing things and I’ll be damned if she loses a smart phone a week after we get her one. She’ll have to practice keeping track of something much cheaper before she gets the kind of phone she really wants.

Having said that, my phone crapped out on me and my plan was to turn it in to get the $150 credit towards a new one. Except then I thought maybe I’d keep it and give it to her (to use at home with WiFi only). The reality is, she can use our iPad pretty much whenever she is allowed to have a screen, so it doesn’t really feel like that big of a deal, except I know it is a big deal for her, because it would be HER phone.

{A couple of her friends have actual smart phones with actual data plans – which seems totally insane to me! – but most of her friends that “have a phone” have a relative’s hand-me-down that works only with WiFi, so this mean a lot to her.}

It was a hard choice. The $150 off my new phone was nothing to sneeze at, and I worried that the current issues would multiply making my current phone pretty much useless, but those weren’t my main concerns. Mostly I worried that we would be capitulating to her wishes, wishes she only harbors because of her friends. Do I really want to let her believe that we will get her everything her friends have? It was hard to feel good about either choice.

We did end up giving her my old phone. She was thrilled. But before we gave it to her, we sat down and had a long conversation about when and how she would use it. We wiped the phone, created a child’s icloud account for her under our Apply family share plan, and put every parental restriction on that account that was available. We also disabled the web browser. She can’t go online at all, and she can’t download even a free app without requesting permission.

All these restrictions were really important to us. We’ve struggled with apps for a while; we are very careful to research everything before letting her use it. Many of her friends are already using apps with social functions that we do NOT feel comfortable with. GachaLife is a popular game – mostly the girls just want to design characters with different hairstyles and outfits – but there is a social component that cannot be turned off and any other person in the game can contact anyone else and say whatever they want. Even if we trusted her not to respond, who knows what horrible messages she would be exposed to. Evidently this app is notorious for creepy adults trying to gain access to young kids. NO. THANK. YOU.

{I’ve been surprised how many of my very smart, involved parent-friends have done nothing to research apps before letting their child use them. Some of my daughter’s friends have absolutely no app restrictions at all.}

The other app my daughter really wanted was MessangerKids, which has more protections (parents have to approve any new contacts), but is created by Facebook and is rife with functions that can have the effect of making kids feel addicted, or creating unnecessary feelings of social isolation. Not to mention I don’t trust Facebook with my daughter’s data AT ALL. Could my daughter use it and just have fun, without getting addicted or feeling left out? Probably. But that doesn’t mean we should capitulate and let her use it. (The more I learn about Facebook, the more relieved I am that I left over three years ago and the more committed I am to never, ever go back.)

Navigating this stuff is definitely becoming increasingly more complicated.

We ended up finding an Instagram-like app for kids with lots of parental protections called Kudos :). And since it didn’t have the photo editing capabilities she wanted in MessangerKids, we let her get photo and video editing apps that have no social media functions (she just saves her creations to her phone and then uploads them to Kudos). She can also iMessage with her friends that have access to an iphone or ipad, which doesn’t happen much because none of them are on these devises very frequently.

Finally we printed copies of the Common Sense Media K-5 media contract (I highly recommend them as a resource for navigating media of all kinds with your children) and discussed it with her before asking her to sign it. It has three sections “take care,” “think first,” and “stay safe.” We also added our family’s specific screen-time restrictions (no more than an hour a day – after homework – unless extra time is earned by reading a grade-level or above novel on the weekends). We already see her choosing not to watch TV so she can have phone time, or choosing a second episode of something knowing she won’t get her phone later. So far she hasn’t fought back against any of our boundaries, and is really enjoying connecting with her friends through her phone.

I know that navigating technology with our daughter will only get more complicated as she gets older. I hope we are laying a strong foundation now for conscientious and responsible media use when it really matters.

How do you manage media in your house?

Last week, I read an article in Remezcla about two kids who were setting up a Churros and Chocolate stand in Berkeley to raise money for kids that are still being detained at the boarder. Their efforts were in response to a boy who sold lemonade to raise money for Trump’s wall in Austin.

I wanted to support their efforts, an show my kids how other kids can make a positive impact in the world. I also wanted to do something else in Berkeley after we went.

I ended up searching for fun things to do with kids in Berkeley, because I usually take my kids there to see sports games or to roam the campus. So somehow, I didn’t know about Adventure Playground (even though I think I read an article about it not that long ago), even though it’s pretty much the coolest thing I’ve ever heard about for kids.

Adventure Playground is basically a junk yard where kids can do whatever they want. It’s a space where random boards have been cobbled together to create forts, and kids can add, or subtract, in any way they see fit. Any child can take saws to the already made structures or hammer on something new. The tools, wood, and paint are all provided; kids just need to turn in pieces of wood, nails or “monsters” (wood with nails sticking out) to the tool table to trade.

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As a “free range” parent who wishes my kids could have the kind of freedom I remember as a child, I think this place is the absolute greatest. I can imagine many parents are horrified by all the possible scenarios in which kids could get hurt, but there are clearly many parents, like me, who are thrilled to let their kids loose in this creative wonderland. Honestly, seeing how popular it was, and realizing I’m not the only parent who wants this for my kids, made me feel pretty great. I guess I’m not totally crazy!

We got there late and it was closing early (winter hours), so I promised my kids we would be back next weekend with some friends. I have a feeling we are going to spend a lot of weekends at Adventure Playground.

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(Also, we spent an hour at the marina, right next to the playground, which was also beautiful and fun, and full of crazy squirrels who didn’t give a f***, as squirrels in Berkeley rarely do.)

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My week off is over. So how did I do?

Pretty good.

I did accomplish the following, which I’m happy about….

• Determined (at the genius bar) that my old phone really was busted, backed it up, got a new phone, got the old phone ready to give to my daughter (just the audio jacks were busted so she can still use it, just not with headphones or to make calls).
• Got teeth cleaned (and unexpected dental work done, blerg).
• Dropped off bags of clothes at a few different places.
• Returned both my kids Kindles to get fixed under their warranties (this was an entrenched item on my to-do list so very happy to get it done).
• Stamped 650 envelopes with 8 stamps each! It was a lot of stamping, and my arm, hand and fingers are still recovering, but I also got to watch 10 episodes of season 3 of The Magicians over two days so it was actually pretty pleasant. And it saved us $200+.
• Tore half of the 650 strips of raffle tickets. I’ll tear the other half this week.
• Copied the 650 raffle ticket info slips and cut half of them.
• Organized my classroom (a little, it could use a lot more).
• Made some copies for this week (which I had to staple and hole punch because our big copier that does those things is busted).
• Created an assignment for this week.
• Got two of my classes’ online grades up to date (for one of them I hadn’t inputted even one score for this trimester, which ends in three weeks – for shame!)
• Grade papers for two more of my classes (though I didn’t get those scores online).
• Worked out 4 times. Woot!
• Kept the house relatively organized.
• Put up the March calendar in the kitchen. (And realized I haven’t booked my kids spring break camp yet! Welp! (Our spring breaks never match up.)
• Went to my professional development on Saturday (it was really hard to motivate myself to go).
• Wen to two doctor’s appointments with my daughter (we ordered her new reading glasses, which she borderline needs – we’ll see if they help her with longer novel reading stamina.)
• Got both kids to school on time on Friday morning without my husband (my son had to brush his teeth in the car but otherwise we did great!)
• Volunteered for four hours at an event at my daughter’s school on Friday evening (even though she didn’t go because of a cough – my parents’ had her)

Things I didn’t do…

• Volunteer at either of my kids’ schools (the additional dental work required so much time on Wednesday that I didn’t actually make it to my classroom, so I had to drive back to work on Friday to get the stamping done).
• Input the scores online for the grading I did this week.
• Grade some make-up work and tests that need to get graded. Ugh.
• Write the Spanish 2 recommendation letter (I kinda, sorta started it, but not really. Blerg.)
• Write as many blog posts as I intended to. (Par for the course these days, I’m afraid.)

All in all, I’m happy with what I got done. I’m not surprised I didn’t get the Spanish 2 recommendation letter written, because I have no idea how to go about that. I did try to write it. I sat with the cursor flashing on the white page, but I was flummoxed. I need to ask the other 8th grade teachers if they have any kind of recommendation letter for Math or English that goes out so I can at least use it as a reference. If they don’t I’m in trouble; I need to send them out in about three weeks, which is also when a whole bunch of other shit needs to be done by. The next three weeks are going to be brutal, but it’s good I know that now so I can be proactive in tackling my to-do list. There will many late nights but I’ll get it all done. I always do.

It actually ended up being a nice break, even though I had to fit so much stuff in. Just being away from my regular work schedule is so refreshing, even if I spent two of the four days in my actual classroom. I’m not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, but I’m also not dreading it. That’s something.

How was your week?