Not a Wasted Word

First I wanted to thank everyone who commented on my last post. I really appreciated your perspectives. I’m definitely in a place where taking in other people’s words feels like a better use of my time than writing my own. I have SO MANY books I want to read, and not enough time to read them at the pace I want to. And I’m not sure if forcing myself to show up here is the right move. I think there are definitely times when pushing past lags of an enthusiasm is the right move, I’m just not sure if it is for me now. The reality is that if I force myself to write even when I don’t want to, I can’t actually do any real damage (I don’t have to worry about burn out because my livelihood doesn’t depend on my ability to write), so maybe I’ll push myself and see where it takes me.

I definitely want to think more about WHAT I should write. I think one of the reasons I felt compelled to write that post is that I want to put something of value out there, something that I can point to and know it was of service to someone. I do think personal narratives are valuable, and I absolutely enjoy the blogs I read that are simple accounts of people’s lives. But I also want to sprinkle my writing with more meaningful perspectives. I have a couple ideas, and I hope that if I’m asking myself to write a certain number of times a week, I will actually write some of those posts.

I also find myself totally disengaging at night, and that is not a productive way to spend the precious hours I have at my disposal. I need to get grading done. I need to plan, and create materials for new lessons. I can’t just zone out in front of mediocre programming. Maybe if I ask myself to write a few nights a week, I can combat the disengagement.

It’s so hard to know sometimes what is the right thing to do. I feel like I know myself relatively well, so that I can respect the need to disengage in the evenings when I recognize that inclination. But sometimes I’m less sure if I should continue catering to that desire to disengage, and do absolutely nothing, and when I should push past it and make myself produce…. something. Anything! There are so many articles out there about learning to say no, about letting yourself rest, about respecting the need to recharge, but I have yet to read something that helps you know when it’s time to say enough is enough, and to make yourself do shit again.

I guess I’ll give it a try, the pushing past it, and if after a few weeks I feel better, I’ll know it was the right move. If, after a few weeks, I feel more compelled to disengage than ever, I’ll reconsider my current plan.

How do you determine if you should let yourself rest, or if you should push past it?

Would it change the way you read my words if you knew I made six figures?

I’ve been struggling to show up here. Many nights I don’t even think about writing here, but even when I do I usually think, meh, I’d rather read or play Wordscapes.

I have been wondering why the idea of writing is not as enticing as it used to be. I think part of it is the current political climate and how exhausting it is to just exist in this country right now when you have any idea what is happening. But there are other factors at play as well.

As I’ve mentioned before, many of the blogs in my reader these days are not strictly personal blogs but instead are personal finance, or minimalism, or lifestyle blogs that masquerade as personal blogs, or at least looked enough like them originally that I kind of forget they are actually selling something (some of them are very literally selling books, or workshops by the author, but many others are simply selling a philosophy, out-look or way of life). Even some blogs that used to be personal blogs have returned rebranded, with a very different tone.

And I do believe there is very much a place for blogs like these. When you are trying to change your life, you want to find the people who have already changed theirs, and follow in their footsteps. Many of these blogs are quite popular, and I understand why.

But I also feel like there is so much that is not said on these blogs, so much privilege that is rarely, or never, acknowledged, so much financial success and/or security that is not mentioned, so much that has to be read between the lines

I’ve been wondering why this bothers me so much. I mean, everyone else clearly realizes that these things are not being said and they don’t care. And yes, I can understand that people who make a lot of money still need communities to talk about how to manage their busy lives/embrace minimalism/organize their belongings, space, and time/maximize the potential benefits of outsourcing/learn how, or why, to budget, etc. But it feels like these blogs are written for everybody (or that is the intention of the author), and yet the lives of the authors are so inaccessible to so many people.

I know I don’t have to read these blogs. (I have unsubscribed from many of them, but a few still linger in my reader.) I don’t begrudge anyone their platform or what they want to say. I am very much aware that I don’t have to engage with anyone’s words if I don’t want to.

But I have realized that what bothers me is not so much these people and their unwillingness to recognize their privilege. It’s a deeply rooted fear that I don’t recognize my own privilege enough, and that my privilege renders null and void anything I have to say.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a blog post where ABC espoused XYZ and I immediately thought, yeah but I know that their combined income is $#00,000 (where # is greater than or equal to three) so can XYZ even be relevant to me? Does everyone else who reads this and finds it relevant make $#00,000 too? Or I think, yeah, but ABC has an incredible job that is personally fulfilling AND flexible so does anything ABC has to say about making life feel more meaningful be helpful for me?

What I didn’t realize was happening every time I thought things like that, was I was watering a seed I never realized had been planted, and that seed was the suggestion that I make enough now, and have a stable enough marriage, and have an easy enough of time parenting, and a decent enough job, and involved enough grandparents, that my experiences and ideas are no longer valid, or worth… well, anything.

I do make six figures now. We reached the final step in a 9% raise we’ve been getting over the past three years and now with my salary, plus my masters stipend and the cash-in-lieu I still receive (despite it no longer being offered — I’m grandfathered in) for not accessing our district’s health insurance, I now make $100,084 a year. I am only one step away from my district’s salary ceiling, so this is pretty much it, but still, I technically make six figures.

Does that negate what I have to say?

My husband makes around what I do. He is also at the higher end of his salary schedule. We’ll likely never make any more than we’re making right now, but it’s still good money. We’ll never make enough to have a full time nanny, to essentially pay another person’s salary – to provide their livelihood – but we make more than most of America does. I doubt I need to remind anyone that that means we make more than most people in the world.

I’ve read a lot about wealthy people in America, how they don’t want to flaunt their financial resources, and do want to think they’re they same as everyone else, and really struggle to understand just how much their wealth provides them, how much it sets them apart. It’s easy, when you live with other people who make as much as you do, to forget how much you have.

I know I forget. I forget all the time. Even when I recognize how much easier it feels now that we make more, and aren’t spending a large portion of it on child care, I still forget. It’s always easy to worry about money. It’s always easy to feel like there isn’t enough, or at the very least that we could use more. I want to travel and not have to kick my husband and cat out to AirBnB our house. Our current car payments are as much as our childcare payments used to be, so it doesn’t feel like we have that much more. But we also have a BRAND NEW CAR. That’s ELECTRIC. I’ve never had a brand new car in my life. And getting a car like this would never have been possible even two or three years ago.

So yeah, I’m just reckoning with what feels like a new-found financial stability. Sure I don’t love my job, but it certainly does pay nicely. And yes, it pays nicely because I’ve been there for 15 years and spent a fortune to get my masters so I could move over on the pay scale, but the raise I got for that masters has finally paid off how much it cost to actually get the masters (this took 8 years), so I’m finally reaping the rewards. And I get to do that because I was lucky enough to not have to leave my job because of health reasons, or to take care of family, or to move for myself or my spouse, or any of the myriad reasons that people have to leave their jobs and start again at the bottom of the pay schedule (this is one of the biggest problems with teaching – how much earning power you lose when you switch jobs).

Our cultural narratives celebrate the people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make something of themselves despite their meager beginnings. We put more worth on the messages of those in the struggle, those navigating hardship, those who are forced to fight. I’m not quite what place the voice of a white, straight, cisgender, neurotypical, financially stable, woman has in the current conversation. I’m not sure what I should say.

Maybe it’s time to stop writing, and just listen for a while.

We did a good job of maintaining the relatively cleanliness of the house after it was cleaned last week. Mostly we remembered to get the kids involved, and when we didn’t I picked up the slack (I KNOW I need to keep them involved or I will take on more and more of this, it’s becoming a habit to budget 10 minutes of cleanup into the bedtime routine, but slowly). It didn’t help that we had a lot of after school commitments last week that kept us out of the house until bedtime. Still, the reward of enjoying neat and tidy living spaces all week definitely renewed our commitment to picking up every single day.

{Side note: I don’t know how people who don’t get home until 6pm or after manage to get anything done before bedtime, let alone dinner and some down time. We have to start bedtime at 7pm to get our kids asleep by 8:00 or 8:30pm, which is really important with our 6:30am wake-up requirement (our daughter’s school starts at 7:50am). My hats off to all of you!}

I really struggled to get my head back in the game last week. I forgot about my staff meeting on Tuesday, even though it was written in my planner. The most annoying part was I also didn’t get my allergy shot that day, which I knew I couldn’t get on Tuesday because of my staff meeting. Instead of doing either one of those important things I just drove home, and it wasn’t until I was back at the house with my daughter by 4pm that I noticed something was amiss. Luckily my principal was really cool about it, but still, it was troubling.

I also forgot a lot of other really important details throughout the week. I finished the week off feeling frustrated at myself in a lot of ways, but I do think it was an adjustment period and that next week will be better. (I also gave myself a LOT of leeway to just chill out in the evenings, which I will not be able to do moving forward. I have to use that time more productively!)

Part of the reason I think this week will be better is that I have less on my plate after school, and I’m scheduling some catch-up in important areas to take place in those open spaces. I really need to get caught up on my grading, and the entering of those scores into our online grading system. I plan to do that on Tuesday and Wednesday, before I pick up the kids. And if I need to catch up more, I have an extra day the next weekend (woot!) I also need to get started on some stuff for our spring carnival, which will be here before I know it!

My husband and I went to our yearly SF SketchFest event last night, which was super fun but also ended the weekend on a busy note, and now I don’t feel as prepared for the beginning of this week. Everything is a give and take, I suppose.

I found this article really interesting. It affirms the way I feel about parenting, describing more concisely the concerns I have with raising children these days than I ever could (with data to back it up).

I consider myself a free range parent. Well, maybe a wanna-be. I don’t think I can be the free-range parent that I want to be because my husband’s opinion is obviously important, but also because I have been spooked by the stories of people calling CPS on the parents of children who walk to the park alone. I know it’s a tired trope to look fondly on the freedom of one’s youth and mark all the ways children have lost that freedom today, but truly, I was allowed to do things alone in Hong Kong when I was in 4th, 5th and 6th grade that would make parents today blanch. I would like to give my children that kind of freedom, but I doubt I will be allowed, either by my immediate community, or society at large.

I’ve already started talking to my husband about how I expect our daughter will be able to get to school by herself in 6th grade, even if that means walking several blocks to a bus or MUNI train stop. Or even taking BART. I could manage that kind of daily responsibility on public transportation at that age (actually younger), why can’t she? (And yes, I understand she has to be taught how to ride public transportation – she does it frequently with us and we are always ensuring she takes the necessary steps herself, with our guidance.) What is the point of living in a city if you don’t let your kids get around by themselves? My husband has a moral aversion to the suburbs for a number of reasons, but one of the most significant is their lack of public transportation. And yet he doesn’t trust his kids, or the system (probably a bit of both) to take advantage of it.

The economic insecurity aspect of the piece also really hit home. There are parts of me that are still reeling at the reality that I will never be as well off as my parents. I grew up with stories of how they came from very little to become comfortably upper-middle class, despite a few poor professional and financial choices on my father’s part. If they could manage that kind of upward mobility, I figured my own future would be just as bright, if not brighter. And yet I will never have the financial stability they enjoyed. The systems they took for granted don’t exist anymore. Neither do the opportunities.

I do worry about our kids’ futures. Mostly I worry I’m not doing enough to prepare them for the disappointment they will certainly face. I assume they will have less than we do. One of the main reasons I’ve given up the dream of converting our downstairs unit into a master bedroom is I recognize my kids will probably need to live in that space rent-free, or at least at a very reduced cost. By the time I can be sure they no longer need that space we won’t want the extra square footage anyway.

I also worry they aren’t smart enough to guarantee their success, even though they are both very bright. I used to read a blog where the gifted status of the children was frequently touted. It caused me an extreme amount of anxiety and I couldn’t pin-point exactly why, until I connected the idea that gifted = successful, or at least financially secure. Of course I know that isn’t necessarily the case, that all sorts of factors contribute to a person’s success, but it’s easy to fall into the black and white ideas that pervade our cultural narrative.

I worry I don’t give them enough opportunities. Actually, I worry they aren’t hungry enough for those opportunities. My daughter would be content to participate in no extra curricular activities at all, especially if her friends weren’t doing anything. The only real reason she wants to do something is be with her friends, which isn’t a bad reason, but it worries me that it’s her only reason. I have to remind myself that she is only 8-years-old and has a life time to figure out what she is interested in and if she wants to pursue those interests. Heck, I even worry about my 5-year-old son, especially when I overhear conversations on the sidelines of soccer about how other kids already love the sport and can’t stop practicing it. (We stopped going to soccer over a year ago because my kid didn’t want to keep going and I still worry about it sometimes!)

I am a big proponent of not playing a lot with my kids. My husband and I disagree about this quite a bit. I think they should play by themselves, or with each other. And if they are bored, they should figure it out. My husband thinks we should be more involved and hands on when we are home. I recognize that he is with them a lot less, and it is important for them to have quality time with their dad, but I don’t think every minute of a weekend day should be spent engaging my kids on their level. I plan some activities and have their friends over, but I should also get to do my own shit. And I refuse to give up the time my kids spend in front of the TV. That is what TV is for, to get shit done. Yes I will watch good movies with my kids and talk to them about the moral or lesson of the story, but I’m not going to watch Teen Titans Go! season 3 with them for the umpteenth time (and I actually really like Teen Titans Go!)

I was just talking with my father-in-law about how intense parenting was. He brought up something about how much more intense it would be if I were a stay-at-home mother like his mom was. I was struggling to articulate all the ways it was different back then (or maybe he was struggling to here me). I sent him this paragraph before I even sent him the link to the article.

Over just a couple of generations, parents have greatly increased the amount of time, attention and money they put into raising children. Mothers who juggle jobs outside the home spend just as much time tending their children as stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/upshot/the-relentlessness-of-modern-parenting.htm

Maybe if he hears someone else saying it, he will actually believe it’s true. Parenting really is a different ball game than it was when our parents were raising kids, and a totally different sport than when their parents were raising them.

It’s so incredible to have a two week break from real life each winter. I always feel like I’m desperate for a break from work at this point, and I absolutely savor the time away from work and the daily grind.

But re-entry into real life is hard. I found myself really struggling yesterday to not fly into a full-flung panic. It doesn’t help that we have a PTA meeting AND a parents’ Night Out back-to-back at the end of the week. It also doesn’t help that it’s supposed to rain all week (our school lacks a lot of resources necessary for managing 700+ students in the rain – like a cafeteria (the kids eat outside normally) and protected walkways to all classrooms (many classrooms modular units or portables set away from the main campus, like mine).

But Monday is a professional development day, which means we don’t have students yet, and for that I am SO, SO THANKFUL. Last year there were teachers from another district who got the day after break for professional development watching me teach, which meant I had to do all sorts of energy-intensive teaching when instead I wanted to do something very low key. That was really challenging. This year is the exact opposite, and I can spend today dipping my toes into re-entry instead of jumping into the frigid waters of reality.

I rallied at the end of the last week and graded a bunch of papers and took the kids to work so I could make copies, so I’m actually in a way better place than I expected to be at this point. My plan is to take the week really slow, and let the kids have the time and space to re-accustomed to reality that I recognize I need.

My own kids really struggled yesterday. My dad helped me install the hitch they got us for Christmas onto our car, so we got home later than I anticipated from picking them up. The afternoon was peppered with melt-downs and tantrums. The good news is they were really tired and ready for bed at 7pm (at least my son was).

I slept in way too much this break, so I was not tired at 7pm. At least not the right kind of tired.

We tried to do a lot to get ready for this morning. We put out all their clothes, and their rain gear. We had the non-perishable parts of the week’s lunches ready. We even had their water bottles filled and in the fridge. I find that the first morning back is hard, but not as bad as the second morning, so I hope we get everything ready again tonight.

I spent hours and hours tidying the house on Friday so the cleaning lady could have unfettered access to the floors and counter tops. The place looks amazing right now, and I want so badly to maintain a certain level of neatness now that the Christmas tree is down and the holiday box is put away. I hope to institute 10 minutes of family clean-up every night. I know we can do this if I just remember; I need to make it a habit, but I struggle so much in the first weeks to insert it into our schedule. Hopefully with my husband’s help we can manage it this time. It’s a new year and the house is clean. Let’s run with this, let’s keep it going.

How has re-entry been for you?

According to the lists you can find online, a “traditional” gift for a 5th anniversary is wood, and for a 10th anniversary is aluminum. Since it was both our 5th and 10th anniversaries this year, we exchanged presents that incorporated those two elements. I got my husband a key ring with wood sided by aluminum and the numbers 5/10/13 engraved on the back. He got me a chunky necklace aluminum chained necklace with a chunkier wooden pendant.

My parents took the kids from Friday evening to today. I’ll pick them up in about an hour. We had the house clean and stayed in SF for our anniversary weekend. Friday was the actual day so we had a fancy meal that night. We spent Saturday on Alameda tasting spirits and eating yummy meals. We were home by 7pm and didn’t go out for dinner again. It was a really fun day, despite the rain and overall blustery weather.

I’d never been to Alameda before, but I really enjoyed it. The views of the city were amazing.

We haven’t had a date weekend in a long time and we really needed to reconnect. It was nice to do so after two relatively low-key weeks – it didn’t take us quite so long to slow down and reconnect.

Tomorrow real life resumes once again. I’m glad we had this short interlude together before we’re thrust back into the daily grind.

13 years together.

10 years since our civil union ceremony at City Hall.

5 years since we were married at my parents’ house.

I truly hope this is just the beginning.

Well it’s already January 3rd and I feel like I’m WAY late to the new years blog post party. Everything these days is either a retrospective of the past year or resolutions about the next. I’m not super interested in either (for myself, I like reading other people’s). The look back part takes so much time, and while I do think it’s important to remember what I wanted to accomplish and think about why it did or did not happen (usually the latter), I also recognize that doing that in the past has not gotten me any closer to my goals. Mostly looking back on a year just reminds me of why I abandoned my goals, and reaffirmed their abandonment.

Having said that, there are a few things I want to focus on. Again. They are all ideas I’ve already visited a million times, but have to revisit for attempt number one million and one because I know they would make my life better.

Mostly I want to get rid of stuff because man how it has crept in again. It’s every where and again I feel like I’m drowning. And while it’s still easier to clean up than it was back when I was desperate enough to get rid of so much stuff, I’m realizing that knowing where everything goes isn’t enough to improve my life. I need to have less stuff if I want to spend less time managing it.

My kids got a ton of new toys for Christmas and I so want to get rid of some of the older toys my inlaws gave them long ago. Part of me wonders if I should give them back to my inlaws, but then they will know I am getting rid of them. Of course, they may get mad if they find out later that I just gave them away. They know I don’t like the big toys, so I suppose it won’t be a surprise for them either way. I will check in with my husband to see what I should do. Having his support in whatever I decide will help.

On other fronts, I have a few goals, but I’m not going to write about them yet. I have put some other “accountability” safe guards in place on the biggest one, and I hope to write about it soon, when I’ve actually made some progress.

Not really sure what else to say at this point. I felt like I couldn’t post anything else until I acknowledged the new year and let you all down with my stubborn refusal to participate. Maybe I will go back and look at some older posts and return with a different mindset. We shall see.

My son snatched my phone and hit post before I was done with the last one. I wanted to ask how everyone’s holiday was. I hope you or your family weren’t sick! And if you were, I hope you made it through.