Of my handful of followers on this blog, I have received feedback from the vast majority of them that my blogs are notably lacking information pertaining to anything besides work. I wish I could say I had some secret life going on from July-present that involved long tales of trials and tribulations, events and landmark occasions and everything in between, but the truth of the matter is work has been my life.
So for the first time in the history of my teaching blog, I will divert from tales of teaching into something personal with this bold and definite statement. I have a personal life.
Somehow between July and January, I found a way to make it work. To cut my work hours from 100+ a week to a solid 60. I have something to talk about with friends and family in person and on the phone besides the trials of T or the leaps and bounds of C.
Evidence of a personal life?
-I now wake up at the ungodly time of 5am and go to the gym for pleasure. It is mind-blowing, starting the day with natural endorphins and something for me, not for anyone else.
-I leave town. And people visit me. And it does not involve holidays. Weird. Two weeks ago I went to Denver and from now until June, I have either plans to leave the city or for a visitor to come at least once a month.
-One of my best friends is moving in New Orleans to join me in the trenches of education come July, which ideally will pointedly improve my living situation.
-My happiness, for the first time since July, does not lie solely in my effectiveness in the classroom. Even on the roughest days in class, I come home happy with life, because I have one.
Woah.
Now let's not get crazy. I am still the most uninteresting 21 year old in the world. From going to bed at sometimes (preferably actually) 8pm, spending still more time out of my house than in it and actually procuring joy from the tedious task of cutting out laminated things for hours, I am a mega nerd. A 21 year old trapped in a 50 year old body. And I would not have it any other way.
So life is good. I am happy. I still have ridiculously hard days, I still have an impossibly difficult task to achieve through this job and I am still drastically less exciting than I was in my college days, but I have rediscovered the contented joy of being alive, healthy and doing meaningful work that for the past six months has been temporarily clouded by emotional and physical exhaustion. I have overcome in some ways, the most challenging task of my life.
I know I sound dramatic, as I always do, but I say this because some others in my shoes did not overcome. I can count on two hands, the number of people who joined this organization with me who have since quit. I can count on one hand, the number of people who joined with me who had to seek out counseling to deal with the pressures of the job. I cannot even count the number of people I know who still have not reached this peaceful utopia I know find myself in.
It is ironic actually, switching schools, which I never wanted to do and am still against, even once all is sad and done has made me stronger. Case in point, I was speaking with my coworker of all year earlier and we simultaneously reached this conclusion, that actually now we can handle anything. From the stress of starting a school from absolutely nothing to breaking it back down to nothing in six months, and reintegrating into a less than welcoming new school not by choice, we are now prepared for anything. While I would love my life to stay constant and things to taper off into something more still and quiet, at this point, I know I can handle it all. And that feeling is empowering. So I leave you with these words of wisdom.
"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure." -Abraham Lincoln
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