Cup Status: On Its Side and Spilling All Over the Counter
Teacher tired. There is no other tired like it, except maybe new mom tired, but that is something else entirely. Lol! This week has been the back to school week for teachers at my school and I have been able to get quite a bit accomplished. It has been nice to see my colleagues again. It has been nice to be back in my classroom again. It has been nice to be back in my element. The place where I feel like I know what I am doing. Where I can choose how I want things to go and how I am going to help my students accomplish the goals that I set for them. This is where I look at evidence based practices and effect sizes and differentiated instruction and collaborative learning versus direct/explicit instruction. This is where I speak the language of teaching with all of the alphabet soup with others who are fluent in the language as well. CSIP and MSIP and BSIP and MOI and EOC and JPS and MLS and all of the others. I have already consumed more coffee in one week than I have all summer. I have enjoyed many pastries and cookies that were thoughtfully given to the school for us to enjoy. So good!
I am doing my best to go to sleep earlier, but it is so difficult to do. All I want to do is stay up late and continue my binge watch of Grey’s Anatomy. My body betrays me, though, and I feel like a zombie when I get home no matter how much I want to watch just one more episode. This back to school season is kicking my butt. I hope that as I get into the rhythm of the school year that my energy level can even out. I would like for my body energy to match my mental energy for the beginning of the school year. The problem is, I don’t have the energy to do the things that need to be done to help raise my energy level. I know what to do, but I do not have the drive to do it. Meal prep healthy meals. Work out. Go to bed earlier. Do not doom scroll on my phone. Reduce the amount of caffeine that I consume. Etc. That’s the thing about being an adult. In my work life, I am able to make decisions that help things to run smoothly, but in my personal life, it seems like I am unable to find the ability to function fully. I cannot find my element here. I pride myself on being so organized and a planner and all of that, but those skills shine at work and not so much at home. I feel a bit like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At work, I am a superhero of getting things done. At home, I struggle to get off the couch. I am an extroverted introvert at work. At home, I am a full on exhausted introvert.
At work today, we listened to a motivational speaker talking about the importance of being “All In” in life and at work. We received a memento, a token, with the words printed on it. He suggested that we decide where we wanted to keep the token as a reminder of where we needed to be “All In”. I sat in the gym, listening, and realized that I am already “All In” at work. I give so much to my students and my work because that is where I currently find so much of my validation and get so many of my needs met. What I realized was, I am not “All In” at home. It isn’t because I don’t want to be. It isn’t because I don’t care. I love my family. I love my home. I love myself. But I am starting to think that energy is finite. I don’t like that one bit. Because if that is true, then I have to really make sure that I am not giving too much energy at work to the detriment of my home and the ones I love. My crazy grandmother once told me that she only had enough love for me and not my two siblings because she only had so much love to give and she had already given the majority of her love to her dogs and cats. This concept perplexed me so much. How can love be finite? That’s ridiculous. However, energy is finite and I need to find a way to generate more of it or at least to parse it out differently. More learning for me. You would think that life would not be this difficult to figure out, but it is. So, I think that I need to be “All In” to figure out how to to be “All In”. This wears me out just thinking about it. How does a person be “All In” in every part of their lives? I want to be, I just don’t know how.
The Cup 
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