Renewal anew
I keep getting asked if I'm made any New Year's resolutions. The reality is that I don't like New Year's resolutions. They seem like an excuse for failure to me. And why should we need a calendar to make us promise to do things we should be doing anyway?
However, this break from routine does offer me a chance to stop and take stock of my situation. By February 15 I need to let the school district know my plans for next year. Right now my plan is to go back to teaching at my school, doing what I can to focus on teaching and staying out of building & district politics. So my goal between now and next August needs to be to get myself physical and mentally prepared for the grand return.
This means I do need to start to exercise. Exercise is a critical piece for me to be able to deal with stress, so I need to work on getting physically fit. I'd love to get back where I can run. I used to have a great love/hate relationship with running but I always felt so powerful after I finished a good run. So I guess that's goal #1. Mind you, this is NOT a resolution of any kind, it's just good sense.
I also need to keep reflecting on living deliberately. Writing, both in the blog and my journal, has been a key piece of achieving my sanity the past few months. I've spent a lot of time reading and thinking about the type of life I want and examining ways to make my actions match my beliefs. I had lost this piece of myself, the reflective piece. While I prided myself on being a reflective practitioner of teaching, I pushed aside much of what I was seeing in my personal life.
So there's the answers I need to find - I've been seeking but, by golly, I must get serious about the finding. How do I live my life without losing who I am and what I value? How do I reconcile my love of teaching with my need to be whole for myself and my family? The rub is that, “Problems arise in that one has to find a balance between what people need from you and what you need for yourself” (Jessye Norman).
Barbara De Angelis, a relationship researcher once said, "Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.” Am I a bad mother, wife or teacher because I don't want to give all of myself away?
When students would ask what I wished for them, I would answer that my hope is they found something to feel passionately about. Something they're willing to work at, and for. For myself, I want to feel passionately and find the energy within myself to feed that passion. I want it all - to provide my family with necessities and overwhelming love, to manage the logistics of teaching with the wild enthusiasm it takes to do it well, to feel peace in myself and the nagging dissatisfaction that drives us to achieve more.
As I look back and watch my writing begin to ramble and lose focus, I realize that's the problem. One question leads to another, which leads to a thought, which leads to an action which leads back to more questions.
Euripedes is credited with saying, “The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.” Either I totally agree with him, or totally disagree, I really can't decide.
Then again, I've luckily never been considered very wise.
However, this break from routine does offer me a chance to stop and take stock of my situation. By February 15 I need to let the school district know my plans for next year. Right now my plan is to go back to teaching at my school, doing what I can to focus on teaching and staying out of building & district politics. So my goal between now and next August needs to be to get myself physical and mentally prepared for the grand return.
This means I do need to start to exercise. Exercise is a critical piece for me to be able to deal with stress, so I need to work on getting physically fit. I'd love to get back where I can run. I used to have a great love/hate relationship with running but I always felt so powerful after I finished a good run. So I guess that's goal #1. Mind you, this is NOT a resolution of any kind, it's just good sense.
I also need to keep reflecting on living deliberately. Writing, both in the blog and my journal, has been a key piece of achieving my sanity the past few months. I've spent a lot of time reading and thinking about the type of life I want and examining ways to make my actions match my beliefs. I had lost this piece of myself, the reflective piece. While I prided myself on being a reflective practitioner of teaching, I pushed aside much of what I was seeing in my personal life.
So there's the answers I need to find - I've been seeking but, by golly, I must get serious about the finding. How do I live my life without losing who I am and what I value? How do I reconcile my love of teaching with my need to be whole for myself and my family? The rub is that, “Problems arise in that one has to find a balance between what people need from you and what you need for yourself” (Jessye Norman).
Barbara De Angelis, a relationship researcher once said, "Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.” Am I a bad mother, wife or teacher because I don't want to give all of myself away?
When students would ask what I wished for them, I would answer that my hope is they found something to feel passionately about. Something they're willing to work at, and for. For myself, I want to feel passionately and find the energy within myself to feed that passion. I want it all - to provide my family with necessities and overwhelming love, to manage the logistics of teaching with the wild enthusiasm it takes to do it well, to feel peace in myself and the nagging dissatisfaction that drives us to achieve more.
As I look back and watch my writing begin to ramble and lose focus, I realize that's the problem. One question leads to another, which leads to a thought, which leads to an action which leads back to more questions.
Euripedes is credited with saying, “The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.” Either I totally agree with him, or totally disagree, I really can't decide.
Then again, I've luckily never been considered very wise.
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