Two summers from now: my first break

And now for my on time post. My girlfriend got sick but I seem to be safe. I've been taking preventative medicine, and going to bed early, and on the weekend, sleeping in. I am tired. I'm feeling a bit better today. I had a class that's part of an ongoing series yesterday, that would have taken up my whole afternoon from noon to 5 pm, but I started it, and just couldn't bring myself to finish it then. I needed a nap, which turned into watching some anime. I felt a little bad about it, but I also felt like I should be allowed at least a few hours of relaxation and recuperation time. The class was emotionally and mentally demanding, and I need a break, not further exhaustion. But now it's just one more thing I'm behind on. And there are so many of those now.

I'm trying to transcribe the recorded conversation I had with a teaching mentor. I had recorded it on a livescribe pen, which is a device created by the devil to inflict psychological agony. I have never come across a more infuriating and non-functional software interface for something. Perhaps I've come across something equally janky, but it was so long agony I don't remember it. I do not recommend them. I just need to get this recording transcribed so I can delete it and give it away to someone I don't like. (joking. except for the getting rid of it part.)

I haven't had lunch yet, it's 2:41. I should do that.
This would be really stressful, but my relationship is great and that provides a kind of psychological cushion. I have someone I can come back to and be held by, when I'm feeling overwhelmed. Just in general, it makes me happier, more energetic, more disciplined. Which is good, because I need it, with all that I'm doing.

It's kind of frustrating, how easily and quickly my desk gets over-run with stuff. I really want a system that keeps it generally clean, but I don't quite have it there yet, just like I don't quite have the rest of my stuff organized enough to put everything away easily, there keeps being all these things that just don't quite fit, that I don't immediately know what to do with, and so I have to sit down and ponderously decide where each things goes, rather than being able to mindlessly sort them quickly.

I could work on it and get better at it, but that itself takes time, which is precious and keeps being taken by fires that need to be put out immediately.

There is satisfaction in my job. Second year teaching is definitely less stressful than first year teaching, I feel like I have some ability to understand what is going on, what the kids and class need, and to adjust things to make it happen. But I don't yet have the systems in place to make it happen efficiently. I'm having to create all those systems, experimenting, learning, adjusting.

The weather is beautiful. There are wonderful friends around. I look forward, not to next summer, which will be just as busy as the previous two, but two summers from now, which will be the first time I can actually breath and get well and truly caught up on things. It feels kind of far away right now...

Week Late Post

I'm real real behind on my posts. I basically missed last weeks post. I'm very busy. things are going well, I suppose, but there is so, so much I want to do, and I have time for almost none of it. I think I said that last time, it's still true. I tried to get myself to do stuff Saturday, but I just couldn't. I needed a break. I work early in the morning, through the day till 4, and then keep working a bit into the evening. I just need a day to take a break from all that. Sundays I'm back at it, I'm teaching a class in the evenings and I try to clean up and keep things from becoming a mess in my room and with all my papers. etc. laundry, that kind of thing. It's to much, but even too much is not enough. I'm making forward progress, but it's slow. It's like walking against a blizzard, where the wind is blowing so hard you're almost at a 45 degree angle, leaning into it, just so you aren't blown over backwards. There is new stuff added every day, that is the wind blowing against me constantly, and the steps forwards are the longer-term positive things that I'm doing.

I understand why my teaching mentor said to stay with an age for three years before deciding to stay or switch. I can see it taking a full three years before things are automated enough that I have some idea what it would be like to do, long-term. But I've already pretty thoroughly committed to my age range. I have both a masters and will soon have an AMI certification for elementary students. It seems silly to not end up with that age range. like buying a nice car and then leaving it in the garage.

For my own completionist sake, I'm going to end this post and then write another one, so I technically continue to have one per week.

trying hard to get back to zero. work, not enough work, and more work.

OK, almost back on track.

I spent... how long have I been doing this... well, I was doing normal upkeep, cleaning, laundry, from maybe 2 to 4, and then going through my over-stuffed inbox until now, 8:30. This doesn't mean I did everything in my inbox. No no no, that is an entirely different step. I'm just trying to process it, for now. things that need to get filed, get filed, things that need to get done, get put in a location where I can look through them, either entered onto my computer todo list program, or in a bin with a sticky-note that tells me what needs to be done with them.

I am sad. I had this beautiful three day weekend, and I spent most of it just doing fun, playful things. I perhaps needed that, but I really wanted to get a whole lot done instead. I got... some stuff done. I'm still getting some stuff done. But not nearly as much as I would have liked.

I suppose I must be gentle on myself. But I'm not really being hard on myself about it. I just feel a bit anxious. like I'm not well prepared. That is maybe sadly inevitable though. I think I have a fair idea of how much time it would take me to feel well prepared, or at least reasonably prepared, for life to go on, and I'd put it at about two weeks of hard work. Maybe two and a half. If I was really pushing it, I could maybe get it all done in one and a half.

I need to be more of a machine in how I get stuff done. I'm trying to facilitate that by what I'm doing right now, organizing and setting up next actions with all of my todo's, so when I actually have some time to do it, I don't need to waste it trying to remember what I have to do or decide what the next step is.

I must say, as I get close to an empty inbox, it feels reaaaaly nice. papers filed, room cleaned, next actions clearly delineated. It makes for a clearer mind. Simpler. Over the summer, I had a tremendous amount of work, but I was able to do it pretty efficiently, because it was all very easy to put into todo lists and just go through them, checking them off as I went. I saw how long things were taking, I saw how much time I needed to finish them, and that itself created more motivation to keep working. I'd like to create that for myself, in a non-artificial way. School kind of does that for you, which is nice for getting an exceptional amount of work done, but in real life, you have to make your own assignments and rubrics, most of the time. One of those useful meta-skills we never bother to teach, for some reason.

OK, I'm... not sure if I'm going back to work or straight to bed so I can get up super early and get some more work done then. In any case, time to stop talking/writing.

to my dear friends and family, I love you deeply. to people who I don't know who have somehow found this, um hi. Have a nice week. and any other category of friend, may you have an excellent week. ^_^

-I

Busy, Finding time to save time. The first day of school.

Again I am incredibly behind on my blog post and as usual it's because things are crazy busy. It's a different kind of busy than that of my summer. The summer was a soul-crushing amount of work, but it was very orderly. I had a clear list of assignments, I could input it into my todo list software in a matter of maybe 15 minutes, and I was good for the week. It was an incredible amount of work that kept me busy night and day seven days a week, but eventually I got the hang of how to do it more efficiently, and though it was still night and day 7 days a week, I at least was able to go out to lunch on the weekends and take a walk every now and then, and I didn't feel like I was being ground down into a paste by the weight of things.

This busy is different. My desk is covered in layers of things I have to do. Like a sedimentary rock, with the oldest stuff on the bottom, and new stuff continuing to pile up faster than I can take care of it.

And it is such a diffuse cloud of things. I keep trying to write them down, but they are in very diverse categories. Most but not all of them are school related, but they vary from researching songs to planning lessons to practicing lessons to buying roles of felt and neutral cloth from walmart and making lesson tracking sheets. And then there are other things as well, the usual din of life.

The first day of school with students was yesterday, and it went well for a first day, I think. Perhaps even very well? but I'm still leary of how things are going to continue to go, forwards from here. My list just gets added to, as I see students interacting and think of more things that should be done. I'd love to have a few hours just to sit down and writing it all out into my todo list and then sort it and date it if need be so it's easy to review and find. But I'm deep into firefighting mode, in that there are immediate things that need to get done right now. And so I don't have time for the longer-term planning. This always frustrates me, because what this means is something to the effect of:

I could do things three times faster, if I just had the time to stop and plan. But I don't, because I have so many things to do, that I need to do right now. so it takes three times as long, so I don't have any time to stop and plan. And the cycle thus self-perpetuates. I need better routiens, better habits, and that would make me more efficient, but again, finding the time to install those habits is hard, when I'm all in a tizzy. And by the end of the day I am totally exhausted. I'm no good for the higher order planning that is needed.

On the plus side, I think the anxiety is waking me up really early, so perhaps I can start chipping away and planning at 5 am, which may be the only time I have that I can do this. My girfriend will be gone for a week, so I can just go to bed at 8 or something and get up at 4. We'll see if I actually stick to that plan once it's the weekend... But I sure hope so. Maybe I'll post a big sticky-note reminding me, front and center on the wall in front of my desk.

OK, that's certainly all I have time for, gotta get back to all the other stuff I've got to do. I think I started working around... 5:20 this morning? and it's 6:40 now. Perhaps I'll go for my morning 15 minute run soon. I had to spend a good 10 minutes folding clothes just so I could sit down at my dest. And kept getting distracted by other stuff that needed doing. That's one of the problems of this lack of order and system, continual distractions by other stuff that needs doing. I've set the goal though, of order and more spaciousness with my time, and I have faith I'll be able to achieve it, like I did over the summer. (thought that wasn't a lot of spaciousness, time-wise, but it was enough for comfort, at least.)

Until next time, take care and don't forget to enjoy life, even if it's crazy most of the time.

-I Out

cockroach poo, decision fatigue, NASA mandatory napping policy

So tired. Setting up classroom. Decision fatigue. Cleaning super duper gross, cockroach poop under sink areas. Disgust/horror fatigue. moving stuff all day on my feet: physical fatigue. Just want to rest. But I have too much to do, so instead, I'm switching to other activities that I need/want to do, that are different. Like catching up on my blog.

I'm doing so much. I'm doing way more than last year, it feels like. That seems obvious, because I am capable of more, I can predict more. One would expect that. Still, it feels like a lot. However, there's a part of me that feels more comfortable than last year. I've been gaining lots of skill and knowledge, in specific, but I feel like I've also been gaining skill in general, at being able to handle larger workloads. Still very much in process of learning, but I definitely feel like I'm making progress. Getting more efficient, and more willing to take action and take risks.

I think that's all I'm going to write for this week. This is already almost a week late, like the last one. My brain is almost blurry. No, it is full on blurry. My body doesn't want to move. I need to take it easy. maybe I will take a short nap. cat naps when you're really tired are one of the best things ever, for me. Just short ones, no more than thirty minutes. I wake up, and it's like I've had a good nights rest. If you go over thirty minutes, you start getting some sleep hangover, that grogginess that takes a while to shake off, so I usually play it safe and set the alarm for a few minutes before the half hour mark. I think I heard about this study and experiment via a story of a NASA person who had his team take strategic 27 minute naps at certain points during the day/

also, in the science literature about mastery, the people who perform at the top of their fields, sleep around an extra hour, mostly as naps. it helps recover after the intense focus required for deliberate practice, and sleep can actually help you consolidate learning.

OK, goodbye for the week. next week on Wednesday, school starts for real. I feel like I could do with another week and a half just to prep, both physical classroom and planning. Why is there never enough time? I feel like that shouldn't be so inescapable. It's not a law of physics. There must be some way to do things so that it feels like you do have sufficient time.

Until next time, take care and keep napping ;-)
-IO

Moving on up, moving on in. PD with a PhD: Wee!

I'm waaay past my due date for this. I need to post something or it will be next week already.

Why am I so delayed? well, I've gotten back home, and I'm moving in with my girlfriend. 🎊

Moving, organizing, is exhausting work, and if it's not done then everything else takes three times as long, because you go to use something and you have to spend several minutes searching for every little thing. It's also draining, because everywhere you look there is something wrong, something calling out for your attention to fix, so it becomes exhausting to try and concentrate, continually ignoring these little calls to action. And finally, it's just exhausting, being in a space that's messy. Then there's decision fatigue: what do I bring over, what do I leave? where do I put it? etc. etc. And it can be frustrating as well, just wanting to be done with it so I can get on to all the HUGE amount of other work that needs doing, but to do that in a horribly messy space is like trying to work while a kid is continually trying to distract you the best they can. To just ignore that takes a tremendous amount of effort, like a scratch that you are continually fighting not to itch.

I'm making progress. I just have to remember my KonMari training, putting everything of the same category together, that lets me not have to expend so much brain power, and I'd already done that to a large degree.

Then, school starts up with professional development on Monday. there's something almost a little perverse about PD for teachers most of the time. When I would like nothing more than every available second to be doing all the things I know would be most effective to be preparing myself for class, I'm instead subjected to a training I had no say in choosing, for a full day, and in terms of usefulness, almost none of the trainings I've had at any of the schools I've been at have actually translated to improved performance, even if they are eminently practical, (which is also not all the time) because for something to be actually adopted requires systematic follow-through, feedback, and support throughout an extended period of time. It seems almost funny, how so much teacher training seems to ignore basic pedagogy. I don't mean to slight the presenters, often they are very knowledgeable people, with useful things to share, but one day of it is like reading a book on cooking and thinking that makes you a great chef. It's not true, no matter how good the book is, if you don't practice, the knowledge stays in the book.

I've generally enjoyed professional development. the presenters are interesting, fun, insightful. but have I become a better teacher because of them? unlikely, or if so, to a very small degree, just because of this lack of follow-through. Teachers are really busy, you can't expect them to carve out the time and energy for follow through on these things, unless you help them, give them specific chunks of time where they don't have to work on other things, and some additional coaching, if they are learning a new skill. otherwise it's just... kinda PR, I think. "we're developing our teachers" we get to say, but in terms of measurable outcomes... I'm skeptical.

I talked with one teacher who had just one experience with professional development that she said was really useful. It was a regular meeting, I don't recall how often, once every couple weeks, maybe once a month. the teachers got together with a PhD in teaching methodology, he gave about a 15 minute presentation on something, and then asked what issues the teachers were having, and did trouble shooting with them, or if there were no issues, asked about things they wanted to implement and helped theme design an implementation plan or just helped them design it. It's so simple it almost makes me cry. He was giving small bite sized useful bits of info, at regular intervals, mostly tailored to what the problems the teachers were dealing with, with the ability to follow up with them on how the implementation was going and thus help them trouble-shoot it.

we kind of do something like that among my colleagues, just as a regular part of our week, not as a special PD thing. which makes me proud of my workmates and structure, but we're not paying someone for that, we're just doing it.

Not to mention I've spend almost the entire summer working like a dog at PhD levels of intensity, taking a teacher training. (That I'm paying for out of pocket) That's about two months of PD, I'm good for now 😅

OK, time to go-go. It's already time for a second post, for this weekend now. Oy!

anger, peace, change

wrote a super long ranty post that I could never post.
I'm angry about how long it took me to put together my album today
I'm angry about something else that's probably not appropriate to talk about on a public forum because I'm trying not to talk poorly about anyone. (if you know me well enough to know about this blog, it's almost certainly not about you. this wasn't someone I knew.)

I'm a little worried about my anger. It leads to the dark side, yoda says.
In any case, it's kind of unusual for me, and I don't like it. It's not helpful. Anger can let you know when your boundaries are being crossed, but it can also be destructive. When you unleash it onto the world, you're the one who ends up getting it back, many times over. Maybe not in the form of people yelling at you, but certainly it causes negative effects.

I think a large part of it is I'm trying so hard to do... kinda everything. A lot. And there are only so many hours in the day. So when something gets in the way, it's really frustrating. Like being late for a meeting, while a loooong line of ducklings are slowly crossing the road.

when things are in the way, it makes you want to bash them out of the way. But when it's people, if you try and bash them out of the way, they bash back. Verbal hits, in this day and age, more than physical.

In any case, ultimately most of my anger is about trying to change and control the world, being not ok with what is, and trying to fight it. The solution is trust and acceptance. One of my favorit personal growth teachers had a phrase she would repeat to herself often: "surrender, trust, accept" (not sure if it was in that order, or if order mattered). If you can do that, anger cannot control you. And from that peaceful base, change can happen much more deeply and profoundly. Think Martin Luther King or Gandhi.

So, perhaps that is my test these days: intense dedicated activity, without the clenching attachment that leads to frustration and anger.