Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad

I’ve come to understand my life as a trifecta of sorts. I see three priority areas: home and family, teaching and school, and health and wellness. I love my job and want to do it as well as I can. I value time with two sons and want to have healthy meals ready for us to sit down to at dinner or to pack in their lunch boxes each morning. I value running and time outdoors if I want to maintain my sanity and any sort of patience with others.

I know that life is a balance - there highs and lows, gives and takes - and that helps make it a bit easier as I come to realize that I can’t be on top of my game in all three of these areas at once.

Look! In these pictures, I am apple picking with my family. It was a beautiful late summer day and my to boys are always thrilled to spend time with their cousins. Before meeting at the orchard I had gone to my running group, emptied the recycling, and cleaned the bathrooms. After the orchard, we all went to lunch at an awesome local cafe. This is certainly nothing to complain about, but this day also included a looming sense of guilt and panic about the summer homework I was not finishing feedback on or the activities I wasn’t prepping for the days ahead.

The next weekend I took this picture. It’s the stack of journals I worked through reading after my sons’ soccer game. They play on the high school fields so after the game we parted ways, I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t set off the building alarm, and I headed to my classroom. It was quiet and calm and I was pretty productive, which made me feel better that my kids were probably at home zoned out on their Kindles. That afternoon I took my boys swimming at the lake. What I didn’t do was clean bathrooms or fold loads of laundry. I didn’t get a head start on meal prep for the week, which meant that week’s dinners were prepared late with a side of cranky, over-tired, and "Just pick up the Legos already!"

Going into this school year, I made it a goal this year to avoid Sunday dread and panic. My husband is also a teacher, so the combined stress of grading and prepping for the week ahead often means we spend Sundays with guilt and anxiety. It’s even worse if the Pats don’t play well. I started the year feeling like I was mastering this balance, but as we settle into five day weeks, I can feel it slipping away.

I hope that blogging could be a way for me to maintain perspective and appreciation when times get busy. As Gretchen Rubin says, “The days are long, but the years are short” and I don’t want my days to slip by in a haze. Writing has always helped me to make my life purposeful and reflective.
This week I caught up on some grading after school, which has lifted a weight from this weekend. I’ve gone running group, cleaned the house a bit, order the boys some new clothes after realizing this week that their pants hadn’t kept up with their summer growth spurt, and am sitting down to write this post. Even if tomorrow is less productive, I’m learning to be okay with two out of three.

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