the leather recliner of emotional enabling...

Hamlet is spinning around my head. What a mess that kid was. Why couldn't he just confront his mom and say, "Look Mom, I am having a hard time with your new marriage and I am not quite ready to move forward after Dad's death and I think it would be better for everyone if I just went back to school and then maybe I'll backpack around Italy."

BUT NO... Hamlet had to fester and stew and create a revenge fantasy, and then act it out in this huge killing spree. Reading this play as the first thing I do with the seniors has convinced me that I need to be taking care of myself this year.

I created a little triangle of wellness (well, I didn't create it, but I remember it). In order to maintain my well-being I need to maintain my spiritual, physical and emotional health. That means having time to read and journal and pray, making time to exercise and eat well, and using my little emotional help tools to stay emotionally healthy. School is a huge drain on me, and I sometimes wonder if it is like that for everyone who teaches. I find myself going to bed early and relying on diet Pepsi to get me through to 4th block. In the fall I think I tend to adjust poorly to this change. I come home at 3:30 and I sink into the leather recliner I got this summer... and I rock back and forth while staring at Jeopardy and I wonder if it is too late to apply at Starbucks. I can create some negative spirals fairly quickly. Granted, my coping skills are fairly innocuous, but coping just enables poor emotional health, it doesn't heal.

But this is (I hope) a short transition time. I have to take care of the needs I have; spiritually, emotionally and physically, and in turn that will give me more energy to teach and teach well. A dangerous cycle is created when we don't take care of ourselves. I know how it affects my teaching when a part of my well-being is off-kilter. One bad hair day and I go back into the negative cycle. I don't want to sit in that recliner all school year. What kinds of things do you do to keep yourself healthy in times of stress?

Super Girl fights the perceptions of others!

This has been a strange summer for me. Not like alien-visitation strange, but more "awareness-of-who-I-am" strange. I found some photos that I hadn't seen before, I met new family members, I tried beer from Thailand. It was almost like I was looking at this person I used to be and thought "who was that?" I think people do that in their 30's, reflect a lot on who they are, where they came from and inevitably, they look toward where they are going.

As humans, we tend to compare ourselves to others. And sometimes that comparative analysis can lead us into dangerous waters. The waters where our insecurity and fears become magnified. I have been watching a lot of Mad Men this month and I see it a lot in the 60's. There was this unspoken standard to be "normal" in the 50's and 60's that was ultimately repressive and emotionally shaming. Now (even today) we sometimes compare ourselves to the "norm", the "standard expectations" that seem to satellite around us. But I am finding that those standards don't apply to me, and that feels really freeing.

I have said to many people this summer "99% of how another person treats you is about them and not about you". Well der! But it is one thing to know that and another thing to own it. If we get that negative message in our head and then start a story around it, then all that stuff about it being about them is moot.

So what is my supergirl strength? Well, I vow to fight the stories in my head and be aware of what is definitely NOT about me. Fight the "norm", be YOU and whatever makes you YOU is meant to be.

I've got suitcases full of issues.

“If I could fully accept the truth that I am forgiven and do not have to live in guilt or shame, I would really be free. My freedom would allow me to forgive others seventy times seven times. By not forgiving, I chain myself to a desire to get even, thereby losing my freedom.” – Henry Nouwen

Last week was pretty hard for me. I struggled with my top three “gah” inducing issues. I am sure we all have at least one of those issues; family, self-image, confidence, success, blah blah blah. Mine are sometimes triggered by well-meaning people and then I am sent to my bed listening to sad FM and drinking Coyote Gold from the bottle with a straw. Well, it wasn't that bad last week, but I did feel some anger, some self-pity and some awesome self-loathing. And this week as I was trying to get myself free of the garbage that hangs on after one of these rockin episodes of crappiness, I found some very wise words and had a real epiphany.

This summer my mantra has been “Let Go”. I love the songs that really underscore the letting go, “Babylon” by David Gray comes to mind, and that Frou Frou song, “Let Go”. I think the theme of these things is to let go of whatever is keeping you down. Be unfettered, be free to go forward. But I think this really hit home for me yesterday as I was reading the above passage by Henry Nouwen. I thought about all the things that have come easily to me, in particular, this wonderful house I bought last year. I really really really wanted this house when I first saw it. It was the one. But I never had a moment of anxiety that I wouldn't get it. I just knew that I would be living in this place and that it would be awesome.

Well, obviously home-ownership is not one of the issues I struggle with. In fact, the issues that I struggle with are the same issues I carry around with me everywhere I go and in everything I do. It is like I have these three giant suitcases full of my neuroses. I pack the suitcases with my wants, my fears, my insecurities and all the issues that trigger them. And whenever these issue suitcases are triggered, they get heavier.

But then there is the promise of faith. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, right? So if I hope for a resolution to these issue suitcases, I am gonna have to set the suitcases down. Because if God intends to give me good things (as I believe He does) then I can't receive them if I am schlepping suitcases around. Can I get an Amen? I have to let go of my suitcases full of issues. In fact, I have to toss them away, let them fall open, and let all my issues come flying out. I can't get what I want if I am clinging to what I have. Taking control over my own issues and trying to “fix” them just won't work. If I let go, then I can receive what God would have for me.

In order to receive the things I want, I have to let go of the things I carry.

What are you tired of carrying around?

Notes from a technidiot

Okay, so here I am at the technology in education conference. It is in Copper Mountain which is stinkin pretty. I am sitting outdoors, watching the rock climbers on the climbing tower. There is this little kid starting up. He is a little spider-man, climbing climbing. He stops, shaking, holding onto the rope, saying "I'm done, I wanna come down." But the guides are great, they hear him, they give a tip, "there's a great handhold to your right," and the kid finds the wall again and keeps on climbing.

I feel the same about technology in the classroom. I thought when I played Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand on my dad's old Apple IIe in the 80's (with 5" floppy disks, MENU and RUN GO) I was more technology-savvy than most of my friends at the time. But technology got away from me somehow. I lost my edge. Suddenly there were gadgets, devices and software that I had never heard of. It all is supposed to increase efficiency in the classroom, but how would I know that? We don't even have formal training in my school for the gadgets that we do have. And as a teacher I am not too keen on adding more job descriptors to my title.

Then I remember that great routine by Louis CK. If you haven't seen it, or don't know what I am talking about, you can look at it here. Everything is amazing right now and nobody's happy. Teaching is an amazing place to be right now and I want to embrace the good stuff. I came up with a few plans to implement next year; a wiki for my class, keeping up with my moodle, doing online weekly writing prompts, podcasting students' commentaries. There is a lot to do and I think the best way to tackle it is one step at a time. I want to believe in the amazing, not be embittered by the unfamiliar.

I need a personal assisstant.

I have learned something about myself in these first three weeks of summer. I need a schedule, but not just any schedule. Anyone can have a "schedule". I can schedule a time for watching People's Court, or doing the jumble, or napping, or watching my cats napping. I think I need an assistant who will plan stuff for me to do, set an agenda for the day, something for me to follow.

Having free time is kinda crappy for one who's sole aim in life is to procrastinate. My problem lies in the transition moments. I can work out every day, but then I hem and haw and stretch and yawn and two hours later I still haven't gotten in the shower. What is up with that? If I had an assistant, let's call her Vera, then I would have someone tell me when is workout time and when is shower time. Otherwise I will work out, find out that Susan Sarandon is on the View in half an hour and gee, I would really like to see what ol Susan has been up to and then I can do 30 extra minutes on the rowing machine and who cares about time anyway because it is summer and where do I have to be later, that big line at the DMV? You see my point? No structure. No rules.

I do get out of the house. Occasionally I will have a date or engagement or thing to do during the day, but the meantime has been filled with unproductive, mindless nonsense. Vera would keep me in line, I think.