[meant to post this LAST weekend, but …. ]
As usual, my plans fell apart almost as soon as 2023 was underway. Students came back to school in pretty bad shape. For weeks they struggled to engage, their stamina for learning and effort was almost as limited as at the beginning of the year. AND it was almost the end of the semester, with mid-year diagnostics due, a final attempt to reteach and reassess skills and knowledge that was a bit rocky earlier in the year. AND someone who was staying with us brought SARS-CoV2 into our household.
I went from enjoying peaceful afternoons and weekends reading and crocheting in comfortable chairs I had waited literal years to acquire; to retreating to the bedroom when home because we needed to mask in the shared living spaces. And wearing a mask all day while teaching … and then although my long-suffering spouse and I never apparently caught the same virus, I had several days when I was ill, including two when I called in sick due to asthma and one when I went home mid-day. That last absence was Imbolc.
What have I managed to accomplish at home is far less than I had hoped. I did finish my mother’s shawl. I have made progress on a blanket for one of our sons. I have started a shawl for a friend.
We got the Yule tree down the first weekend of January. Tom made progress in getting some winter debris up toward the end of the month. And what little momentum we (I) had gets eaten up by each setback.
But I haven’t managed to reorganize my studio to make it a reasonable workspace again (light at the end of the tunnel is our houseguest will leave in another week, so I can wait until that room is available and organize both simultaneously). So I am avoiding some projects I would like to start until I have the spaces ready. Which means some of the fall-winter projects will now wait until the end of summer or early autumn. Again.
I haven’t managed to work in the garden at all for many months, the cold and rain keep me inside most of the time when I had the energy, and when it was nice …. Well that’s just how it goes. My health and strength just don’t let me do a lot outside independently, and when I am outside I don’t have the stamina for heavy work I once did.
My health. Increasing asthma attacks (possibly stress related). Regularly being sidelined by digestive issues (which are intermittent, but always impossible to ignore, and always result in several days of reduced energy). Back issues (have dealt with those for decades, but not recently). Increasing problems with mobility and dexterity – seems strange when I do know how to stay strong, and … but going to the doctor takes time out of my limited productive day, and energy I just don’t have since social interactions are so draining.
So it seems that all the things I plan and try will just take longer and longer. Meantime, because everything takes so much of my available energy teaching is increasingly exhausting – with less help in school (truly – fewer paras for more students; more students who have greater needs) – and I don’t know how much longer I can continue.
I am asking for help a lot more at school, and that is relieving some of the pressure, though I know it means that the people who help me are then burdened with more. I am cutting back on expectations for what we will accomplish in the class, and that relieves the stress for me and for the students – they would love to do more science and more art, but we are limited on time (and not limited in what we are supposed to cover – we just won’t get to it all this year).
I am stopping by my teaching team at least a couple times a week during lunch just to touch base, and visiting with the paraeducators before and after school – just checking in with folks who are also stressed out. It gives me energy to help others, even if the “help” is just affirming that things are not easy right now for anyone in the school. And I am fortunate to have colleagues who are kind and patient – and wise. Their wisdom helps me think through sticky problems in my classroom.
And, I am looking at my options for ways to earn money once my teaching certificate runs out at the end of next school year. By then, we’ll have paid off all my student loans and one of the cars. I’ll be able to save a little to help with some necessary expenses for the house that are coming up. And that will mean that the money I earn, whatever the amount, would be “nice but not needed.”
If I can find work I can do from home, part-time – even early in the morning (since I am a morning person), then I would have the energy to do more around the house and the parts of the yard I can reach on my own. We could grow more of our own food, and I would be able to prep and preserve more.
I know it might sound Pollyanna-ish, but I really prefer to be at home. I am not someone who needs or wants to travel to see sights, or visit important places. My home and garden feed my soul and make me happy. Spending 10, 12, or 14 hours away five days a week is getting harder and harder, even if teaching is my dream job, even though my students and their families are wonderful (they really are), and even though I really have found my stride and my voice as a teacher of younger children.
So — Imbolc. New beginnings, looking ahead, reconnecting with purpose, re-vital-izing one’s self and one’s home. This is a good time of year as the daffodils begin to poke their noses through the earth and the primroses begin to bloom, and the birds sing spring songs.
At my pace, and in my time, the increasing light brings renewed energy for creativity and for living.
Bright blessings to you and yours as the wheel of the year turns.
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