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In a lot of ways today is no different than any other day of the last couple of years. I'm puttering around the house, doing household chores. I'm reading, I'm writing a little bit, I'm being sat upon by the cat...
But I have a unique perspective on today, perhaps partly because of the recent two weeks in Australia where everything was springtime uncertain instead of autumn uncertain. There were flowers instead of falling leaves, there were purples and pinks instead of yellows and oranges.
Today's been a beautiful day. Sunny and warm at first, clouding over and getting dimmer as the afternoon progressed.
I find myself welling up with tears, for no reason I can actively identify, it's just a little tangle of feelings in the middle of my chest and down into my belly I don't even really want to identify it. I'm just going to let myself feel whatever it is and, it looks like, cry a little bit.
I think one of the hardest things I've had to learn in the last decade is that there really is, and never can be, just that one path that we're "supposed to" take with our lives. You may think there is, and you can spend years beating yourself up for failing to meet those imagined goals, or benchmarks, or, I don't know, life crisis points. But the best thing I did in the last 10 years was to realize that it's my life and nobody else's. That my meandering path is just as valid as something that looks straight as a ruler's edge. That nobody but me gets to set my goals for me, regardless of scripts that I have in my head from movies and television and other stories. It's like that one XKCD comic where the first character fills his apartment with ball pit balls. They're all bright colored against the black and white drawing and he says from inside the apartment, "we're grown-ups now, and we get to decide what that looks like."
In the next year I want to practice radical kindness. Radical generosity. I want to practice speaking up, and calling out b******* oh come on now say it bull crap (voice to text). I want to be there for my friends and family. I want to be there for my husband and my home. And I want to be there for myself. Maybe, that's still the most important thing I'm still learning, how to be kind to myself and when I think of all the bologna I had to shovel in order to just get down to me... To get past childhood and adolescence and young adulthood's indoctrination of this is what you're supposed to be.
You know when I was teaching I always had a hard decision to make as far as where do you spend the majority of your your attention, your time, and your planning? Do you spend it with the stars? The kids who are already smart and have it together and are on it? Do you spend it with the kids at the tail end of the class where if it was a physical education class they'd be lagging behind the rest of the class by a lap or half lap? Do you spend your time and energy in the middle and hope that the ones behind will catch up and the ones that are far ahead won't resent you for it? Wow I haven't thought about that in a while...
One of the best things about leaving teaching If I can say there are good things about leaving teaching, which, honestly my mental and physical health appreciate that I'm not doing that anymore. I don't have to make that decision anymore. The world is full of places I can help, and all of the work that I do does something somewhere. And I can forgive myself for not helping absolutely everyone I come into contact with, which was not a headspace I knew at all while I was still teaching. I blamed myself for every child had an f, or who moved away or every perceived failure piled up.
My failures now are softer, they don't have edges of self-hatred. I don't have to have shields up every day cuz I'm not getting attacked every day.
Somehow I am both softer and stronger than I was then. Some of that is just having lived longer, and having been in therapy as long as I was. But I don't hate myself anymore. And I'm not constantly angry with myself, or disappointed with myself. I do feel guilty for having the leisure to do the healing work for myself when 95% of the people who I know don't have that opportunity. which is why I try to use the healing work I've done to benefit other people I offer literal, physical help or emotional support or sometimes I have wherewithal...
Anyway, tonight is a tipping point. And there's no holding it back. There's no rushing it forward either for that matter!
Happy birthday to me. I still have hope in the future, I have hope for the world, I have hope for myself and my loved ones, and I acknowledge that the world is complicated and it's broken in a lot of ways and I promise I will lend a shoulder when I can.
But I have a unique perspective on today, perhaps partly because of the recent two weeks in Australia where everything was springtime uncertain instead of autumn uncertain. There were flowers instead of falling leaves, there were purples and pinks instead of yellows and oranges.
Today's been a beautiful day. Sunny and warm at first, clouding over and getting dimmer as the afternoon progressed.
I find myself welling up with tears, for no reason I can actively identify, it's just a little tangle of feelings in the middle of my chest and down into my belly I don't even really want to identify it. I'm just going to let myself feel whatever it is and, it looks like, cry a little bit.
I think one of the hardest things I've had to learn in the last decade is that there really is, and never can be, just that one path that we're "supposed to" take with our lives. You may think there is, and you can spend years beating yourself up for failing to meet those imagined goals, or benchmarks, or, I don't know, life crisis points. But the best thing I did in the last 10 years was to realize that it's my life and nobody else's. That my meandering path is just as valid as something that looks straight as a ruler's edge. That nobody but me gets to set my goals for me, regardless of scripts that I have in my head from movies and television and other stories. It's like that one XKCD comic where the first character fills his apartment with ball pit balls. They're all bright colored against the black and white drawing and he says from inside the apartment, "we're grown-ups now, and we get to decide what that looks like."
In the next year I want to practice radical kindness. Radical generosity. I want to practice speaking up, and calling out b******* oh come on now say it bull crap (voice to text). I want to be there for my friends and family. I want to be there for my husband and my home. And I want to be there for myself. Maybe, that's still the most important thing I'm still learning, how to be kind to myself and when I think of all the bologna I had to shovel in order to just get down to me... To get past childhood and adolescence and young adulthood's indoctrination of this is what you're supposed to be.
You know when I was teaching I always had a hard decision to make as far as where do you spend the majority of your your attention, your time, and your planning? Do you spend it with the stars? The kids who are already smart and have it together and are on it? Do you spend it with the kids at the tail end of the class where if it was a physical education class they'd be lagging behind the rest of the class by a lap or half lap? Do you spend your time and energy in the middle and hope that the ones behind will catch up and the ones that are far ahead won't resent you for it? Wow I haven't thought about that in a while...
One of the best things about leaving teaching If I can say there are good things about leaving teaching, which, honestly my mental and physical health appreciate that I'm not doing that anymore. I don't have to make that decision anymore. The world is full of places I can help, and all of the work that I do does something somewhere. And I can forgive myself for not helping absolutely everyone I come into contact with, which was not a headspace I knew at all while I was still teaching. I blamed myself for every child had an f, or who moved away or every perceived failure piled up.
My failures now are softer, they don't have edges of self-hatred. I don't have to have shields up every day cuz I'm not getting attacked every day.
Somehow I am both softer and stronger than I was then. Some of that is just having lived longer, and having been in therapy as long as I was. But I don't hate myself anymore. And I'm not constantly angry with myself, or disappointed with myself. I do feel guilty for having the leisure to do the healing work for myself when 95% of the people who I know don't have that opportunity. which is why I try to use the healing work I've done to benefit other people I offer literal, physical help or emotional support or sometimes I have wherewithal...
Anyway, tonight is a tipping point. And there's no holding it back. There's no rushing it forward either for that matter!
Happy birthday to me. I still have hope in the future, I have hope for the world, I have hope for myself and my loved ones, and I acknowledge that the world is complicated and it's broken in a lot of ways and I promise I will lend a shoulder when I can.
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