Balance

I realize that I come here to vent, and this blog becomes a repository of a lot of negativity. That means I feel freer to put aside those difficult and heavy emotions, to walk more lightly through the day, but as a record it tends to slant downward.

Today is a beautiful day. The sun is out and it feels so good on my skin. The mountains are glorious shades of blue and green, sparkling after the heavy rains of the past week.

The bike ride to school was smooth, smooth, smooth.

piled higher and deeper

I’m feeling more anxious than usual today, even though yesterday I felt quite mellow and content during our weekly Zoom chat with my in-laws. Over the weekend I processed a lot of thoughts and feelings about a couple of my students who are sending off SOS signals of different kinds, and had come to some new insights about how to help them more effectively and so was moving towards Monday with a sense of having a good plan.

But then this morning I lost my raincoat. Or, better said, last week Wednesday (I think) I lost track of my raincoat. I spent several days thinking I had left it at school but today was the first time I really needed it, and when I got to school this morning, didn’t find it where I thought it was. I have searched all over and it’s nowhere to be found. It was new, too, and a bit expensive, so I’m very unhappy with myself.

It could be at home, although I didn’t find it there either, or someone could have taken it home from school in these past days. But that thought makes me really sad because access to the building is so restricted that it would have had to have been one of the students or staff and either of those options makes me really sad.

Two teachers are out sick today, and four students, as far as I know none of them have Covid, but it means that we are stretched past the breaking point for staffing today. It’s getting so hard to deliver quality education right now and that’s bumming me out as well.

So I’m fretting about my “troubled” students, fixating on the missing raincoat, and scrambling to figure out where I can possibly pitch in to help cover for the absent teachers. The thing is, I can’t. I’m already doing all I can.