Juggling

Currently, I’m imagining each of my responsibilities being tossed my way by a red-nosed circus clown, and my job is to catch and keep each ball in the air.

• Kids.

• Work.

• Marriage.

• Friendships.

• Dog.

• Mental health.

It’s all way too much and balls are definitely dropping.

The bullets above represent the big picture. When I zoom in more closely, focus a lens on just one of these elements, I imagine a smaller act of juggling taking place; a Tom Thumb version of me tossing up marbles within the larger scope.

Let’s take work, for example.

Within a given day, I have to lesson plan, prep the lesson (those two are actually different), look over student work and give feedback, meet with colleagues, greet my students at the door with a smile, eat something, drink water, and oh yeah, actually teach the children.

My school days are so tightly packed that I’m often reminding myself to go pee before it becomes an emergency situation. If one event takes place that I was not planning for, my whole day shifts off its axis. Tasks pile up, and I’m left teary-eyed and deeply frustrated. I recognize this feeling.

I remember it from my first year teaching.

That first year, I ground myself down to almost nothing. I threw every ounce of energy into my job. I have always been a perfectionist when it comes to the classroom. I am the hardest on myself.

By February of that first year, I was exhausted. Mentally and physically. I asked to meet with my then principal. I needed to hear that I was doing an okay job. We met in my classroom, and when I opened my mouth to speak, I think I got one sentence out before I started balling inconsolably.

She smiled and said, I think you need a mental health day. Don’t forget to take those. She paused, but not on Monday or Fridays, too hard to find subs. She was always the most practical.

Even now, as I type this, I’m thinking of her advice.

But that internal critic whispers, it’s only September. Things are going to get harder. You’ll want to save those days for when you really need them, later. And what will happen when the kids gets sick? You’ll run out of days! Did I mention I also struggle with a scarcity mindset? This internal dialogue runs in my brain constantly, like a hamster on a wheel. It’s another kind of juggling.

This is all magnified by the fact that I’m in a new building, and I have this unrelenting, internal pressure to prove myself once again. And even more disturbing, I can’t help but be reminded that I was involuntarily transferred by upper administration. Which leaves me feeling that it was a punitive move—and whether it’s fact of fiction—that I’m under some kind of administrative microscope.

Equally as discouraging, I also miss my daily writing time. I had such a strong routine in place before work began. I notice the quality of my writing suffering, because I’ve lost my daily practice, a luxury all it’s own. Daily writing was also therapy. I processed my feelings and dug into interests and curiosities. I grew, not only as a writer, but as a person.

Now, I’ve found I only have the bandwidth and energy and the time to write once a week. This time lands on Sunday mornings, which I’ve religiously typed into my google calendar that I share with my very understanding and even busier husband. It is as though we’re both hanging on by a single piece of floss.

This moment in time is temporary. I write about that idea—that nothing lasts, that one day I’ll look back at this time and wish I could visit my babies and smell their heads—with great frequency. The act of slowing down is so ingrained in the writing process, and it’s always this that floats to the top. A gnawing reminder that life is constantly in flux. That being this overwhelmed and stressed won’t last.

But still, it’s hard. I don’t want to minimize that.

So what should I do? Keep juggling, of course. When a ball falls, I’ll have to wait for a clown to throw it back to me. I can’t change my perfectionist tendencies. But I can take a breath every now and again.