After publishing this blog, I have sat on it for about three weeks trying to figure out what amazing first post I would write, but as I sit here during my students’ nap time, I’ve realized that post will never come, and also that it doesn’t matter. I feel like I do this a lot, think of some idea to help me or to have fun, and the prep is super fun and exciting, but when it comes to executing said plain I chicken out and think I am not going to serve that plan justice. I do this with every story I try to write, every small business I have wanted to create, every side hustle I have considered. The plans are there, but I can never really act on them and feel good about it. I just procrastinate and say I’ll do it eventually, and then I never do. That’s why I am forcing myself to write this now, because if the first post is done, there won’t be enough pressure for the second one.
It’s funny, actually. I feel like in middle and even high school, this page would already be full of thoughts, teenage angst, and unintelligible philosophical ramblings (typical thought daughter 2014-2016 Tumblr stuff). Back then, I felt like I had all the time in the world to think and write those thoughts down. Currently, those thoughts are reserved for showers, post-D&D 3 am car rides, and apparently nap time.
On the topic of time, I feel like it’s been on my mind a lot lately. I graduated from college last May and started my job in early January. I’m sure many of you will just say “Welcome to life” or “Welcome to adulthood,” but I’ve always felt that this isn’t how life is supposed to be for anyone. No one should be required to waste away their lives just to survive. I constantly have no time, I get up at 6:45 am, at work by 7:15 (Dont ask lol), get home by 4:00, nap until 7:00, cook, shower, spend time with my fiance and cats, in bed by midnight, asleep by 2:00. A total of eight hours of sleep, a fifteen minute commute, cooking for about an hour, and all that together takes seventeen hours and 15 minutes of my day. That only leaves seven hours and forty-five minutes each day to do what I need to. In that time, I have chores, laundry, dishes, sweeping, mopping, and that takes a minimum of forty-five minutes, often more. Then I have to shower, leaving really only five hours or less. Writing it out and looking at it on paper, five hours really feels like a lot of time, but then comes my second issue: motivation. In those five hours, I want to do nothing. Not scroll, read, write, watch TV, nothing. All I feel like doing is sitting and staring off. I often think it may be because my job is so demanding. I work in an elementary school self-contained special education classroom, so all day I am getting hit, bitten, cussed out, breaking up fights, and keeping kids from hurting one another, all while trying to teach lessons, life skills, and feeding and changing the kids who need that. From the moment I get there until 2:00 when they leave, I am going nonstop. Then, when they leave, I have to spend the rest of the school day prepping for the next day and cleaning the classroom.
I like to think I just haven’t figured out a good routine yet, but on the worst of days, I wonder if that environment just isn’t for me, if I would do better behind a desk at a quiet corporate office somewhere. I love my job and kids, but it’s those thoughts on the worst day that make me question if I am where I am meant to be. I am hopeful that summer break will allow me to find a groove and allow me to get done all the little projects and things that I have my mind so much lately.