Education is quite focussed on management. Managing situations into good outcomes and managing deteriorating situations to avoid bad outcomes. Bad outcomes involve less premptive work but require much more paperwork after the event.
It's taken 4 weeks to get to this point where the first "down" of 2020 has occurred. It's easy to spot the the 'event' which broke the camel's back but harder to focus on the corcumstances which led up to it. In the aim of better mental health (as I think that's all anyone can aspire to) what happened?
Working in education is difficult, but so is any job. The difference is the person you are when seen outside of hours. One must be very protective of their own life away from the edu-space and that can be draining. It can be more so for people who live in smaller communities where their life can seem to exist in a fishbowl. Someone saw you telling off your child at the football ground and cant wait to tell you what their parents thought of you come Monday etc. In a good week I can get to be myself (uncensored warts aand all) for around 30-60 minutes. Enough time to get air for the upcoming week,
What happens when that time becomes rationed? Well, I have an idea. 60 Minutes a week (just over 8 minutes a day) became 60 minutes in 2.5 weeks (17-18 days give or take) thats now 3min 20 seconds per day. One pop song's time to let go of everything if you can find that time. One thing I am not good at is time manufacture. Two nights I was watching a film, which entailed watching snippets of 10-20sec while adding to work pintrest boards, adding planning, writing on a student shared document and researhing options for hands on ways to teach narrative writing.
"There are some great resources online", is a term that can hugely misrepresent the time needed to locate and implement such things. Multitasking via smartphone is my only way of getting close to the job done because to work in education nowadays you must feel you are 'called' to be so. It can be a position which consumes all of you until the point where I feel like I cant draw breath and my heart races and my head is dizzy and I write annoying run-on sentences with a total lack of punctuation or regard for the poor person who may or may not wind up reading them just to show what it can be like and how important those 60 minutes are because you are on show and a model of responsibility, compassion and humility while putting yourself aside for the needs of others in and outside of your employment....
So the break time is important and I cant figure out where to take it. Do I not be there for family? do I not be as prepared as I can be for work? or do I not take my 3min 20sec a day? guess which I have been choosing.
I need help to manage my life. I don't know how to let other's know of that expectation. Maybe it's unreasonable but its the expectation I've had to work under my entire professional life. Today it will seem to others that I'm all bent out of shape over breakfast. I'm bent out of shape over the compromises and failures of the last two and a half weeks and not being able to get air leading up to breakfast.
The bad mood has been mostly kept to myself today and I shall contunie to try and stifle it for as long as possible. Knowing its probably another 10 days until air. Breathe shallowly.
Saturday, 22 February 2020
Monday, 3 February 2020
Repairable Me?
Very much questioning the mini fridge's ability to maintain 4c when the temp hits 40. Wishing I'd read the specs before drinking the milk that had been stored in said mini fridge (cooler actually).
Back at it, with a goal of being a marginally better person this year and less whiny. I think I'd become a part of "cancel culture" for a while there and stepping away from social media is a nice way to get to know people rather than interactions with news feeds. I think I will strive to have more months away this year.
Health: physically, see the above and mentally things are going OK. I might be at a high point but I seem to be able to hit a number of targets but will see how things go when the number of targets which require hitting ramp up at work. I started toying with the idea of a bucket list at the end of 2019. Which things constitute bucket list worthiness? I don't have much of a desire to see the Himalayas or sleep in the desert or jump out of a plane. Does my lack of willingness to do such things make my goals less worthy?
I have goals in my life, some are experienced based and deeply personal. Some would doubtless make little to no sense to anyone else, but they're mine and time is ticking. Someone may want to go skydiving and I want to fix an iPod. One idea I have had is that many people's goals seem to have some element of conquering the world in which they live. Climb the mountain, swim in the hot sporing, see all the points of the compass. I want to conquer the place where I live, between my ears.
Sleep is the word
One week in at work and perhaps the biggest shock is that I'm still tired. My knee aches after sitting for long periods, which is difficult if I am completing a lot of work at the desk or kitchen table at night. I have tried a few things, pillows, wheat bags, ice packs and medication. Unfortunately the medication that affords me sleep is highly addictive.
From what I can deduce my sleep issues come from a couple of places:
1. GPS (Gotta Poop Syndrome) having no large intestine and a small internal pouch means no colostomy bag for me but also frequent trips to the toilet at home. The best method to not spend all day in the little room is to keep busy, intellectual rigour. Sleep time discourages mental problem solving and I will wake frequently in the night to engage our facilities. The alternative is to sleep and crap myself, not likely.
2. Pain, getting to sleep requires a fair effort and it seems laying still makes my knee ache quite badly. I have taken some codeine based meds to help with the pain and induce sleep (they re even mildly constipating which helps with GPS) but they are highly addictive and I don't want to become dependent. The pain coming off them is worse than the pain that drove me to taking them.
3. Stress, everyone is stressed. Everyone has worries. So do I. Maybe the worries that I cannot talk about are the same as yours, but I cant talk about them. I am lucky to be able to share with my Mrs I.M and Cate (with a C) which helps but these are not the kind of things that I can talk about with anyone else and to be honest I would never feel comfortable in doing that anyway. I have some stresses from work as we all do and then the ones that follow me around. My teeth, my breath, my face, my upper body, will I need the toilet soon? Do I snore? Why would anyone marry me? going on in the background along with Stress X (the aforementioned unmentionable kind). Is that like everyone else? Do you feel like a teenager whenever you're talking to someone? As if you have no knowledge or life experience, or you're just trying too hard to impress?
4. Caffeine. Stress and work and life make me tired so I drink a fair amount of coffee. I try to have no more than 6 a day at worst. Currently lowering that to 4. Caffeine helps you stay awake to deal with the tiring workload of life but then it makes it hard to fall asleep and also exacerbates GPS.
5. Ability to relax, this may seem to be a part of stress but I see it as separate. stressed people find ways to relax all over the world, as have I. Having conducted some 'tests' there are some interesting things that happen when I can be relaxed and, watch my caffeine intake and diet. Pity there's a lot to do in the meantime and little time for it, relaxation is limited to around 20 minutes per week.
I asked Cate if I was broken at my last session. She didn't believe so but conceded that it would be difficult to break a cycle that has been who I am for my lifetime to try and be who I am, not who I've been. I'm under renovation and the building site is messy. With her and Mrs I.M I'm slowly sifting through the rubble to see what goes back in and what is discarded. The last week let me know that everybody is a ticking clock and we don't know when our time is up. It stresses me to think that time is running out as my life has already been rebuilt twice. It does, however heartened me to think that the ticking clock might force me to just out and be 'me' because life is meant to be lived honestly and happily (supposedly).
Maybe the reason this song resonates so much.
I.M
Back at it, with a goal of being a marginally better person this year and less whiny. I think I'd become a part of "cancel culture" for a while there and stepping away from social media is a nice way to get to know people rather than interactions with news feeds. I think I will strive to have more months away this year.
Health: physically, see the above and mentally things are going OK. I might be at a high point but I seem to be able to hit a number of targets but will see how things go when the number of targets which require hitting ramp up at work. I started toying with the idea of a bucket list at the end of 2019. Which things constitute bucket list worthiness? I don't have much of a desire to see the Himalayas or sleep in the desert or jump out of a plane. Does my lack of willingness to do such things make my goals less worthy?
I have goals in my life, some are experienced based and deeply personal. Some would doubtless make little to no sense to anyone else, but they're mine and time is ticking. Someone may want to go skydiving and I want to fix an iPod. One idea I have had is that many people's goals seem to have some element of conquering the world in which they live. Climb the mountain, swim in the hot sporing, see all the points of the compass. I want to conquer the place where I live, between my ears.
Sleep is the word
One week in at work and perhaps the biggest shock is that I'm still tired. My knee aches after sitting for long periods, which is difficult if I am completing a lot of work at the desk or kitchen table at night. I have tried a few things, pillows, wheat bags, ice packs and medication. Unfortunately the medication that affords me sleep is highly addictive.
From what I can deduce my sleep issues come from a couple of places:
1. GPS (Gotta Poop Syndrome) having no large intestine and a small internal pouch means no colostomy bag for me but also frequent trips to the toilet at home. The best method to not spend all day in the little room is to keep busy, intellectual rigour. Sleep time discourages mental problem solving and I will wake frequently in the night to engage our facilities. The alternative is to sleep and crap myself, not likely.
2. Pain, getting to sleep requires a fair effort and it seems laying still makes my knee ache quite badly. I have taken some codeine based meds to help with the pain and induce sleep (they re even mildly constipating which helps with GPS) but they are highly addictive and I don't want to become dependent. The pain coming off them is worse than the pain that drove me to taking them.
3. Stress, everyone is stressed. Everyone has worries. So do I. Maybe the worries that I cannot talk about are the same as yours, but I cant talk about them. I am lucky to be able to share with my Mrs I.M and Cate (with a C) which helps but these are not the kind of things that I can talk about with anyone else and to be honest I would never feel comfortable in doing that anyway. I have some stresses from work as we all do and then the ones that follow me around. My teeth, my breath, my face, my upper body, will I need the toilet soon? Do I snore? Why would anyone marry me? going on in the background along with Stress X (the aforementioned unmentionable kind). Is that like everyone else? Do you feel like a teenager whenever you're talking to someone? As if you have no knowledge or life experience, or you're just trying too hard to impress?
4. Caffeine. Stress and work and life make me tired so I drink a fair amount of coffee. I try to have no more than 6 a day at worst. Currently lowering that to 4. Caffeine helps you stay awake to deal with the tiring workload of life but then it makes it hard to fall asleep and also exacerbates GPS.
5. Ability to relax, this may seem to be a part of stress but I see it as separate. stressed people find ways to relax all over the world, as have I. Having conducted some 'tests' there are some interesting things that happen when I can be relaxed and, watch my caffeine intake and diet. Pity there's a lot to do in the meantime and little time for it, relaxation is limited to around 20 minutes per week.
I asked Cate if I was broken at my last session. She didn't believe so but conceded that it would be difficult to break a cycle that has been who I am for my lifetime to try and be who I am, not who I've been. I'm under renovation and the building site is messy. With her and Mrs I.M I'm slowly sifting through the rubble to see what goes back in and what is discarded. The last week let me know that everybody is a ticking clock and we don't know when our time is up. It stresses me to think that time is running out as my life has already been rebuilt twice. It does, however heartened me to think that the ticking clock might force me to just out and be 'me' because life is meant to be lived honestly and happily (supposedly).
Maybe the reason this song resonates so much.
I.M
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)