Twenty Days

It's been twenty days since my last post. TWENTY. That's a long time for someone who made it a goal to write 2-3 times a week when I started this. However, when I started this, I had not yet started school and did not have any kind of realistic expectations about how my life would be in the first month of school

It is now October. For first year teachers, well, teachers in general, this means that we are moving out of the crazy period that is the beginning of the year. Now, this doesn't mean I have made it "out of the woods" yet, but it does mean that I am about two weeks away from the end of the first quarter. With that comes parent-teacher conferences (yikes!) and first quarter grades. 

There is a lot that has happened in the last twenty days. For one, Nick and I went back to DC for our engagement photos (to be shared later!) Aunt Karen and Uncle Darren came to Charlotte, and Lisa and Brooke paid us a visit as well! It was a fun twenty days, but within that was a lot of stress and struggle.

After one particularly long day at school, I was trying to relax with a bath when I had this huge panic that on top of all of the other things in life I felt behind on, I had not posted on the blog in over a week. A WEEK. How would all of my readers (ok, seriously, it's just my family and closest friends) ever know what was going on in my life? How would I look back this time next year and remember what was going on? It sounds just as ridiculous as it was. I was sending myself into a tizzy over something that was really not a big deal.

That was one of the many times that I had to put on the brakes in the last two weeks. With the first month of school being, well, the first month of school, and being a first year teacher, I had a lot of "breaking point" moments. I am not a crier at all, but there was a lot of crying in the last twenty days. There was a lot of doubting if what I was doing was the right thing. A lot of doubting that I was a good teacher. A lot of doubting that I was making the right choices for my students, myself, and for me and Nick.

Then I realized I was doing just fine. It was only in the past week, but I really stopped and realized that I am doing the best I can, my kids are learning, Nick and I are happy, and that I am truly inhibiting myself in my excess worry. We're talking a lot of lost sleep, wasted hours worrying, and manic mornings and days that turned into exhaustion in the afternoon. Is it worth all of the stress over the things I can't control. Definitely not. Am I still constantly learning and focusing on what I can control? Absolutely. 

There was a lot that happened in the last twenty days. A lot of it was great, most of it was clouded by unnecessary stress. No one actually cares that I didn't post in the last twenty days. At least not the people who actually read this blog ;) In the next twenty, there will be a lot less stress and a lot more deliberate focus on what is happening now. Stay with me, the posts will come more consistently again soon.

Best,

Becky