TTC Friday: Saturday Edition

Things have been pretty quiet on the TTC front around the blog lately. There's not much left to say on the subject. When I last posted, I mentioned that the frustration was starting affect other areas of my life and I felt like I needed to take a step back. That has turned out to be the best decision I could have made.

As the months kept passing by and my cycles kept dragging on, it took up more and more mental and emotional space. I was thinking about it and worrying about it more often than not. Work, as I've mentioned many times before, has been stressful this semester and I wasn't handling it as well as I could have because my energy was focused elsewhere. It was getting to the point where I was getting behind with marking and giving up on dealing with some classroom issues; I just didn't feel up to it. Hormones being all over the place didn't help either. When I found myself starting to think bitter things like "I have bigger things to worry about right now than a bunch of immature kids acting like brats," I realized that a line had to be drawn. I was not proud of the job I'd been doing and it was exhausting feeling perpetually behind, never making progress. I don't want my students to remember me as the teacher who was tired all the time and didn't seem to want to be there. That was when I started the Good Things project.

I decided to focus on the fact that, according to my ultrasound and blood tests (however ill-timed they might have been), things are fine. I'd keep charting, temping, and doing all of the things I usually do, but I was not going to think about it beyond what was necessary. I'd start appreciating all of the things that were going right rather than focus on the one big thing that was going wrong. Letting go of that weight has been such a relief. For the first time since the semester began, I feel like I'm in control and on top of things. I'm still a bit behind but it doesn't feel like a bottomless pit anymore. I'm smiling more in class again and am putting more into my lessons again beyond just what is needed to get through each day. I am also more appreciative of my collegues; they are probably also dealing with personal things that the rest of us have no idea about and it is probably not easy for them either.

In the back of my mind, I still wonder how much longer this is going to take. I still wonder what we're going to do when we hit that one year mark. I still wonder if there is something wrong. None of worries have magically disappeared. But those worries are exactly where they need to be right now: the back of my mind.