See you Next month… probably…

Happy Sunday!

I ended my last blog with “See you next month… probably” – 5 months later I am back, kind of.

The New Year has come and passed, and we’re half way through the year at school. In less than 5 months now, my Year 6’s will be heading off to pastures new. My teaching career thus far would have come full circle – starting out in Year 1 with these small humans, to seeing them off at the end of this year to their new schools, as “not quite as small” humans.

I hadn’t come here to talk about school today but, as always, it has popped up in my rambling. So let’s get that out of the way first. As I am sure you can gather by the lack of blogs over the past 5 months, despite it being one of my 2021 ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ it hasn’t exactly been the quietest, nor the most enjoyable time of my life.

Reading through my ‘September’s Story’ (https://mywhatamidoing.blog/2021/10/05/septembers-story/) blog I saw how insane life already was then, just a few weeks into the new school year, and how life was already battering us. Looking back now though, I can’t believe how much more it was going to batter us – not only 2 months later. When I say we were so ready for the Christmas holidays back in December, and we were immensly grateful for the extra day off at the end of the first half Spring term, for the ‘Queen’s Jubilee’ (the shortest term of the whole year) I don’t think I could mean it anymore strongly than I do at this moment. This by far has been the hardest year I’ve done, and yes that includes 2020!

I’ve only very recently come to the realisation that the last 6 weeks have been the closest I have come to leaving the job, and saying it’s not worth it. In all honesty I’m not even talking about the teaching itself – that, in our school hasn’t really even changed much, we’ve remained very much like we were last year, perhaps in ‘looser’ bubbles, but the same as we always have been. I’m talking more about everything else that comes with the job.

I said I wasn’t going to ramble about work, and I went and rambled about work. However, I think the main point I needed to make was that it has been insane, and frankly I can’t believe how quickly time has passed, but how much has happened during that time. Everything else went out the window. Although in the back of my mind I knew I wanted to get my book finished, enter into a 5km run, organise a get together with my friends and also continue with my target of writing a blog every month, I just didn’t have the energy, nor the motivation to do so.

Not doing these things, fed into my sense of failure, like I had let myself down by not keeping up, by not keeping the promise that, let’s be honest, no one cares about but me. I felt guilty for not writing a blog, each time a month ended and a new one began. I’ve been slowly learning to give myself more of a break, and just accept that not everything needs to be done right there and then, and the things that don’t get done one day, will be there to pick up the next day. I also realise that putting time- restricted resolutions in place when I am already scrambling, is probably not the best idea I’ve ever had.

So, here we are again. I am not going to promise a blog next month, but I have lots of books, musicals and TV to review so you never know. If there is time I will write.

For now, have a great rest of your weekend – I hope Storm Eunice didn’t do too much damage!

Sinead x