Taking back my life

For years, I’ve spent most of my time focusing on my work life – making sure I was the best at my career, whether it was working in industry (I worked at a famous internet company during the dotcom boom) or teaching. I give everything I have to my job, which leaves little for the rest of my life. When people ask me what I do, I always answer with pride, knowing that I have given everything I can.

The problem is that when the ask me about the rest of my life, there’s not a lot to say. Sure, I have great family and friends, but they always took a back seat to my work. My parents instilled a strong work ethic in both my sister and me, and I think I took that a little too far.

For years now, when school is in session, the rest of my life suffers. So much so that I become unhealthy – not eating well, not exercising, not going out with family and friends. Not living.

Many people think teaching is easy because of the short work day, but what they don’t realize is how much time it takes to grade all of the essays and other work that must be assigned in order for students to get enough practice so that they become better writers, analyzers, and critical thinkers. I think English teachers have it worse, because of the amount of writing involved in the day to day assignments (but I may be biased). I love teaching and interacting with students, but as I’ve written so many times in the past, the part of my job that I hate is the constant paperwork and grading that I have hanging over my head. Sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I can’t seem to look past it. So I avoid it, but I don’t do other things either. I’m stuck in a sort of limbo mode where nothing productive gets accomplished. I back myself into a corner where the only way I can finish all that I have to do is to stay up all night grading. It’s happened so many times in the past, and it leads me to living in a manner that I hate.

As this school year approaches on Monday, I am fiercely determined not to lose my life as I have in the past. Now that I’m finished with graduate school and all of the requirements I faced for the last two years, I’m really ready to start enjoying my life, even when school is in session. The plan for this year is to stay after school for two hours every day and grade as much as possible in that time period. Whatever doesn’t get done is going to be left for the next day. I am promising myself that I won’t take anything home with me. Not in the evenings after school and not on the weekends. (Unless I need to finish a few things during a grading period, but if I stay on top of the assignments, I shouldn’t have to do much of this).

I’ve made this plan several times in the past, but I’ve never executed it. I get so tired at the end of a school day that the last thing I want to do is grade papers. I take them home with me, but avoid doing them, and the piles just get bigger and bigger. And it leads to more frustration.

So I am telling myself that even though this plan hasn’t worked in the past, it will work this time. It has to. I cannot keep living my life only working. Because even though I may not have been grading, it was always in the back of my mind, and I could never truly enjoy my time away from school.

I want to be able to leave work at work, and live a full life. I want to keep up with the healthy habits I’ve put forth in my life, and I want to take those even further. I want to continue to enjoy my time with family and friends. And I even want to spend some time pursuing hobbies like writing, maybe through a non-fiction writing class.

It’s time for me to work to live and stop living to work. I know it’s easier said than done because I am a workaholic, but if I don’t change this pattern now, I know I won’t have the life I truly want to live.

I’m actually really excited by this new challenge I’m putting forth for myself. Because I have been unsuccessful at balancing my life in the past, I am that much more energized to do it right this time. I have a different mindset now. I know that my life is about a lot more than my job, no matter how noble my chosen profession might be. It’s ok for me to want to have a life outside of teaching, and it doesn’t make me a bad teacher, or a selfish person to want more out of life than a red pen and a stack of essays.

I’ll continue to check in on this blog with my progress, but I am hoping to have positive results to share. I’d like to ask any and all of you to keep my honest with this plan, and if you start to see me slipping back into old habits, that you’ll call me on it.

This is my chance to put me first, and I can’t wait to do it.