Teaching in the inner city is hard.
It's funny though - the things I want to think about the most don't have to do with teaching. Time and again I find my mind wandering, not to my lesson plans or upcoming project-based unit or more efficient grading systems, but to my financial stability and plans, to spending time with my boyfriend, to working in more quality time with Simon (who is currently drowsing in the kitchen chair next to mine, overjoyed to have me back after a 5-day vacation). I find myself wistfully thinking of the hobbies I wish I had more time for, like making my own red wine vinegar, or finally finishing that goddamn afghan for my sister, or cleaning my room, which I haven't gotten around to doing since I moved in in July.
There's just never been a break. Moving here was a haphazard, frenetic, multi-stage affair that at one point involved two different storage units in two different states. Once the move was completed, I've had to bounce from activity to activity like some nomad electron whizzing uncoupled around the cosmos -- apartment hunt, job hunt, summer training, job training, new career, relationship adjustment, trying to make new friends -- and with the terrible energy drain that is a) teaching and b) teaching in the inner city, I have felt...emptied. Diminished.
And really, really tired.
I miss the things that used to make me feel like me. Waking up on a Saturday and drinking coffee and journaling. Cooking on a weekend afternoon. Hanging out with Simon. Reading dogeared old favorite books. Spending quiet time just thinking. Exercising.
A nice little vacation down to Disney World gave me some physical and mental space to do some thinking; a violent illness upon my return forced me to rest. I'd like to return to work in the morning with a sense of self-groundedness. That I am my own center, and everything else flows from that.
It feels like I've forgotten how to do that, sometimes. Maybe it's one of the challenges of being in an intimate relationship -- the desire to be separate and whole, and the desire to be together and whole. I've never been particularly skilled at that balance -- my experience of close relationships hasn't lent itself that way.
But I can learn. If I'm going to be able to keep a sense of self, I need to learn. And there's no time to start like the present.
