Today I decided to write because I'm feeling like I'm juggling a lot again and I'm overwhelmed. My coping mechanism is often oversharing, so the blog is perfect for that. I started to just tweet, but it took too many characters and I didn't feel like cutting anything, so here I am.
My tweet looked like this: I took on too many things at once. I can never not drop everything to help my kids, but picking everything back up after dropping them is the only time I think about how many things I have taken on. Why have I, after almost 42 years living in my brain still not figured out how to use it?
It's a valid question. Why am I still figuring out how to function in a healthy way? I'm frustrated with myself.
I have given up oversharing about my kids (not my story to tell, consent, and all that stuff that's really important). Still, my issues are open for sharing, and there are so very many that a blog post works well.
I probably should catch up a reader (not that there are many, and most know all this, but I'm telling the story, so I get to choose the stuff to write about). Since I last posted in 2017, I went back to school, became a special education teacher, got my master's in education, had a horrible, traumatic church experience, taught through a pandemic, and got a couple of my kids through high school graduation as well. I also bought a house with a pool, went on a road trip with my Becca, was undiagnosed with MS, and lost a bunch of weight.
It's been an eventful few years.
The things I have taken on lately are a new job (still a SPED teacher, just a completely different kind than the one I started with), joined a bunch of people starting a church plant, went back to school again to get a STEAM education certificate, started a club where I teach to promote inclusive practices, and I'm heading up a team of parents at my kid's school to start a booster club for the music program, and I just took a mentor position with a brand new teacher that starts tomorrow.
I know, I'm crazy.
I know that my self-worth isn't defined by all the stuff I accomplish, but I like accomplishing stuff. I've been paralyzed before, and I never want to feel that way again. I like doing stuff. Still, it all drops to the floor if one of my babies needs me. I was given the nickname of Mamabear at work because I passionately fight for the needs of kids. My own children get that tenfold.
Without going into the who or why of the most recent reason I had to drop everything (not my story, but I was a being mom), I want to share the picking back up of the broken pieces when I dropped all the things.
I still haven't gotten it all together yet. I have this week to finish all of the assignments for my STEAM class that I didn't do in the midst of the issues, but it's happening, even if I just took on the mentor thing. I will make the time because I will not fail. I have late IEPs for the first time in my 4 years of teaching. That's horrible, but I'm fixing it. I'm getting help for the stuff for the band booster thing. I'm not alone in that, even if they voted me in charge. I learned that I have to have more than a few people backing me up on new projects or I will never make it, so I'm leaning on others with my new club and the new church plant until I get my feet back under me again. It's probably growth that I'm doing that because I know in the past I always liked to just take on challenges by myself, and I learned how toxic that can be.
It's all still a bit crazy, but I'm still figuring out how to function well in my brain, which I have seen in scans, and is super weird. I'm good with being weird, though.
