New School Year's Resolutions

Time to dispense some advice to myself

I am an educator, which means that I do not measure the passage of time by the calendar year, but by the school year. On Monday I go back for my first day of pre-school year preparation at the New York City independent high school where I teach. I feel it is always good to make a list of new school year's resolutions.

I Will Read Books On The Train During My Commute

I mostly did this last year, and it was great for my mental health. Too often I would scroll through Twitter or listen to podcasts, and when I got home at the end of the day, I was so exhausted that I could not read without passing out. Reading is by far the most meaningful spare time activity for me. If I do not have time to read I may as well not be alive. I am saving the podcasts for when I am doing household chores and the like, and hoping I can keep the Twitter use to rare moments.

I Will Lean Into Parenting When I Get Home From School

This is a big one. After enduring my commute after a long day of work, I am usually ready to just collapse into my chair and zone out. During the school year it feels like I barely see my children during the week, and I need to do more to make the most of our time together. This also keeps me from scrolling through social media or reading the news and getting depressed. Plus my kids need my support as they go into the first grade this year.

I Will Not Get Sucked Into Drama and Petty Bullshit In My Workplace

I have a great job and I teach with wonderful colleagues, but even in such fortunate circumstances there's going to be drama and petty bullshit. That's something that's just endemic to the American workplace. It can be even worse in the hothouse atmosphere of schools and universities with a lot of people used to being leaders of their classroom domain. Teachers also tend to have big personalities (part of the reason I love working with them.) Of course, this can lead to personality conflicts. In life I tend now to have a practice where I assume best intentions. In the rare case after giving someone the benefit of the doubt and they turn out to have bad intentions, I do my best to disengage and not get bogged down in their negativity.

I Will Try To Get Seven Hours of Sleep A Night

I resolve this every year, and rarely go through with it. Part of the issue is that I need to get up at 5:30 AM to get to work, and the hour or two at night that I get to myself is so precious. Hopefully I do better this year.

New School Year's Resolutions

[Editor's Note: personal post today. Feel free to skip if you like.]

My school year started Monday with some professional development sessions. It will be another week of meetings before I see my students, but the grind has already begun. I'm back in the trenches, back to getting up at five in the morning, back to a mad rush to get the girls up and fed before my train leaves, back to my long commute into New York City, back to coming home exhausted and barely having any time to spend with my daughters. I was filled with such dread last week thinking about the months ahead, and I decided to make some resolutions. I do love my job, but juggling that job with family life has been very difficult, to the point that by March I wonder if I am going to make it to the end of the year. I don't want to experience that feeling this coming year, so here are some things I want to do:

Get seven hours of sleep a night
When my daughters were infants my sleep got patchy for obvious reasons, and it still hasn't recovered. Last year I usually got about six hours a night, which is not enough on a consistent basis. It made me tired and irritable.

Read books on the train, rather than listen to podcasts or surf the web
Part of the reason I stay up late is that I need time for myself every day, and that includes reading. If I go a day without reading a hundred pages or so I feel like I've wasted my day. Part of my problem was that due to sleep deprivation, I was too tired to read during my train commute, and I would fall into surfing the web on my phone and listening to podcasts. Reading on the train will help me sleep more. Yes, I am that weird.

Playtime with my daughters every day
In the morning I am with my daughters in the mad rush to get ready before my train leaves. When I get home I am with them in the mad rush to walk the dog and get dinner ready. Because we get up so early, they have to go to bed early, which means I barely get time with them. I'm trying to avoid the temptation of just flopping in my easy chair while they play or watch TV. We had so much fun this summer, I don't want to lose that.

Don't work through every lunch
Being a teacher is a hectic job, and some days I am able to get a lot done by bringing my lunch from the cafeteria to my desk as I work. This kind of behavior keeps me from getting a break or socializing at school. I need to stop doing the working lunch so often, and take some time to let my mind breathe.

Do enjoyable things on the weekend
During the fall weekends can turn into a cycle of yard work, lazy soccer watching, and trying to appease irritable toddlers. Then Monday rolls around and I feel zero sense of rest or happiness as my train gets enveloped by the darkness of the tunnel beneath the Hudson. This year I want to make sure I do something legitmately enjoyable on the weekend. My wife and I certainly need to go out more without the kids, and when we do go out, venture into either the deep country or New York City. Sitting around the house for two days is a recipe for irritability, since I am not a homebody.