2018 Really Sucked

Well, that's a hell of a title...

And for me, 2018 was one of my most challenging years, personally and professionally. And I realize now that I had been trying to sugar coat my life for so long that I had essentially lost my voice.

I became my own Little Mermaid, if you will. 

So what happened that led me to taking charge of my life and turning things around?

I'll come back to that.

So, 2018....I was teaching a new grade level. I went from Kindergarten to 4th Grade. And that in it's self started the spiral....because changing grade levels is really hard. Not only did I have to learn new curriculum (reading, writing, math, science, social studies, grammar, spelling, etc) but I was learning a new age as well. 

Ideally, a new teacher gets support but I didn't...on any level. Not even people (there was more than one) who were supposed to be mentoring me helped me. The other thing about switching grade levels is that you don't know what you don't know. I would be thinking I was doing great until I found out that something was due that day that I knew nothing about. I didn't know what questions I should be asking or if I did I'd get vague answers, I would discover that no one else was using a rubric because they just knew what "on level" looked like. 

Well compared to K, they were all doing phenomenally. 

So I just did my best and kept my mouth shut that I was struggling so much because I didn't want to throw any of my team members under the bus. I was trying to protect them and make it look like I was doing just fine by myself. 

And then my principal disappeared. She went home on a Wednesday in January and never came back. They kept putting off her return from medical leave but eventually even the powers that be had to say she wasn't coming back next year anyways and probably wouldn't be coming back at all. 

There are theories as to what happened to her. I believe she found out she wasn't going to be returning and spent the rest of the year on stress leave. We got an email at the end of the year from her announcing her retirement. 

And that really sucked because my class was really difficult. I loved them but I had fist fights breaking out in my class (7 of them for the year) and without any admin support, nothing was done to make it stop besides my time outs and losing recess. I did start suspending kids out of my classroom because that's all I had the power to do. 

Again, I was still doing just fine.

And by this time I had discovered who my friends were, AKA I lost my friends. 

Okay, really I stepped back and realized that they were not supportive of me when I reached out and were not good friends, so I backed away.

I'm going to give two examples in case they are reading this because I just ghosted them while in my obvious JUST FINE mental state:

1) I was waiting for them at a work event before I chose my seat because I wanted to sit by them. I waited for maybe 45 minutes before I found out that they had met before at one of their houses to start the party earlier. I felt stupid for waiting for them. Really stupid.

2) I had asked the same group to go walking with me in an effort to be more healthy. I had to take a break after a couple of miles and told them just to go on ahead. I waited for them and then trailed behind trying to keep up. Then a few weeks later, I saw them all going out for a walk without inviting me. Since I was the one who asked if we could start walking together in the first place, I felt stupid and so rejected.

I did take an amazing trip to Hawaii. I was hoping for some kind of life changing epiphany that came from Mother Earth being so close to volcanoes but I just had nightmares about union rep meetings. 

I don't remember what triggered it but my JUST FINE status turned into playing HEART ATTACK or PANIC ATTACK. I had an amazing trip to Budapest, Vienna, & Prague but I hid the fact that I broke out into hives from an allergic reaction to my sunscreen plus my joints had swelled up making movement more difficult and uncomfortable. Being morbidly obese is difficult onto its self but throw extra swelling in and you got yourself a party.

Did I mention that I'm morbidly obese and prediabetic?

It was after my trip to Europe that I realized that things could not continue this way. I had been asking for help and it wasn't working. I was asking the wrong people.

I turned to therapy. 

And I wish I had done it years ago. 

My therapist opened doors for me. I'm not on any medication but she's helped me with my mild anxiety AND discovered something about me that had been affecting me for years, which had a huge impact on how I got to the JUST FINE mentality that was drowning me. Why I ghost people and protect people who aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing, why I had stopped standing up for myself, why I had been slowing losing my voice to my own personal sea witch. 

I found my voice again. 

I might go into what I struggle with at a later time but I'm not ready to do that just yet. I will say that self-esteem and self doubt have a lot to do with it. 

So not only did I find my voice but there have been other side effects of my therapy: 

*I rediscovered my love of teaching. I am a good teacher, there are many great things about me as a teacher, and I am so much stronger this year as a 4th grade teacher

*I started decluttering. I watched Tidying Up on Netflix and it has totally inspired me. It's amazing how much stuff I've accumulated in the last five years. Purging my stuff has been so cleansing to me

*I have been consistently keeping up with my bullet journal. Last year around this time, everything creative around me stopped. I stopped journaling, blogging had been inconsistent but it just died. My little bullet journal has been a huge help to me moving forward

*My house is cleaner. I've discovered it so much easier to keep a clean house when you have less stuff in it. 

*I've been walking Dakota more

*My relationships are better...this includes family and my small group of friends. I don't intend to "confront" my old group of friends mostly because I don't see much point to it. I'm happy to keep things the way they are now.

So where do I go from here? Whelp, I got some plans! I've applied to join a medical weight loss program that's super intense that I would actually like to document my journey if I get accepted. I've got an incredible trip lined up this summer through Spain & Morocco that I want to research and prepare for. 

I would love to turn Miss Ruark's Adventures into more of my journey into wellness but that's also an adventure so I'm not sure if a title change is needed. For a long time, I thought I had nothing of interest to say or that I couldn't say the things I wanted to say. I no longer feel that way.....so we shall see what happens next.