Sometimes...

Sometimes it's hard for me to tell what needs to be done. I live a life so fraught with complexity, so many people and things need my attention, I often feel like I don't know what I must neglect, because something will fall through the cracks, it's inevitable.

My typical day:

• Wake up at 6am
• Pray
• Shower, get ready for school
• Listen to the Book of Mormon, a conference talk, or NPR while you get ready and eat breakfast
• Pack lunch
• Out the door, listen to NPR on car radio
• Greet the kiddos
• Get them started on creating math problems that equal the number of the day.
• Read homework journals, check homework
• Teach reading/writing
• Recess
• Teach math
• Lunch
• Read aloud
• Make copies/prep lessons
• Teach science and/or social studies
• Teach spelling/grammar/phonics
• Get kids packed up
• After school duties/meetings
• Exercise
• Eat
• Talk on the phone
• Write, if I'm lucky
• Go to church meetings, visits, or plan lessons for church related events/activities
• Make calls for church stuff
• Listen to music, catch up on emails
• Read
• Pray
• Bed

Looks simple, right? Wrong. What I didn't make clear in the list is that while I do all of these wonderful and important things, I get interrupted about six times a minute by little voices, or phones ringing, or people at the door, or people on the intercom, or kids from another class, or a specialist, or an administrator, or another teacher, a volunteer, or my own thoughts. All day I feel like someone who wants to swim but there I am standing on the edge of the diving board and someone keeps whistling, telling me something, keeping me from diving in. I never even get wet. Some days I wear the bathing suit for nothing. I walk home, with the towel around my shoulders, just thinking what it might have been like to dive in deep, swim long, burn out in that satisfying way. I feel burned out all right. Just not the way I wanted to burn out, feeling accomplished.

I feel a little emotionally constipated lately. I feel like nothing, I mean nothing is really working. Everything I want seems to elude me. I can't seem to find what I wanted to find in the form of a life. What did I expect? I expected to have time to be myself I guess. But there isn't much time for that these days. Let me stress, I didn't say time to be BY myself. No, no. I said time to BE myself. Who is that? I'm talking about the funny girl. I'm talking about the girl who draws and paints. I'm talking about the one who discusses things with people who care and think. What happened to her? I think she's standing on the diving board again. That blasted whistle is relentless.