Holy three months later, Batman!

So when I started this blog, I intended to update it at least every couple of weeks.  Shame on me for not keeping it up.  I have lots of things in the works right now, some school related and some not.  I have some pretty great pictures of my kids working hard both in an academic fashion and in a performance fashion.  There is so much going on I can hardly keep up.  That said, I think I may have officially discovered my personal limit for how many irons I can have in the fire at one time.

The trouble, of course, is rooted in finances.  Of the kind where I owe Sallie Mae around $64,000 and Great Lakes another $8,000 or so.  A great big shout-out to my alma mater for setting me up to graduate with more student loan debt than I made in gross income in my first two years teaching.  Too bad I have this troublesome habit of eating and wanting to live indoors, otherwise I probably could have made more headway on these loans.

To rectify the situation I currently work four jobs.  I say currently because not too long ago I actually had five.  I teach full time, I teach private lessons through my own personal studio, I work for Tractor Supply 3 days a week, and work for a pet sitting company sporadically.  And also I am in charge of the Destination Imagination program at my school.  So I suppose that could count as my current fifth job.

But the purpose of this post (believe it or not) is not to gripe about money and needing multiple jobs to keep up with things and be able to eat and pay rent and put gas in my car to get to said jobs.

Instead, it's about personal limits.   What a person can do, what a person can't do, and how they may die trying.  A long time ago I thought that having a job meant getting up, going to work, working 9-5, going home, doing whatever you wanted in the evenings, relaxing on the weekends, a vacation in the Summer, and not having to worry about much beyond that.  If kids were in the picture, they occupied the space outside of work.

Now, it seems to me that working can be anything from standard bankers hours to a few hours here and there, working every waking moment in one capacity or another, trying to squeeze every last drop of energy and willpower from your body before collapsing in a heap in bed at the end of the day where sleep becomes increasingly elusive from the continually increasing quantity of caffeine required to make it through the day.

A couple weeks ago I had a realization that the coming week had not a single hour that wasn't spoken for.  Wake up, take care of the animals, get ready for work, report to work at the designated time, put in a full day of teaching, then either come home to teach lessons for 3 hours, go to a county level rehearsal and run a low brass sectional, go to work at Tractor Supply, or run the DI group.  This was every weekday in one form or another.  Saturday was spent at a DI event in the morning and Tractor Supply in the evening.  Sunday was a blur, as friends were in town dealing with major medical issues that brought them from the West Coast to here.

At first I thought "Wow, that's a lot of stuff going on.  I'll really have to buckle down to get through this week."  Now here I am several weeks later realizing that I have this same (or similar) schedule to look forward to for at least another month until things calm down with the extra school activities and rehearsals.

Within the last 48 hours I have begun to realize that I am in the midst of a juggling performance.  And it is no longer a question of "Will something fall?", but rather "What has already fallen, what can I do about it, and what's going to fall next?"  I missed a staff meeting this morning that I had no idea I had missed until I got to school.  What's worse is that I was supposed to help a friend's band this morning in the other end of the county.  It never occurred to me that I had double booked myself.  Back to the old calendar for me.

My hope is that by pushing in all of these directions and being pulled in many more, I will be able to emerge on the other side of the school year with a sense of accomplishment.  At the moment I fear for my sanity.  I do not function well on not enough sleep.  I am starting to dread going to work - all forms of it.  I spend time at Tractor Supply doing things that are so vastly different from school, which may be helping in many ways.  I teach lessons because I love it.  I do DI because I feel it is important for the kids.  I work with other bands because I want to help the students grow as musicians, and because helping out colleagues always feels good.  Pet sitting is fun because I love the animals.

My worry is that as a result of all of these divergent activities each will suffer somewhat.  I know I don't feel like I am being as effective in the classroom as I should be.  I have a to do list that is a mile long and getting ever longer.  Some of that list can wait until Spring Break or Summer.  Other parts of it are far more immediate.

I hope that anyone reading this can take solace in a couple things I have learned.  First, you can always do more than you think you can.  It might cost you time, energy, sleep, sanity, etc., but you are very capable of enduring.  Second, the ability to compartmentalize your life can come in handy while also causing trouble.  I find myself at one activity suddenly realizing something that needs to happen with another activity.  Third, a good calendar is worth its weight in gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, tritium, and anything else of value all combined.  The hard part is sticking to it.

I'll see everyone on the other side.  And who knows, maybe I'll hit the lottery and run away to a cabin in the woods somewhere so I can rest a little. :)