Good things about January 2011

One of my most prominent thoughts in the first week of the first month of the new year has been:

"Can January please be over already??!!!"

This is sometimes followed by a series of (mostly mental) expletives. As a general rule I dislike swearing, and I try to almost never do it myself and discourage it among anyone who's within spitting distance of me. However I have to admit that in the past few weeks inserting random foul words into my thoughts and conversation has had a surprising appeal.

I'm stressed about January for a lot of reasons, most of them work-related. It's a transitional month in high schools, which ends up being pretty awkward for me in my particular job. Without going into all the details, there's onus on me to find creative things to do with the extra time available, to meet (often conflicting) expectations for myself/students/support staff, generally do a lot of scheduling, organizing and paperwork (not one of my top 1000 favourite things to do), arrange things for the next semester, tidy up (yeah right), find time to do assessments (hmmph!) and stay sane in the meantime. On top of that, I have fairly high expectations of myself and how efficiently I should run things. I'm also aware of how my decisions impact others and I worry (possibly too much) of how they might be negatively affected by a given decision. At the same time in the past few weeks I've questioned how well I'm being supported in dealing with any of this.

Anyway, in summary I think I've arranged everything as well as I can, and it all has a reasonably good chance of working out fine, but there's enough uncertainty that my stress level has been several notches higher than usual and I expect it to remain so for the next three weeks. Ugh! In real terms this means anxiety eats up at least 1/3 of my energy and creativity on any given day, my appetite disappears to the point where I have no interest in food until the evening (I force myself to eat lunch), and I have a tendency to tear the skin off my fingers a la Black Swan (but I've avoided the last one thanks to an especially good hand cream.)

So it isn't surprising I am looking forward to January 31st, when hopefully I can say "Thank God that is all over and there were no disasters I couldn't live through."

At the same time....I don't feel right about wishing any time of my life away. Who knows what the future will bring? Who knows what precious experiences will only come my way in this month? Who knows (well, I know actually) how many of these "problems" are really wonderful opportunities that I am just not choosing to see that way? And finally, at age 31 I am old enough to know that I am not immortal, that time is limited....How foolish to throw away any of it because of stupid fears or regrets!

So, on that note, I decided to make a list of things that are good about this month. I don't know if I'll convince myself, but at least I'll distract myself. And sometimes that's exactly what it's about.

1) I (re) learned how to knit and now have a new relaxing activity, which also can give me a sense of accomplishment without worry;

2) This is the anniversary of a couple of important beginnings that happened last year: 1) engagement, 2) house purchase, so I can look back and appreciate how much has been accomplished since then;

3) There are several good ski days still left in the month. Bryan is learning to ski and it's so much fun to share it with him and help him to learn better!

4) Anything that that goes well at work, I can take most of the credit for, since it was all my idea (this is the flip side of "If it goes wrong it's all my fault" which is the side I usually fixate on);

5) All my Christmas presents are new and I can enjoy them;

6) Thoughts and daydreams are free and easy and I can enjoy as many good ones as I can fit in;

7) Thanks to modern technology, I don't have to chop wood outside in -30 to stay warm;

8) I get to go to 2 concerts;

9) Having angst means I'll keep up with the blog more

10) Band starts again next week, which means I get to be a euphonium player and a percussionist, not only a teacher. And it means I get to have people take care of me and teach me things, instead of always the other way around.

There, that's as good as I can do for now. But as I think of more (I will!) I'll add them on. What's good about YOUR January?