focus

As most of you know I foolishly decided I should be the assistant basketball coach this year. This has caused much exhaustion and overwhelment [I just made that a word]. I have been frustrated that I can't put as much energy into my classroom, that I can't prepares meal at home like I used to, and that any free time has to be taken up with grading or cleaning because it won't come around again soon.

Also, Borders [the mega bookstore that I LOVE], filed bankruptcy yesterday. You can't even begin to believe how much this bums me out.

However, recently I have realized that I have been bitter about all of this far too much. So I want to refocus. I want to stop worrying about what I can't control and start focusing on the blessings in my life.

Things I want to focus on:

My students. They are awesome. I like laughing with them. We are getting ready to start poetry. I love teaching poetry and reading their poetry. I want to enjoy it.

This weather. Oh. My. Goodness. Windows were WIDE open in my classroom all day and we were still too warm. Beautiful.

Yesterday I asked one of my students to do/not do something because I didn't want her to get in trouble. She was like, "Why?" And then I said, "Well if you don't I may end up getting in trouble." She did what I had asked her to do then said, "I didn't care if I was going to get in trouble, but I really don't want to be the reason YOU get in trouble for something." Sweet.

Brent.

A few of the girls on the team who have really made my coaching experience enjoyable and worthwhile.

Being caught up on grading: even if being caught up forces every fiber of my being to make use of every spare moment, it is a WONDERFUL feeling.

My Juniors just started reading Thoreau's "Walden" today. For those of you that don't know, he lived at Walden pond for 2 years to see what was necessary and unnecessary in life. What he discovered, essentially, is that people get so caught up in "making a living" that they don't live. He combats this, saying that he wants to "suck out all the marrow of life." He says that when he come to die he does not want to "discover that I had not lived." He finds that our lives are "frittered away by detail... Let your affairs be as two or three...simplify, simplify." Thank you, Thoreau. I needed to hear that.

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed? .. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

** yes..he invented the phrase "march to the beat of your own drum: