So my week got a little crazy at work, and it spilled over into my out of work life.  When that happens, something has to give (or in my case several somethings) and one of those things was my blog posts for the rest of the week.  I apologize, but as the saying goes, s*** happens.  But looking at the quotes I didn’t get to blog about, I kind of realized that they sum up my week perfectly.  Wednesday was a crazy day with school wide PSAT’s for the sophomores and some of the juniors.  This disrupted the schedule for the rest of the school as well as class placement.  Basically, it was a fly by the seat of your pants kind of day.  We did what we could with what we could with what we had, which wasn’t a lot.  A lot of the crazy spilled over into the next day and a lot of time was spent picking up the pieces of the crazy day before.  For me anyhow, I didn’t believe in the power of anything.  I was hanging on by a thread, but I made it through and figured the next day would be smooth sailing.  Oh how wrong I was.  The next day started with me down in the principal’s office with a student who was supposed to be suicidal the night before.  Thankfully, the reports were incorrect, but those are the kinds of things you don’t leave to chance.  However at the end of the day, it was the same story, different kid, and sadly that report was far more credible.  As an educator, my main goal is to help kids see how awesome that they are, and yet, sadly, we deal with situations like that far too often.  How am I supposed to help a kiddo realize their self-worth when the rest of society, including their family, is telling them they are worthless? 

We all have something of value to contribute to this world, and our job as parents, and as educators is to help our children and our students realize it.  Our job is not to tear them down and destroy their feelings of self worth.  Anyhow, needless to day, this week kind of killed me inside and there wasn’t a lot energy left over for writing.  What’s incredibly ironic is that I tell my students when they are faced with situations similar to this, when they’re feeling overwhelmed, or that nobody cares, I tell them to write about it.  Journal writing is a big part of my school day.  I tell them if they need to swear to get their point across, do it.  If they don’t want me to read what they wrote start off their journal entry by saying that, and I’ll stop reading.  Journal writing is an amazing way to let your feelings out and to sort through emotions that you are struggling with.  But I didn’t do it.  I forgot to look for the positives in each day and to try and turn things around.  Instead, I chose to wallow in the craziness of my week and it didn’t do me one bit of good.  So while I do know and accept that there will be days when I am just too out straight busy to write, I also know that on the days that are super stressful, I need to write!

Another good lesson I was reminded of this week is that I am NOT perfect.  I screw up, I make mistakes, and sometimes I fall off the positive thinking wagon.  It’s okay.  I’m not supposed to be perfect.  I’m supposed to make mistakes and hopefully learn from them, and the biggest lesson of all is that if and when I do get mired down in the negative thinking, is that it’s okay.  I just have to make sure I don’t stay there.  We can do this.  We don’t have to do it alone, we can do it together, just one day at a time.