Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
We don’t have to feign naivety and pretend something horrible didn’t happen. Sad things happen in the world and we need to understand this. What we don’t need is a constant flow of news and a detailed account of the event pushed on to us, and more importantly pushed onto kids.
This was some professional advice shared with me 14 years ago, after a tragic suicide in our community that was followed shortly after by a school shouting in the US.
Refrain from sharing images or video of the incident.
If discussions do take place within the classroom, we recommend they be limited to a brief sharing of facts.
There will understandably be some anxiety around this incident and staff and students may have some level of emotional impact from the news.
Please watch for any changes in behaviour, particularly among vulnerable students, and refer appropriately to your school counsellor as needed.
Children don’t need to see report after report about a tragic incident. It doesn’t have to be the topic of a current events discussion. And nothing needs to be shared about a perpetrator of a horrific crime. Not even the perpetrator’s name. Not at school, not at home.
I could go on, but I’ve share a lot on this already, many years ago:
Excerpt: We often get results based on the pictures we fill our young impressionable students’ heads with. Tomorrow, I fear that well-intentioned teachers could stir up thoughts of fear for personal safety in young minds, as concerns about Newtown are discussed. As I said, ‘I’m willing to bet that hundreds of thousands of students that might have felt safe in their school, and would not have questioned their own safety, will now think of that question (Am I safe?) and perhaps be more frightened than if that question did not get discussed.’
Excerpt: The fact is that we know, both through research and from historical evidence, that glorified stories perpetuate the very sadness we are appalled by. But that doesn’t stop a major national magazine, MACLEAN’S, from glorifying a killer on their front cover page. I’ve shared the cover below, but took some creative liberties with a red pen to prevent this very post from doing what I wish others wouldn’t.
When I see a cover page like this, I’m left wondering what we truly value in our society?
It comes down to this: We need to care for those who are concerned, we don’t need to amplify concern. The less we share tragic stories as a community, the more care we are showing for that community.
I was tempted to start this by sharing a screenshot of my miserable sleep pattern, as recorded by my new watch. However that feels like I’m somehow bragging about how bad it is, and well, that’s not only nothing to brag about, it’s also not necessary. So just know that above everything else, my sleep cycles have been ‘off’ for a couple weeks.
I’m planning on retiring, I’m trying to document the uniqueness of my job(s) for the next principal. I’m dealing with a second family loss in just over 2 years. A close family member had a scary medical issue this summer that is only now coming to a (thankfully positive) end, and a good friend just started chemotherapy.
Cognitive overload is the term that was shared with me by my counsellor. I dismissed it. That’s not my problem, I’m a high functioning individual, I’ll be fine…
What finally gave? My sleep and my health. And now my ego. Admitting that I pushed too hard has been way too hard. I need to be quicker to listen to my counsellor and to my body.
Im happy to offer advice about the importance of taking care of yourself, but the last to take the same advice myself. The easy excuse this time is that I was in cognitive overload, the honest excuse is that I’m stubborn and believe these kinds of things are what others deal with, not me.
I hope sharing this will help someone else listen to their bodies and the people that support them.
I’ll come out of this just fine, the question is, will I learn from this or just let myself get to overload again?
I sat down to write, put some relaxing music on, and fell asleep before a word was put on the page. I’ve had a lot going on personally and the net effect is that I’m not sleeping well at night. I’m not a great sleeper to begin with and so when I get like this my nights are rough.
Compounding this is the fact that I have a new watch that monitors my sleep. I know this will become a helpful tool eventually, but now it’s more like paralysis by analysis. Seeing my sleep results in the morning only adds to my stress about how crappy my sleep was. Not enough deep sleep, not enough REM, and both too many restless moments as well as too much time awake during the night.
The good news, it’s the weekend and I can take some naps to catch up. I think my body was designed to live in a place with siestas. Power naps revitalize me. I passed out for 20 minutes and feel better. But if I’m honest, I could easily sleep for another 20-30 minutes right now.
Too many people try to go solo when they have a community of support around them. There are more people around you willing to help you than you think. You just need to ask… and that’s the problem. The help isn’t always offered.
The people who can be most helpful would be glad to help if they just knew you needed help. The trick is to make contact and be clear about what you are hoping for.
There’s a difference between: “Do you have time to…?” And, “I really need you to help me right now.”
There’s a difference between: “Hey, just calling to say hi.” And, “I really needed a friend I could talk to right now.”
Too many times in my career, and in my personal life, I only realized after the fact that I could have gotten so much more support to get over a rough patch than I actually got, more than I asked for… only because I didn’t know how to ask, or that I could ask.
Sometimes I’ve thought I’d asked, but it was a soft ask, a sort of ‘help would be nice’ kind of ask rather than an, ‘I really need help’ kind of ask.
I get it, it would be great to have people realize that the soft ask wasn’t just an ask but a need. The thing is, everyone is knee deep in their own stuff and the soft ask can easily be missed. So don’t assume your soft ask is enough.
If you need help be clear, be blunt, and ask. It’s hard to do the hard ask… just do it anyway!
I’m 57. I’m never going to compete athletically at the level I did half a lifetime ago. I know this. I understand this. I’m good in terms of how I think about this.
And so what I look for now are moments where I connect with that former athlete, the drive, the push, that I once had in sports. The ability to have my body quit before my mind does. That’s the push.
We are capable of so much more than our minds usually allow. We exert ourselves with mental limits conservatively below what our bodies can achieve. So when we have those moments where we surrender those limits and work our bodies to limits that are our real limits… we remember the push of who we once were… and we become that again.
It was an accumulation of being busy and getting poor sleep, but last night I hit a wall. I could tell my body was heading to a crash because of the tell-tale sign for me… feeling constantly dehydrated. That’s my cue to slow things down. But I couldn’t, I didn’t slow down, and so my body gave me the metaphorical middle finger and said, enough.
Is it too cliche to say that we need to listen to our bodies? I’ve been better in some aspects. I’ve been taking more consistent rest days in my workout schedule. I’ve done a few lunchtime 4-5 minute walks through our ravine trail next to my school. I’ve been more thoughtful than usual about my diet.
I need to also listen to my body, take the cues, and then focus on my physical as well as mental wellbeing. And if need be, take a sick day. I’ve pushed through too many times and the results are always a longer recovery, all the while being less resourceful than usual. I’m a slow learner, but I’m learning to listen to my body.
This is a little reminder to myself to not take everything so seriously. I was away Friday and so yesterday was extremely busy as I tried to catch up on things that needed to get done. I then ended up on the phone or in meetings for most of the morning and spent the afternoon just moving from task to task.
At the end of the day I chose to just stay at work until my PAC meeting at 7pm, so I could keep catching up. After deciding to head out for an early dinner, I went to the bathroom and noticed a teacher still working and about to leave. I’ve known her for about 25 years, when we taught together, and now she’s one of my lead teachers.
“Come join me for dinner, my treat!”
It was such a battery charger having dinner and chatting not just about work. She knows me well and could sense my task-oriented stress levels. She reminded me to keep things light, and to enjoy my day. I work with great people, we have awesome students, and we all work hard… but we need to remember that the best way to get work done is to enjoy our time while at work.
On a day when my whole focus was getting caught up, this was an important reminder.
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Update: Just did my morning meditation about setting intentions: “I set an intention to seek more joy in my day!”
I had a bout of food poisoning that put me out of commission for a good day and a half. While I am not yet 100%, I can say that other than my tummy feeling a bit off, I am not feeling any other effects. I wrote yesterday that I was in recovery mode, I realize that I was also in a bit of a reset.
I was getting swallowed up in news about the Canadian election and the goings on of US politics as well. I was swept up in the news and for me that’s never good. In the last 48 hours I just didn’t have the mental capacity to care, and so I haven’t been paying attention.
Refreshing.
I need to remember to take these small breaks, small resets, where I let the crazy news headlines of the day slip by without putting mental energy into them. I don’t need to be dismissive, just less sensitized to things beyond my control. Because when I’m paying attention, I get deep in because even my social media algorithms get pulled towards news and so even my mental breaks end up being more of the same information.
Reset completed, I’m going to try to stay away a little longer… there will be enough craziness happening next week that I can let this week’s news go for a little while longer.
Have you ever noticed people‘s affinity to focus on the negative?
You say what a beautiful day it is to a stranger outside a coffee shop, and the responses you get is, “I hear it’s going to rain tomorrow.”
You say what a great price for eggs, (🇨🇦), and the response is, “I can’t believe how high prices all are these days!”
At coffee with a friend this morning, he commented that my ‘observations’ recently have all been positive:
‘Workouts are going great, and I feel stronger than I ever have.’
‘Things have been running really smoothly at work, and I’m enjoying connecting with students the past few days.’
‘I’ve felt a lot more present recently than I have in the last few weeks.’
Where I used the word ‘observations’ above, very often the term tends to be ‘complaints’… things that I notice which are not going as well as they could be, or even if they are going well noting afterwards how this is fleeting.
I’m going to bask in these positive observations for a bit. Let them soak in and appreciate them… I had the funny urge to say, ‘while it lasts’ but as funny as that might be, it totally misses the point. I’m enjoying staying positive, and I look forward to this feeling continuing!
If you are good at things, and have high standards, you assume that you should always do well. Which means that success isn’t a form of celebration, but it’s the minimum level of reasonable performance. Anything less than victory would be a failure, and victory itself becomes nothing more than acceptable.
Congratulations. You might be very successful, you also might be miserable.”
I came across this quote earlier today and it hit me like a punch in the solar plexus.
I have a weight training goal, I hit it, and moments later the celebration is gone and I’m wondering what my next, more challenging goal will be?
I foster and empower leadership of others at work, I have a bit more time on my hands… never mind that I’m still very busy, what new project am I going to take on?
With every success, a new target. With every achievement, a question of what the next achievement will be? Not for bragging rights, not for glory, not for accolades. Just for shear determination that another success is around the corner. Because standing still is losing ground. Pausing and breathing is for losers… except it’s not.
I’ve been in a challenging head space recently. I read and felt this quote. If nothing else I think I need to stop asking what’s next; to be present; to focus on what is happening here and now, and not what the next challenge is.
