Man Flu - first time in years!
When of the unfortunate side effects of being a teacher is what happens when we break up for our extraordinarily long holidays (thought I'd make the point before someone else does)!
When I first started out teaching I would wait for the inevitable body crash every holiday period! Teaching is very much a one way activity, always giving out emotional energy and, towards the end of a long term, most teachers end up running on empty. As soon as you allow the body to relax it redresses the balance and goes on strike for a few days! It's the price of the ticket I guess.
Although this is a well known occurrence, particularly among newer teachers, I haven't suffered in this way for years - that was until 2 weeks ago when we broke up for Easter hols! Everything just ground to a full stop and it's taken me until now to get my brain and body in gear again!
The lesson? There are two ways of looking at this:
1) Frustration and anger with the time I wasted while feeling poorly. Not very useful and resenting your body is never a good idea.
2) Seeing as a necessary balancing of energies and 'enjoying' the experience. It took me a few days of cursing my luck before I switched to this and just let everything sort out in its own time - which it has now.
Everything is energy and imbalances always correct themselves eventually. The thing is that as the term got really busy in the last two weeks or so before the break, I stopped doing the very things that would have kept me healthy. My exercise time went out the window and I lost my connection to pretty well everything.
Lesson learned - here's to finding better balance this coming term!
Steve
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First, teachers are saints in my book. They work extraordinarily hard, it is often a thankless job (which is beyond me), they do far more work than they get paid for, and they are the ones responsible for helping to educate, guide, and mold our future generations. So, in case no one told you today... thank you for what you do! Next, this was an awesome post, I love the positive attitude and the fact that you found a way to turn a negative into a positive! We always have to remember to take care of ourselves, especially those of us here chasing our dreams. We can't run after our dreams if we aren't physically and mentally healthy enough to do so! Great post and hope you are feeling better!
Hi TK - thank you for your comments. I wasn't fishing for sympathy but your kind words really meant a lot and served as a reminder as to why I spend my working days doing what I do.
Kind regards,
Steve
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Thank you for teaching.