Going into this school year, I already knew that I was going to be taking on a new position as the 9th grade English teacher lead. Though I wasn't worried about the duties or responsibilities of stepping into this role, it was still one I had never pursued nor felt quite ready for. But entering my fifth year of teaching, I knew it was time to take on some leadership in a more prominent way. This felt right. This felt good.
Then, one of our most beloved English teachers announced her sudden departure from the profession. She would no longer be with us, and with so little time to fill her position, our department chair asked for the help of my fellow colleagues and I to step in and take those classes she'd be leaving behind. This was a big ask, much more daunting than being the 9th grade lead, but the raise we would get certainly helped me to accept the offer. This felt doable still.
And then, on the first day back to work, we discovered that taking on an extra class meant that we would be replacing one of our planning periods with it, which would cut our time in the building to get work done in half.
Now things weren't feeling so great.
Along with all the other responsibilities teachers already take on, whether universal or voluntary (like office hours, extra clubs and council sponsorships, PTSO), now having two additional major positions of leadership effort became a blaring alarm in the scope of my new year. It was day one, and I feared I was already spreading myself way, way too thin.
So I had to stop, breathe, and remind myself: I actually have been preparing for this exact moment.
For much longer than these work opportunities have been cropping up, many more small and subtle pockets of time have presented themselves to me, asking gently to be used as the foundation of a more fluid, more abundant future - not just for work, but for life. In these moments, I take more time than I probably need to journal at length about my desires to deepen my spirituality, or to be the girl who consistently does her morning pages, or who can jump right out of bed, excited for the day. In these moments, I decide which routines and habits have been serving me and which ones are ready to make their final exit from my days. Perhaps I even linger in the kitchen and craft a meal that takes a bit longer. I clean out the sink while I wait.
In these moments, I am actively building a container for my long-standing happiness. I am carving out a space that can hold who I am becoming.
Much of my adult life has carried a theme of needing more structure - what this means to me is taking it upon myself to act as my own caretaker, attempting to provide healthy boundaries and discipline to my inner child - and by association, my current self - in better ways than I may have in the past. Having grown up very freely and abundantly, but with a lot of alone time where I had to figure out how to entertain myself, I often resorted to unlimited screen time, relentless snacking, and sleeping in as easy methods of comfort and pleasure. I didn't have many chores or responsibilities until I became a teenager and got my first job. I did well in school, but procrastination was my way of getting through it. So as an adult, now expected to uphold a life of work and relationships and financial responsibility, those habits served as a pretty unsteady foundation. Although I've always enjoyed the freedom of adulthood, it became clear that I would have to parent myself through a few things.
I've spoken and written about it many times before, but social media has always been my greatest addiction. When I first began this blog, I was spending upwards of three hours a day just on Instagram. Due to this, I vowed to never download TikTok as I knew how detrimental it would be for my mental health and time management. Still, this didn't include random YouTube rabbit holes or Reddit doom reading. I talked with my therapist at the time about how evident it was that this was self-sabotaging behavior, but I didn't know how to stop myself from doing it. Makes sense, considering it's all I spent my free time doing as a child. How does someone build structure and live comfortably within it when they've never done so before? An Instagram timer never really worked, because I would just replace that time with a different platform.
Setting my alarm fifteen minutes earlier every morning, likewise, never really worked for breaking the habit of sleeping in, because I would fall right back asleep until I had to wake up.
But you know what did work? Meal prepping.
And here's why this bad-turned-good habit was different: Once I started going back to the school building for work after COVID, I realized how much money I was spending on eating lunch out pretty much every day, or how dissatisfied I was with the abysmal student school lunches. It was a major detriment to not have my own healthy and flavorful meals prepared - much more than the time it took to make them. Through this, I realized that I wouldn't be motivated to improve my bad habits, my shaky foundations, unless they became more uncomfortable or even painful than the process of changing.
I've come to understand that creating structure is a very logical thing. A lot of strategy and thought process goes into it, and of course, a lot of dedication to the goal. It's inherently masculine to be structured - some might even say they're one in the same. In studies of polarity, it's critical to have clear boundaries and containers, or the masculine essence, where there is energy and expression and exploration of any kind. Balancing the "feminine" of our lives - the freedom, the play, the never-ending journey of experience and interaction and emotion that makes up our days - requires that we put some guidelines out so that we don't get lost in it all. We have stop signs and road maps. We know when to slow down, when to pivot or change direction altogether. In simpler terms, we parent the part of us that wants boundless freedom. In that, we actually create more of it.
How does that work, exactly? In short, it's sustainable.
Imagine that you never have to set your alarm ever again. What would happen? Well, given that you don't have a job to be on time for, you'd get to sleep as long as you want. Maybe you could use a few days of this. No problem. But what happens once you're well rested? Will you introduce a morning routine? Will you fill your morning with sunshine and coffee and journaling? Will you even wake in the morning?
Chances are, without an alarm or any real reason to wake up, you won't. At least not consistently. The reasons we have, whether intrinsic or forced upon us, therefore serve as our structure. They create possibility. They create a time and a place - a container for our waking hours, or our eating habits, or our screen time. Without them, our desires may run free, but they have nothing to hold them up. When parameters are put into place, suddenly they have a sense of direction.
So all of these little lessons in feminine and masculine dynamics, in boundaries, in figurative architecture that I've collected over the years have been preparing me for this moment I couldn't have foreseen: one where I am being given an opportunity with great reward, but with perhaps even greater responsibility. It will take a lot of structure to uphold. It will take a lot of saying no and staying in. It will take a lot of fuel and rest for my body, with a lot of presence and awareness. But it will be done, because I know that the consequences of not fulfilling the duty will be much too painful.
I also know that I am ready. I can hold this pose and thrive in it.
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