10 things I am doing in the pursuit of happiness

Hello there dear readers. Today is a rough day. If I can be perfectly honest with you, every day is a rough day this semester. I have a tough group of students this year. Not tough, as in defiant, or aggressive, or anything like that. They just do not work. Imagine putting everything you have into every single day and get met with blank stares and apathy of the likes you have never previously seen. That is what I do Monday-Friday from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon. It is taxing. I refuse to give up on the kids, so every few weeks I have try something completely new. Plans are tossed aside with reckless abandon in favor of developing all new lessons, activities, lesson delivery methods, etc. I have created two brand new units in the last five weeks. And know that next semester I am going to do it all over again. The hard part is, I have no idea what these students know. They do not produce enough work to even know what I need to teach. It is possible many of them are innately good writers, but since they are taking zeroes on writing assignments I cannot even assess them. There are weeks when I question why I am in the teaching profession, something that never really happened in the last few years. Until November, I felt all of that BLEH seeping into other aspects of my life. I was not sleeping well, food did not even taste as good. I became even more of a shut-in than I already am, felt myself snapping in my every day life, and felt like my creative pursuits were failing. I was at a complete loss of personal confidence. Chocolate became my calming force. I felt more unhealthy than I have in four years, and what was worse, was that I felt totally comfortable in it. I was quite content to slide back into the life I was living six years ago because it was easier.

What follows are some of the things I have been doing to shake myself out this. They do not work every day, but in the last month and a half I have felt much better. I am starting to feel more like myself.

1. Cutting myself some slack. This is an on-going battle for me. I want to be the best at everything. When nearly half of your students are failing or near failing, it is tough. You want to spend all day every day trying to fix things are not broken. At some point I had to realize that school life was going to be school life, and home life would be home life. What that means is, I take little home this year. In fact, AP Literature is the only class I bring home anymore. The rest of it can wait. I need to take time for myself. Let myself breathe. My friend Megan, who is also my writing coach/task master, has always, many times through email, reminded me to cut myself some slack when it comes to writing too. If I cannot get as much written as I want, that is okay. I feel like I spend a majority of my day reminding myself that it is okay. It is okay if I give myself a break, and spend hours reading in bed when there are other things I should be doing.

2. Keeping my classroom clean and my desk organized. I prefer my world to be organized. I like structure. My classroom is full of disorganized teenagers who cannot keep track of their own brains. It can become a chaotic hurricane if I let it. I try not to let it. The more organized and clean my room and desk, the more calm I am. I try not to leave school with a mess on my desk because when I get to school in the morning, it starts me off on a bad note. It is similar to the idea of not going to bed with dirty dishes in the sink. If I can start my day in a good mood, I can typically get through the day feeling better.

3. Cutting down on idle time. I have been trying, and mostly succeeding, in cutting down on time where I am sitting around doing nothing. My current unit at school is a film unit, so there is a ton of passive time during movie watching. Instead of sitting around watching the same movie all day, or sitting around looking at nonsense on the internet, I am writing letters of recommendation, doing research for grants, grading papers in a timely fashion, researching units, and starting to look at stuff for my grad program. At home, I cut down dramatically on the number of television shows I am watching and I do not binge watch anything anymore. Sunday for the Redzone channel in the only time I sit in front of the television for multiple hours.

4. Getting moving. This feels self explanatory, but this is a blog, so I am going to explain it anyway. I spend most of my day standing in front of a class, or circulating the small classroom area. That stagnancy can be a pain. At the moment, I am finding that I am too tired to get myself up early enough to work out on a daily basis, so I am making sure that during every break, lunch, or prep period I have, that I leave my classroom, and walk around a bit. My classroom is not the best place to be stuck all day. It is small, dingy, with spray-painted over windows, closed off, and sad. It brings people down compared to what I was working with last year. This walking around not only gets me out of that classroom, it gets me talking to other people and keeps the blood flowing. Even a five minute walk around a few buildings leaves me invigorated.

5. Talking. I am talking to my friends more. I am communicating with the world more. I am still pretty much a shut-in unless Martina makes me go somewhere with her, but I am keeping in touch with important people more. Yesterday I spent a lovely ninety or so minutes with one of my best friends. Monday, Martina and I went out to dinner and to a movie. On campus I trying to talk to other teachers more. It is not natural for me. I am not social by nature. I am content to sit in my own bubble. I like my bubble, but I find, that when my bubble is not the happiest place, that talking to those I love, helps me fill my bubble back up with positive air.

6. Reading and writing. Man, do I love words. I have filled my time with words. I am reading them, writing them, consuming them as often as possible. But more than that, I am talking about reading and writing. I am sharing my books with my students when they ask. We discuss books at length AP Literature. Megan and I trades texts about our writing projects, and I am feeling less self-conscious about calling myself a writer. I am talking to people more about what I am writing, how I write, why I write. I am proud of how much I read and I am proud of what I have written. I will never say I am a great writer, but I love doing it. I am getting more comfortable with the idea of people reading my writing, as personal as much of it is. That is another thing, I am trying to be fearless in my writing. I want to put myself into the world, and the only way to accomplish that is to be truthful. No matter what I do, I want it to be full of me.

7. Loving unabashedly. I am trying to express the love I feel for people on a more regular basis. This has always been easy with Martina, as we tell each other "I love you" multiple times a day, but I am trying to be more free with the love I feel for my non-romantic life partners. I find that when you love without limits, and express that love without fear, those people often love you back without limits, and make you feel safe. Feeling safe allows me to take risks because I know that those people will be there to catch me should my risk taking hurt me. Expressing feelings has never been something at which I excel. I prefer the written word for that, but in the last month or so, I am seeing a difference.

8. Living for myself. If anyone ever called me selfish, I would consider it the absolute worst thing. I have never done anything specifically for myself. I am known the world over for putting other people first, even at my own detriment. It is probably my worst quality, something with which I am still struggling, but I am getting better at living for me. If I want to write for a day, I do not put it off if someone else wants something. I applied for grad school knowing that it would limit my time in every other aspect in my life, but I wanted it. I wanted it for me, and only for me. It is weird when you start living for yourself for the first time.

9. Focusing less on things I do not like. This is actually a super difficult one for me, and I fail at it as often as I succeed, but I keep pushing myself to focus on talking about the things I like, and ignoring the things I do not like. On Facebook I desperately try to talk about the things in my day that are good or funny. On Twitter, I am less successful. I do tend to talk about the things that bother me, instead of the things that lift me up, or that I like. Coming out of the final Hunger Games movie, I felt disappointed, but I told myself to focus on the aspects of it that I liked, so while I am able to critique the film for its shortcomings, I try to spend more time thinking about the aspects of it I did like. I will always be a critical person, but I can acknowledge the weaknesses without it taking me over.

10. Putting down my phone. I have to admit, this is the one with which I struggle the most. However, I recognize I feel better when I am more present in moments. The addiction to that device is real, and it is a problem. One of my goals for 2016, which I will lay out in this blog, is to spend less time attached to devices, and spend less time on social media. I have taken great pains to try to rid myself of the people who make social media less fun, but I know, deep down, that I need to stop spending so much time attached to the digital world. When I let myself get lost in the world, life is better. Last night I picked up a book at around 7:35, and finished it without ever checking my phone, checking the time, etc. It was awesome. I need more of that in my life.


There you have it. There are other things I need to add to this list, specifically going back to cooking more/eating more healthy food, and of course, sleeping better, but they will come. Little things make a b ig difference, and many of these changes allow the slightest shift in my own perception of the world, which makes a tremendous difference. What are some things you do in the pursuit of happiness?

Kicking it up a notch

From the moment I found myself back in the pool, I wanted to get myself to 20 laps. My body is a mess of pain, I am incredibly obese and out of shape and I was swimming 10 laps the first week and in order to do those 10, I had to take breaks. It was embarrassing for someone who used to swim on a regular basis and I was good. This is not some bragging nonsense either, I was a pretty good, and fast swimmer. I have always been bigger, but when I was younger, I was in pretty good shape even for a bigger kid. The fight to get myself to 20 laps has been equally as embarrassing for me. I would hit this wall at 16 or 18 laps and my mind would take over and I would crash. The pain would kick in and I refused to fight through the pain. The back injury was a major setback in my progress, and I was starting to feel defeated but that was before my major attitude adjustment this week. I came into this week knowing I needed to kick myself in the ass.

Well the attitude change brought with it my 20 lap milestone! Not only did I hit the milestone, I hit it without any real breaks between laps! Oh, but that is not all readers, today I got up to 24 laps in the amount of time it took me to get 20 on Wednesday. Next week, I am really going to push it and get myself to 30 by the end of next week. I honestly think I could have pushed myself harder today, but I do have a bit of a cold and it was making breathing a bit difficult, and let's be honest, breathing is an important part of the living process. I started this blog on May 10th and began my quest a day or two earlier, and here I am 7 weeks later and hitting my first, of hopefully many, big milestone. It feels great! My body was exhausted, but it was a good exhausted, not the kind of exhausted you feel after wolfing down a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger.It was not that exhaustion of shame you feel when you ate too much and realize you are tired from eating. I am excited to hit 30 laps next week. My goal is to be at 50 laps before the summer is over. I really believe I can get there.

Keeping with the physical, I had my first dance rehearsal in over a year this week. Our choreographer moves at a fast pace, which I appreciate. For some reason I have always picked up choreography very quickly and I love to move and I love it when a choreographer does not hold back on me because of my weight. The next day I woke up and I could move! This is another huge thing for me. Normally the day after a dance rehearsal my body is a mess of serious pain, stiffness and general sadness, but not this week! I was up the next day, went for a brisk walk and spent the day packing and lifting boxes with minimal pain. This is 7 weeks in and I am seeing the exact kind of results I was hoping to see. Yes, I have hit a weight loss plateau, but I am feeling so great about myself for the first time in a few years.

In terms of weight loss, I have decided not to weigh myself for another week. I do not want to risk getting down on myself. I want to keep this positive momentum flowing. It feels like I burst through a dam and I do not want to stop the gushing water of positive emotions. I need this right now. There are still a few aspects of my life that are freaking me out, and this momentary outburst of pure positive energy is needed to get me through the rest of it.

Happiness is a fleeting emotion. If you find it, you have to do everything you can to hold onto it and remind yourself of that happiness when times get tough. I have a world of things to be thankful for and I am not ignorant of that. I know many of you have great families, but I believe I have the best family in the world. We rally around each other in the face of everything and I have needed to fall back on them many times in my life and never once have they let me fall. My best friend has seen me through so much and seen me at the absolute lowest of emotional, physical and mental health, and he has always told me I deserved better for myself and always reminds me how much I have to offer. I am also lucky enough to have the sweetest, most understanding, most caring and most amazing girlfriend in the world. I apologize, half-heartedly, for the cheesiness, but it is completely sincere. Martina does way more than she probably knows to keep me focused. But most of all, I have myself. I have to control my own happiness. We all have to control our own happiness. We surround ourselves with the people who bring out the happiness. They do not create it or control it, but they help foster it. I have to be in charge of what I let in my body, and who I let in my heart and life.

This journey has taken me so many places already. I have cried quietly in the dark of night as I realized how I caused this in myself, but how I always blamed other people. I have randomly laughed, and cheered when I hit this big introspective realization. I have eaten more fruits and vegetables in the last 7 weeks than I can ever remember, and I have stuck to my plans. I have hated every fiber of my being, and then never loved myself more when I realized what was causing that hate. I am a million miles away from completing this journey, but after 7 weeks, I feel like I have traveled the entire world of emotions. I am exhausted, but energized and am thankful to each and every person who has read and followed the journey thus far. I am unbelievably thankful for the words of encouragement, the suggestions and the positive energy everyone brings to my journey. I am even more thankful to those who have said I have inspired them. I do not want to sound douchey, but it is my life's goal to inspire and if my journey to free myself from the chains of obesity, pain and sadness, can help someone else escape their own chains, that is best feeling in the world.

Tomorrow I get to go witness two people who love each other commit to a life together. Is there anything more inspiring than that? I tell you readers, life is a crazy, beautiful, tragic, awesome trip and it is about time I look up and enjoy the damn ride!!