The past week or two has found me hurtling full-throttle towards burnout (despite my best efforts to thwart it), and I was all set to write a rant-type post about how this always seems to be the hardest part of the school year for me, when I found a beauty of a post that talked all about taking the time to reflect on our “inner harvest” this season. The post encouraged me to look inward at what I’ve “grown” and “harvested” since spring, and since that’s a much better use of my time than wanting to throw up over how many papers I still have to grade over the next week, I’ll run with it.
I haven’t taken much time lately to celebrate my victories, large and small. (Because, of course, it’s hard to celebrate victories when you’re so laser-focused on your to-do list and all the factors looming over your head that you can’t seem to control.) But if I look back at everything I’ve “grown” since spring?
Pretty amazing, actually.
For one thing, I birthed a small human, who is quickly becoming not-so-small (and who is scooting around and around with fire and determination in her eyes that no obstacle shall prevent her from reaching whatever small object she is going for). And while I can’t take credit for Raven’s accomplishments, I AM pretty proud of myself for feeling overall pretty well-adjusted to this whole new-motherhood business.
Seven months ago, I didn’t know how to breastfeed, change a poopy diaper in any small amount of time, effectively rock a baby to sleep, or know three different ways of heating up a bottle. Now I do. So that’s crazy to think about.
I also have managed to slowly but surely start getting myself back into some sort of physical shape despite having an autoimmune disease that attacks my muscles and even managed to train for a 5K (and run the whole thing!) despite often feeling dreadful muscle weakness. Interestingly enough, when my doctor said that he thought the muscle weakness component of my disease was in remission, he mentioned that he thought that the fact that I “stubbornly kept exercising” might very well have had something to do with it since I wasn’t giving my muscles much of a chance to get weaker.
And let’s not forget that I (mostly) successfully made the transition from full-time stay-at-home mom to working-like-a-madwoman mom without too many tears or freak-outs, and as I mentioned before, I’m actually feeling overall pretty positive about the balance I’ve struck between teaching and my home life, which is something to be proud of, indeed.
And craziness of all crazies (how I’ve managed not to brag about this already, I can’t even fathom–probably due to aforementioned grading/hurtling-toward-burnout frenzy)–
I am writing a book.
*Gasp!*
Writing a novel has been on my life’s to-do list for so long, it’s almost become one of those quaint notions you think will never actually happen but like to joke about sometimes. Well folks, thanks to a NaNoWriMo competition with the husband, I have managed to write almost every day for the past 2+ weeks, and I now have over 11 single-spaced pages of a novel and an annoyingly proud feeling about the whole thing.
This is a Big Deal.
Plus I’ve somehow managed to read anywhere from 20-60 pages on most days, even with the craziness that is my workload.
So there you go—not bad for an inner harvest, indeed. Feeling pretty proud of myself, actually 🙂
