Letdown

The year leading up to my wedding was an incredibly busy and exciting one. I had just started my first full-time teaching job in a Catholic school after spending the past two years working four part-time jobs simultaneously. I knew NOTHING about running a classroom or teaching curriculum beyond what I'd been told by the best principal I ever had. I asked what exactly I was to teach.

Sister Gloria Jean handed me the English and American history textbooks and said, "Teach this."

So I did...in addition to religion, art, handwriting and spelling. It was A LOT of work...and I got only two precious breaks all week while the kids went to computers and gym.

We also were charged with getting those sixty eighth-graders ready for Confirmation and graduation -- two huge events that took place within the last month or two of school. My wedding date was a mere two weeks AFTER the end of the year. So by May, I could hardly think straight. I often look back on that year and those kids and wish for a do-over so I could tell them, "Hey! I really AM a good teacher! I really DO know what I'm doing!" But whatever...such is life...it is what it is...blah blah blah. Somehow I made it through, the year ended, and I got married.

We left for the honeymoon vacation of a lifetime.

And then I was back home in my new apartment while my husband went back to work. There was little else for me to do but write thank you notes and make dinner.

I was bored.

I wandered around the (little) apartment looking for something...ANYTHING...to occupy my time.

I shopped a bit...but what could I possibly need after a wedding??? Our possessions hardly fit in the apartment as it was.

I finally found the pool and spent long afternoons there reading trash novels. My husband would come home in time for dinner, whipped from a long day, and have me pounce on him to go do something...ANYTHING...to entertain me. To say he was irritated is an understatement.

It was just that post-wedding, post-school year letdown. I had been riding a wave of adrenalin for so long that my body didn't know how to sit still. I craved activity, excitement, ANYTHING more than what I had.

You know where this is leading, right?

Fast forward...this past school year was perhaps the busiest yet. I worked harder this year than ever before, both academically and administratively. We have an incredibly diverse study body with specialized needs for whom we plan individual lessons, and we're going through accreditation. A teacher will read that and shudder. Everyone else can just assume that it's TERRIBLE. And I was put in charge of THE DOCUMENT. Committees worked and reported and drafted their piece, gave them to me, I edited, revised and entered the information. It's over 100 pages long...and I sat on/wrote for two committees myself.

And then there was this little matter of community activism. Since the day after the November elections last fall, I have been 110% consumed with helping save my library. I stepped off a cliff and into the political arena, and life will never be the same.

Oh, and I was incredibly lucky to be able to start freelance writing IN MY SPARE TIME. Ha!

So if you had told me a year ago -- when I had just had major surgery and was happy to be able to walk across a room without vicodin -- that I would help start a grassroots coalition, speak multiple times to audiences greater than 100, be a panelist on a televised town hall, talk on radio with a progressive warrior, record a robo-call and CHANGE THE WORLD in my little city, I'd have LAUGHED AT YOU.

Not a day has gone by in those nine months that I haven't had a full e-mail inbox, multiple FB messages, texts and phone calls galore. Not a day has gone by that I haven't been fully engaged with a plan of attack for my hours. Not a week has gone by that I didn't have somewhere to be nearly every night.

Until this week.

Letdown.

I don't know what to do with myself. I'm bored...despondent, nearly! All my politicos are back to work. My husband is dreadfully busy and battle weary at his job. My kids sleep all morning and are too old to be interested in mommy's adventures ("What makes you think I WANT to wash the car???" spit my 15 year old at me yesterday...), and the things I SHOULD do lack excitement.

I mean...come on...appear on TV or scrub a toilet? Can you blame me??? I'm lucky to shower before dinner, and that's only because I had (thankfully!) two good reasons to be somewhere the last two nights.

Even then, it took me an inordinate amount of time to put together an agenda for a board I chair...an agenda that should have taken ten minutes to formulate. I think I spent over two hours of staring at the computer...trying to remember what to do...looking for e-mails with snippets of details for the meeting.

Oh, and refreshing my e-mail and key websites to see if there was any news, information, contact regarding the library issue.

At one point, I almost called my husband to ask if our network was down.

Refresh...sigh.
Refresh...sigh.
Refresh...WAHHH!!!

The greatest irony is that in a week or two, I'll find my rhythm again. School will ramp-up, the push for November elections will be under way, and I'll be crying uncle at the heap of business on my plate.

But until then...you'll find me wandering the house, staring into space, idly refreshing tabs on my computer browser.