Day 7: Routine

I’m not looking for sympathy here. Really, I'm not. Today's post is more about thinking out loud.

I know full well there are three types of people in the world: (1) Those who work in education and understand how relaxing and restorative it is to have summers off, (2) those who don’t work in education but have enough perspective about it to empathize with teachers and appreciate why having that much time off is valuable for us, and (3) the people who think they know better and are all too quick to criticize teachers and think they went into the profession because it’s such a sweet gig to get the summers off, so all those ungrateful teachers should stop complaining about everything.

Again, I’m not asking for sympathy. But if you’re someone who even has a toe on the line of that third category -- if you really need to constantly bathe in your own self-righteous ignorance, please keep it to yourself. Also you might want to skip the rest of this post because it will probably irritate you.

As the school year is ending, I’m in a pretty good place. In fact, a lot of my school year has been pretty good. It hasn’t been perfect, but one very helpful part has been the schedule I’ve worked with. It’s been nice most days, hitting the ground running as we start the day and maintaining that pace for a few hours, then having the afternoon to catch up, spin down, and even start thinking ahead to the next day.

It has me thinking that it might be a good idea to construct a mostly regular schedule to follow during summer break. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful thing to have the chance as an adult to spend a day (or days, or weeks) with nothing to do and all day to do it. But too much of that can easily become too much. I know myself well enough to understand how much I need structure.

I can’t have a daily schedule broken down by half-hour or hour increments, because that would stress me out when I slip off of it, which I would. I think it’d be nice to have regular things to do each day, with the built-in flexibility to occasionally skip them when there are other demands. I know I’ll have a list of summer chores I hope to accomplish, and a list of summer adventures I’d like to have as well. I’m probably going to have to do more school work than usual this year, with two new curriculum packages to learn. In past years I’ve covered my refrigerator door with Post-It notes in an effort to make my To Do List more engaging. That’s only worked sometimes though, and usually leaves me feeling guilty about some of the things I never got around to doing.

The question is, what do I build into that structure? How much time do I allot for daily tasks, or household chores? What things do I want to have accomplished by the end of the summer that I could break down into small, daily steps? What experiences do I want to have that would best be pursued with all of this time off? I spent a lot of time sitting around my house reading and watching TV last year, but all of that was with the goal of helping my newly-adopted pal Freddie gradually acclimate to his new home. This year shouldn't have to be the same.

Working this out is a minor problem, if it’s a problem at all. And it’s surely a nice one to have.