loose change

i’m back in the red chair again. what a week! i went into work this morning &, upon looking at my schedule, asked the office if there’d been a scheduling mistake or a canceled trip that was rescheduled to today. my clipboard said thursday january 2nd, and i knew very well that it was the 3rd, and it was a friday, and there must have been a mistake. mj said wow, that’s wild. you just gained a day!

i am having extreme amounts of difficulty lately giving myself grace. i can’t pinpoint what about it is so hard. i’m surely in the realm of that time of the month where my head is above water but i’m kicking super hard and i’m expending too much energy to keep it there. this makes combating negativity feel sisyphean. i hope the feeling passes soon! i’m getting outside every day, i’m writing (maybe not as much as i could be) (the prior parentheses is exactly what i’m talking about re: not giving myself grace), i’m eating well, i’m sleeping well. i’m concerned too often that i’m doing something wrong and i’m unable to zoom out and recognize that messing up isn’t the end of the world. i really want to believe that i’m trying my best, it just always feels like there’s better out there.

time has totally evaded me. if the track rabbit is early january, my horse is all the way back in mid-december. just this week i was describing a client to sam: he was probably our age, or your age, like 24ish, and sam said i’m 25. my hand flew to my mouth. i’m 26! woof. nobody’s ever getting younger! one of my favorite books as a kid was called elsewhere by gabrielle zevin; it was a christmas gift from my aunt leslie. the premise revolved around life after death, the idea being that in the after, the elsewhere, every year on your birthday you’d age back one year until you reached 0. at this point, they’d float you down the river back to earth and you’d get to live another life.

it snowed last night into this morning and i got stuck in a mile of traffic on an unplowed road headed toward pc. the great salt lake by band of horses came on my car stereo, a song that i was shown by beckett, one of my first graders last year. i remember him asking me to play it and being impressed that he knew band of horses, and i remember wondering if salt lake would mean anything different to me a year from then. immediately i felt him hanging onto my arm singing, smiling a little shyly every time i’d look over at him singing. i’m happy to be away from the emotional toll of teaching, but i miss those little guys a lot. i understand what parents talk about when they wish they could freeze time and keep them a certain age forever.

we housesat for our landlords this week, waking up early to feed the dogs and let them out, to feed the horses and goats and collect eggs from the chicken coop. it was nice to have a reason to be up earlier than normal. i like the way it feels to put a puffy jacket and muck boots on and venture out into the morning in my pajama shorts. everything is still before 730, especially when it’s snowing.

tomorrow will be day seven of the pcspa strike. i hope vail settles soon. i won’t say much more on it. i’m sad about the rift it’s resulted in. i remind myself often that it’s bigger than any one person.

may we all continue learning to find balance in a new year. everything feels uncertain and unprecedented all the time, until we’re a month out of it and know better how to process it, or have the distance to move on from it. a lot of my learning lately looks like forecasting a month out and wondering if i’ll still be hung up on whatever it is. learning, learning, learning. forgetting to breathe too often. next week will feel lighter!

signing off with a lot of love and a little sadness and high hopes for the things i can control,

ryder