Your Courageous Life

Photos don’t express how great the Next Step groups are!

There is this phrase that we “work on ourselves” and “personal growth” types sometimes use: “choosing out.”

As in, “I’m ‘choosing out’ on participating in that activity.” It’s a way of saying that beyond deciding not to participate, I’ve thought about my options and I’m consciously choosing what I would like to do, and my decision has nothing to do with the other people involved, though I respect them.

After another lovely Next Step weekend, I realized that part of this journey of letting go of teaching and fully embracing the work I want to do in the world involves “choosing out” of flying solo.

I don’t yet know how to walk in that space!

Here’s what I mean by “flying solo”: I have been someone who is….well…”self taught.” I have been someone who has been happy to share whatever I learn, however, I have often shied away from collaboration.

Collaboration can be disappointing. Collaboration can be frustrating. Collaboration has resulted in people criticizing my ideas. Collaboration has sometimes been full of betrayals or dishonesty. Collaboration has been a scary space for me to be in! So a pattern emerged from childhood and beyond: after seeing people flake or drop the ball, and feeling disappointed, I pulled back and flew solo. And after seeing people act in ways that were really frustrating, I pulled back and flew solo. And after hearing criticism, both well-delivered but hard to hear as well as unfounded and incredibly mean-spirited, I pulled back and flew solo. After a few instances where people said one thing but thought another (and, painfully, combined that with “behind the back” talk), it became easier to just do my own thing, stick with the person I knew I could trust (me) and fly solo.

And, by the way, I don’t want to give an impression that working with me in the past, with my own limited communication tools, has always been peachy. I have no doubt that I’ve done things that were frustrating, or flakey, or I’ve delivered criticism in ways that were far from kind–and man-oh-man is it hard to own my stuff around talking about people behind their backs and gossip!

This weekend, it occurred to me that this entire past year has been paving the way for really living in a space of collaboration and connection, rather than doing that space sort of “halfway” and “sorta kinda” and “if it feels safe.”

I’m choosing out of flying solo.

“The adventure you’re ready for is the one you get.” –Joseph Campbell

I’m so excited for this adventure!

The really cool thing is that as I’m choosing out of flying solo, all sorts of people and experiences are stepping out of the woodwork to help guide me along, to actively help me with collaboration. I’ve been talking to other creative and talented people that I know about putting together workshops that I’ve always dreamed of doing, and the excited energy of talking about that is just amazing. I’ve had multiple people reach out to me to offer marketing help as I continue to refine the new websites that I’ll be introducing here on October 1st. This is such a gift because marketing is this area that I have just avoided like the plague because I haven’t known how to do it authentically, and haven’t wanted to waste precious time pursuing a marketing avenue and finding that it doesn’t work.

Beyond that, the support has been amazing. I feel literally carried by the friends and family who, in my moments when I’m telling them that some inner critic Gremlin thing has come up for me, say, “Of course you’re going to be just fine!”

And that is such a huge gift, because the scary moments do come, the moments when I wonder if I’m just a huge fool to change careers “in this economy” (anyone else notice a lot of people tacking that phrase onto things?).

I feel very held by the people in my life, who are nothing but encouragement and excitement for me. And it is a testament to the changes I’ve chosen to make, too–if I may toot my own horn for just a second–because there was a point in time when I did not have that support from the people around me, and it has only been through letting go of some relationships and having this huge reckoning with others that I have been able to create this new community of people in my life who are all so, so amazing.

I wish, wish, wish that I had more time to write here lately. The lessons are coming so fast. Every day has this new gift quality to it. Something new to discover and get is in every moment. There’s new clarity. I’m asking old questions and the answers are astonishingly there and present.

The miracles at a Next Step workshop are always undeniable, big, huge. Love, love, love doing this work, even as much as it chokes me up and terrifies me to do it.

The piece that I got this weekend, the piece that frankly I am just too exhausted to go into detail about in this moment but that felt so vital I wanted to remember it and had to write it down, declare it, put it out there–the piece that was huge for me this time was about letting go and not having attachment.

It can’t be practiced, I’m realizing. It’s something that one steps into. It’s a choice one makes (maybe the choice is the practice).

It’s a choice that I made this weekend, after noticing the pain it caused me to hold on tight to my opinions, beliefs, the “shoulds” that I have around other people or life or what the Universe hands me.

I looked around and had this moment where I got that Life was my biggest teacher, that every single experience of my day was there, waiting to see when I am going to wake up and see it fully, turn it over, get the lesson.

Last night, I was giving my students some last-minute study time before their first test of the semester. I had a nagging feeling that the stack of tests in front of me seemed a little too slim for the number of students that were in the class, so I quickly counted them.

Oh, man–not enough tests. What to do? Nothing but find a photocopier and copy four more.

I left the room with the tests while my students studied, and headed up a flight of stairs, crossing my fingers that I would find a photocopier that wasn’t broken (and this is, often enough, a challenge–someday when I win the lottery, I am totally going to donate brand new, spiffy photocopiers to the college). I was walking down a long hallway when I passed a bulletin board that featured photographs of the current deans of the college, arranged by discipline, and the top administrators who work under those deans. And as I passed this display, I suddenly felt this huge sense of connection to something larger than me, to this institution and all that it aims to do, to every student I’ve ever come into contact with, and an overwhelming rush of gratitude for everything in my life, including teaching, even though I am making a choice to let it go.

I felt such gratitude that I have had the honor of teaching students. I felt such gratitude that I have been privileged enough to teach for this institution, which is a place where I have seen teachers who genuinely, truly care about students, who regularly sacrifice themselves and time with their families to stay late and conference, plan the best lesson plans, meet with other teachers to get ideas or collectively improve courses. This lovely community college, so beleaguered with challenges, just does the best it can with them and what comes out, actually, is pretty damned good.

I felt such gratitude that I stuck with the challenges my Coach had placed before me–to not leave the job in a huff of frustration or in the darkest moments, but instead to fully clean up my side, to get in integrity with me. I felt such gratitude for that because I’ve met teachers who waited too long, who didn’t get out until they were utterly worn down and leaving felt simply like surviving. I’ve felt worn down like that before and had I not had the good fortune to take time to restore myself, I might be even more worn down, now.

My thoughts were these: Thank you thank you thank you, such big gratitude, for the experience of sticking through for all of the right reasons–to work on me. Thank you thank you thank you, such big gratitude, for the clarity to know when it’s time to let go.

I notice a softening inside of myself around the fear. The fear moves in waves. Over the weekend, as I was going back and forth, back and forth, the fear was so intense that I was waking up with stomach cramps in the middle of the night. I felt as if I’d eaten gravel. Nearly every food made my stomach hurt, so I ate very little. This, too, was a surprise. Everything about the fear with this decision has been a surprise to me, the decision to let go of teaching itself has been a surprise, the reckoning with myself and what I really want has been a surprise.

I went to the crunchy-granola natural pharmacy nearby to pick up some pro-biotics and a naturopath checked out my tongue and also suggested some Chinese herbs. Within twenty-four hours of taking the pro-biotics and herbs, my days of stomach troubles were significantly abated and then much better, and I felt held.

And I thought to myself, “I want to remember everything about this.” I want to remember how difficult it was, because it has become very clear to me that this experience of letting one job go in order to pursue another career is not about money or health insurance. Instead, I am very curious about who this woman is who is so unexpectedly afraid, and I am even more curious to see who she is, what she looks like, on the other side of that fear.

I am interested to see what the edges of me look like, the places that are more raw and less put-together.

I feel so much more alive.

I have been working and am continuing to work on what my next direction will be. What has come to me has been really swift, really clear, really directed. I finished the website design for the site that will go with this idea in only one hour, and that is practically unheard of for me (usually, I have about ten “false start” designs, that cover the span of a few days!).

I’m making the announcements on October 1st and sharing it all. I’m so excited. As Jill Scott says, “I’m living my life like it’s golden.”

~ in gratitude ~

The last few days have been really intense, largely because I had a kick-ass session with my own Coach, got really honest with myself, and arrived at a choice that terrifies me even as it thrills me:

I am taking a leave of absence from teaching.

Here’s what happened: Thursday night I arrived at my Coach’s place in a total funk. I blame it on Mondo Beyondo (in the best possible way). The thing is, when I signed up for the course what I thought I would get out of it was a chance to connect with other like-minded souls, to have fun playing around with wishing and dreaming, stuff like that. In my head, the importance that I attached to it was all very light. It was more of an attitude of, “This will be fun,” rather than “This will change the choices I make in my immediate future.”

Taking a few weeks to focus on wishing and dreaming puts a mirror up for how I am living my life and how close I am to living the way that I want to live. When I made my Mondo Beyondo list, I was pleased to realize/discover that my desires were not so very far off. I was at least on the right track, I realized. But like a seed planted, all of these little ideas that I had written down, made public, and started to talk about suddenly had lives of their own. I kept thinking about and was stumped by this: You know what you want, Kate. So what is keeping you from going after it? If you’re thisclose, what are you not stepping into?

I didn’t even realize, until I made that list, how close I was to what I was wanting in so many areas. What was keeping me from fully embracing it, then? And again and again, what kept coming up was a feeling of fear and the thought, “I can’t quit teaching.”

So, okay–Life Coach Red Flags, here. Red Flag #1: Making choices based on fear. #2: Noticing that I was holding on to the fear rather than just letting . #3: The word can’t.

And as I kept writing and journaling, what I kept coming to again and again was that in this moment, I want to let go of teaching English.

I do not know why this would be such a hard truth to admit. Plenty of people dislike their jobs, and I wouldn’t even say that I “dislike” teaching English so much as I have realized–not at that moment but after the last five days of parsing it out–that I simply do not believe it is good for me to continue right now. But what immediately came up, aside from fear over money replacement and loss of health insurance, was all of this…gunk. I have never had gunk come up like this before. Sure, it was scary to start doing photoshoots (confession: before every one I do, I still have thoughts like, “What if I completely mess this up???” It’s a weird photographer’s stage fright!). Sure, it was scary to start my coaching training a few years back and then to develop a coaching business and then to take my first coaching calls. Sure, it was scary to go to Europe for 30 days and to live in Florence this summer (what if I’m lonely? what if I get mugged? what if Andy and I grow apart because I’m gone for too long? what if not speaking the language completely overwhelms me? what if…?). Sure, it has been scary to send out my writing and it has never felt good to receive a rejection notice.

However, I have just courageously stepped into all of those previous fears. Nothing ever felt so big.

Letting go of teaching is BIG for me, mostly because my relationship to it has been sort of like a dysfunctional relationship with a boyfriend you know you need to let go of, but there’s some good stuff there so you kind of hang on, hoping it will work out. I have known that teaching was not working for me in all the ways I wanted it to work for me, and yet I also knew that there were areas where I was out of integrity, or that teaching held gifts, or that there was something new for me to discover, so I held on (that and, I love working with the students. Whenever we laugh in the class, whenever I see groups excitedly discussing a new idea, whenever a student who was previously failing gets it and starts rocking out, I feel like a million-bazillion dollars, so I was hoping that this would carry me through).

Every semester, I have finished the semester identifying habits that I want to work on or shift for the next semester. I think it’s a great teacher practice. And every new semester, I have walked into the classroom thinking, “That’s it! This is the semester I will…”

And it’s so funny, because it’s always blown up in my pretty little face. I was sort of talking about this with my Sept 3rd entry (not sure how to link to that). I would get better at XYZ thing that I had said, “Teaching will work better for me if I master ___” about, and then that XYZ thing would get better but then something else would crop up–immediately! Within weeks of the new semester! It was crazy! So I’d get to work on that, and then the cycle would repeat itself. I’d say, “Maybe teaching just isn’t working for me anymore.” I’d list all the things in my head that weren’t working. And then I’d think of how really great the students are, and maybe I’d think a few fearful thoughts about not having perfectly steady income, and I’d go, “Nope. Not going to let go, just yet.”

And then this semester…oh, good god. I did all of this work last May with my coach around showing up more powerfully in the classroom, recognizing where I am fearful of students not liking me and then getting lax on my own rules and resenting them when they take advantage of me, things like that. And this semester, I have walked into the classroom more powerfully, and that fear is gone. It has hit the dust. I am not afraid any longer of my students disliking me.

No other problems have walked in to replace that problem. The semester is progressing smooth as pie…

…And I still want to let go of the job. I still struggle with not resenting getting up for work. I still get these massive headaches before I am supposed to go in to teach.

I’ve coached many people who are dissatisfied with their jobs and some think a new career path will make them happy. Many of them have even already considered that maybe the job isn’t the problem, but how can one know the difference between blaming a job for problems versus just not being in the right line of work? I believe it all boils down to integrity. If we are out of integrity in many areas of our lives, there’s inevitably something (a relationship, job, body image, etc.) to be used as the blame for why we are unhappy. If we are totally in integrity, to the best of our ability, and we still notice dissatisfaction in these really huge ways, then that means something just isn’t in alignment with our vision for ourselves, and the dissatisfaction is trying to tell us something.

This is why I’ve worked so hard to figure out how to become the best teacher that I could be. I have never liked the idea that I might let go of one line of work and bounce around to another when the real issue is me trying to avoid being totally in integrity with myself. These past few days of soul-searching have shown me that I am as in integrity as I know how to be, and it is time for a real change.

I’m excellent at what I do. I’m knowledgeable about English instruction for the levels I teach and the demographics served (remedial, ESL, learning disabilities), I’m willing to try new things, I’m innovative, I look for every excuse to bring creativity into the classroom, I try not to assign anything that would make me yawn myself. I dislike the commute but I arrive on time, every time, almost always early, I’ve developed systems to ease grading, I avoid dealing with bureaucracy almost entirely, I’m now a seasoned rock star at diffusing discipline problems, I get that grading done and come in and lecture anyway even if I feel physical problems, I work on managing the stress, I don’t check my email nearly as often as I used to and don’t do a stitch of teaching-related work on the weekends any more, and I’m organized to the point of annoyance and usually keep pretty on top of remembering things. I am interested in my students and want them to lead remarkable lives, I talk to them outside of class if they need support, I hold extra office hours. I recognize, during difficult student encounters, that everyone is doing the best they can with what they’ve got and that whatever challenge is presented by a student is one that can teach me something. I recognize that the hostility often comes from some source of pain. I have cultivated more patience than I’ve ever thought possible, and the experience of being a teacher has taught me more about classism in our society than any book.

If I can learn all of that, and still not quite feel right with myself when I wake up in the mornings to teach a class, then that tells me that at least for now, I have some exploring to do outside of the classroom.

I am typing all of this in the afternoon, just hours before I will drive in to my department and talk to my Chair and offer my written notice. I am setting this to post this evening, after it’s all done (because I’d kind of be an ass-clown to announce something like this to the Internet before I spoke to my immediate supervisor). I am nervous, and excited, and…all swirly.

There is so much more to say–especially because since making this decision Thursday all sorts of new and exciting stuff has come down the pipeline–but will have to leave you with this, for now.

Okay–calling all people who have an opinion!

If you really knew me, you’d know that marketing is a huge learning curve for me. Actually, I dislike it a lot because I see so much inauthenticity, and that’s part of the reason it’s a learning curve. Authentic marketing is fantastic. When someone is genuinely excited to share a neat idea or pass along something great, I love seeing that and being part of the enthusiasm. What I find difficult, especially on the web, is seeing places where I suspect that the marketing is not authentic. For instance, when researching travel, I frequently come across websites where someone tries to pretend as though they had a personally great experience with a hotel, when in fact it’s just someone faking the personal in order to pimp the hotel. Not cool.

That said, I also know that marketing is not a dirty word, so I’m getting more into reading about it and talking to people about it. One question that keeps coming up for me is feeling that there’s “too much” going on with my websites.

The trajectory looks something like this–the blog, thisyhere one, is what came first.

Wanting to have a writing portfolio is what came next, and as I branched out into doing photography, what eventually came forth was http://www.katecourageous.com.

Coaching, under the website http://www.healgrowcreate.com was next. For years, I only worked with clients individually. Now I want to branch out into doing more workshops, retreats, and finally (!) getting brave enough to put forth the e-course I’ve always been dreaming of doing.

The Courageous Traveler was a passion that I came to. I’m excited about travel, enjoy writing about it and talking about it with people, and wanted to play with that a bit online.

Four websites. All of them have a different look. And now the question–Should I consolidate them in some way? If not, what are the reasons to keep them separate? If so, what are the benefits of consolidating? Do you find the different websites confusing in any way? Or is it good that they are separate–does this keep them nice and compartmentalized, with one site focused on one particular thing, and that’s it?

Here’s my line of thinking: I want a person to go to any of these websites and just find whatever information they might want to find about the other things that I do on each website. So I would like it if someone who visits this journal also has the option of seeing that I have creative pursuits and work for myself, both because that’s a piece of understanding me and where I’m coming from, and also because I find that my best clients are people who find me through my journal. They already get what I’m about on some level.

I’d like someone who visits Kate Courageous.com to see that I also coach. However, I established healgrowcreate.com as its own separate website because I thought it would be good to give someone who was considering coaching a lot of information about the subject. I’d also like anyone considering coaching–especially because so many of my clients are creative entrepreneurs taking bold leaps into scary territory like working for themselves–to know that I, too, know what it is like to put myself out there creatively. I feel like there’s too much that I want to say about coaching and retreats to glob it all in with katecourageous. That’s a “pro” for keeping the websites separate–the information sort of stays organized within its own place. Yet with separate websites, this becomes more places a person to click in order to find information. Someone who finds me via katecourageous.com would have to click over to healgrowcreate.com to get information about retreats, unless I make several different “retreats” pages (which is the current mode I’m in). That’s more places to make updates–to the katecourageous.com page, plus the healgrowcreate.com page, etc. So that’s a “con” for keeping them separate.

Truth be told I don’t actually mind making multiple updates–if I know for sure that the multiple sites are not causing confusion for readers.

So, I’m incredibly curious (and feeling really vulnerable in asking for feedback). Is it confusing that I have a blog, a writing/photography portfolio, and a coaching website? Should they all be consolidated to one? Or should they remain separate?

Ideas either via comments or email (kate -at- selftaughtgirl -dot- com) are appreciated.

Flying Books. San Francisco.

I was saying to Andy the other day that despite the fact that we are very busy lately–he is inundated with freelance work and I am doing my usual juggle of putting time and attention into one passion and then another–I have this strong sense within that we are building something. The word “juggle” seems an apt metaphor, though the image to conjure up is one of someone with all of the balls in the air, having fun with it, passing one to the next hand with ease. A lot going on, while having this intense focus.

I am going through a reading/personal growth phase. I go through these a few times a year. During these phases, I enter this space where I simply cannot get enough of any kind of book with a message about personal growth, wishing, manifesting, believing in oneself, etc. I always enjoy these periods immensely–what could be better than immersing oneself in positive thinking? Sounds like a win-win to me–and then I eventually ebb out of them when I hit a place where I feel burned out on analyzing my life and want only to live it, not to think about my choices quite so deeply. I think the two sides complement one another; I see them both as a good thing.

One of the books I’ve read recently was Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, “A Stroke of Insight,” which was also named after her now infamous TED talk (and if you haven’t seen it, or if you got bored somewhere around the middle and didn’t watch it all the way through because it was twenty minutes long, you’re missing out! See it to the end; it’s worth it!).

I really loved this passage: “Although there are certain limbic system (emotional) programs that can be triggered automatically, it takes less than ninety seconds for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body, and then be completely flushed out of our bloodstream. My anger response, for example, is a programmed response that can be set off automatically. Once triggered, the chemical released by my brain surges through my body and I have a physiological experience. Within ninety seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated from my blood and my automatic response is over. If, however, I remain angry after those ninety seconds have passed, then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run. Moment by moment, I make the choice to either hook into my neurocircuitry or move back into the present moment, allowing that reaction to melt away as fleeting physiology” (153).

I loved it because anger is not an emotion I am unfamiliar with. I think back to how much time I have spent being angry, often over things that didn’t matter, and it seems like such wasted time. Yet I would have well-meaning people tell me, “Well, don’t let it get to you. Don’t get angry; just let it be. Let go of that negative energy.”

And for years I’d always have this (angry) response of, “Gee, thanks for your insight. Why, I’ll just go flip the ‘anger’ switch and then I won’t be angry anymore! Great! It’s that easy, right? Sure it is!” (Sure it is, you freaking New Age weirdo. Now run along and go pet some crystals and cleanse your aura.)

I had such a response because: A.) I had/have a little kid inside with her own unhealed stuff, and that little kid was always told that she was not allowed to have her anger, and anyone who has ever told a little kid not to feel whatever emotion they are feeling has seen the result–they don’t like it. B.) These people made it seem so easy, and I didn’t feel “heard,” or like they acknowledged that I was struggling . C.) I felt totally controlled by my anger. The thought that it was something I could control felt utterly unrealistic. D.) I was (and in some ways, still can be) addicted to my anger, using it as a way to keep myself a Victim, and anyone’s assertion that I had more power than my Victim wanted to believe I had was a threat to Victim/Ego/Gremlin. Victim/Ego/Gremlin wants to stay in charge, so if someone suggests letting go of the anger–boy howdy, those aspects of myself were not liking that.

Today, I stand in a place where I have shifted a lot around the anger. I don’t get angry as often. I don’t get angry as fast. I don’t get as angry as I did; the level is lower. I look at my part in the situation faster. And when I do miss the mark and blow my top and get angry, I get calm a lot faster and let it go a whole lot faster. I used to have a fight with Andy and be pissed at him for an entire day. These days, if we get into an argument I’m mad for all of ten minutes before I want to shift it.

Now, I think ten minutes is pretty damned good, and I honor myself for that. However, when I read Jill Taylor’s book, and in particular that passage, something really clicked for me. I think I had believed that the reason I managed to get anger down from an entire day to only ten minutes was due to a combination of getting more mature, doing more to acknowledge and honor my inner little kid, finding people who could support me so that anger didn’t have to be my only response (sadness, I believe, is always underneath the lid of anger–and I believe we pull the weed out by the root when we process through the sadness, so having those people available helps), and doing more to step into my own power and not be a victim. Basically, lots of getting honest/real with what was real for me in a moment (the anger) and then allowing it (processing it out) with support, and then choosing something different.

But when I read that passage, and read that it’s really only about 90 seconds…it was just like, “Whoa.” Ninety seconds? That’s it?

This just seems so incredibly powerful to me. For one thing, it completely rips the head off of the story I carried for a long time that I didn’t or couldn’t control my anger. So any time Victim/Ego/Gremlin wants to start chattering in my ear about that, I have this little bit of scientific evidence to pass on.

I’ve been thinking about what other emotions this applies to. I remember that when I taught public speaking, someone told me that it takes only one full minute for the initial stress rush that people experience when speaking to subside. The rush that causes the sweaty palms, dry throat, etc., will be fully over and done in only one minute if the person does not let their mind take over with inner critic chatter (which only stimulates more symptoms because the body has a new rush in response to those thoughts). So I would encourage my students to just keep telling themselves, “Once this minute is over, I won’t have a red face anymore” or “Once this minute is over, I won’t be shaking as much.” I’d also have them focus on their breathing. And for many of them, knowing that it was only going to be one awkward minute seemed to really help.

So what other areas could this be applied to? How about fear.

Oooooh, fear. This has been coming up for me a lot lately, as I continue to get deep with acknowledging what I really want for myself, for my life. There’s been a lot of asking “How Big can I live?” these days (hence all of the spiritual and personal growth).

Sometimes I will just be walking along and then have some thought of fear and it can stay with me for a few hours.

Or does it?

After reading Taylor’s book, I strongly suspect that it is the same for fear as it is for anger. There is probably an initial surge and then it’s done, rifinito (finished). And probably within 90 seconds to three minutes, somewhere in that range, and when I say that it “stays with me for a few hours,” I bet what really happens is that I choose to run a certain circuit of old patterns, habits, and interpretations.

Now, I of course already knew that this is what fear is–the running of old patterns, habits, and interpretations, and believing that they will be our present and future. However, what I’m getting at is just how small the part is that we actually cannot control, the part that is automatic, the part that is a surge through our body. It’s only a few minutes, at most.

So what are most of us doing with all of those hours, all of those days?

Investigator Kate is on the case to answer that very question–and I hope that others will be on the lookout for answers, too.

Wowza. The go-go-go of my schedule Monday-Wednesday leaves me hitting Thursday feeling as though I’ve been out of touch with the world completely. I write that and then think, “I have been out of touch with the world–my world.”

Someday, I imagine that I will write something that makes some kind of sense of what it has been like for me to be in the school system these past seven years, teaching all manner of students, from preschoolers to retirees to UC students to the community college population. Suffice to say, the educational system in this country is in big trouble, and thus consequently the rest of us are in trouble, but that is a whole other post for a whole other time. Every time I try to write about that topic, something different comes out and it’s like wrestling an octopus. The tentacles don’t quite settle down, on that topic.

What I can write about is how I still struggle with balancing between who I become to fulfill this role as a teacher and who I am when I am at home. Why should they be any different? Oh, goodness. Another question with so many answers, another session of wrestling with an octopus. My answer would start with something about how, for me, being a teacher of English (remedial English) requires such commitment, so many follow ups and check-ins and a to-do list of things to remember. Always calibrating, adjusting. Realizing that a class needs something and then making another handout, or thinking quickly on my feet for a different way to explain something when I realize from the looks on a class’s face that the first way didn’t gel. Wanting to balance between work and play in the classroom, and still stay focused. The frustration of finding out that I put time into things that in fact, don’t matter (they didn’t read the handout anyway, so what was the point of me typing it?; that program was canceled, so I wasted time encouraging a student to use it; the photocopier is broken so there was no point in arriving at school early; Disabled Students Programs and Services isn’t going to give me any information about that student’s disability because of confidentiality issues, so I can’t actually come up with ways to help them, so what was the point of staying a half hour late –at 10:30 at night–and sorting through info sheets to figure out who needed accommodations, recording their ID numbers, and making the call to DSPS to try and locate their counselors?).

I have reduced everything down as much as possible, creating a website for handouts, streamlining processes, having backup plans, etc., etc., but it is part of the job that when you are dealing with 30 different individuals times 3 or 4 classes, there are exceptions all over the place that require attention.

They deserve that attention.

Another piece of my answer would be how much I can beat myself up or shame myself or get angry at myself when I forget something or don’t plan well or time runs over and I have to close the class but we didn’t get to this or that assignment…man, just writing about it brings up the “wrestling the octopus” feeling. On Monday, about two hours before I was to start teaching a once-a-week three hour evening class, a bad headache started to take over. They are technically called “cluster headaches,” but when referring to them I call them migraines because it takes too much time to explain to someone what a cluster headache is when my head is throbbing. Essentially, it’s a throbbing, localized pain, but it’s not a typical headache that aches and is uncomfortable–it is serious, intense pain that sometimes makes me nauseous and dizzy. For me, it happens because a bone in my neck causes some issues and if I don’t stretch and ice in just the right way after exercising, this can trigger a cluster headache.

When this headache started to hit on Monday, I spent lots of time breathing slowly, taking care of me, taking it slow. I drove into school for my evening class. I dug around in my purse until I found a lint-covered Aleve, and I swallowed it like it was manna from heaven. And when 6:00 arrived and my class started in an hour and I realized that I was going to have to cancel it because this headache was coming on like a freight train and the meds were not kicking in, I called Andy to tell him that I was coming home. I explained that I had one of my bad headaches. And quite unexpectedly, right there in my office, I began to cry.

“We’re going to get behind,” I sobbed. “My lesson plans will be totally behind, and they have a paper coming up, and we need to review thesis statements, and we were going to have an in-class writing tonight, and…”

I knew even as I was sobbing and speaking that I was being a crazy woman–there was no way that I was going to be able to teach that night. If I bent over even slightly and then sat back up, blood rushed to my head and miserable throbbing and pounding ensued. There was no way. Getting behind on the lesson plan? Yeah, Kate–not your biggest worry in that moment.

But that was it, and it was compounding the headache–my first fears and worries and panic had to do with the fact that the class would get behind. How would we make up the time? Would I lose their trust and credibility? Would I have to do more work later, because I’d have to make up a handout to cover whatever we missed, or spend more time in office hours, or…?

This gives you some idea of the space that I can occupy on Mondays and Wednesdays. On those days, life and time and resources seem limited, like being up against a perpetual deadline.

And yeah, I try to have consciousness around it.

And yeah, I try to be gentle around it.

And yeah–sometimes I succeed beautifully and other times, not so much. Other times, I suck at staying present or giving myself what I need. Sometimes, I completely and totally resent every choice I’ve ever made that leads up to me having a job where, quite regularly, I wrestle the octopus.

The space that I occupy on Tuesdays and Thursday through Sunday, is a different space. I wake up and take time for my morning practice. I take things slow. I have time to notice what is going on for me and what I might need. This is incredibly indulgent, and I’m glad to finally be in a place of giving this to myself rather than trying to do just one more thing.

I have tried any number of tricks in the past few years to merge these two spaces, because I want the work that I do in this world to be work that I’m passionate about, work that feels just like “me.” So I stopped wearing suits to work, I started having more discussions and assigning fewer exercises, I chose books that I liked even if it meant going out on a limb just a bit (and I have such gratitude for those other teachers who went out on a limb before me, pioneering a way for me to see how I could choose books that meant something to me while still meeting administration requirements). I started each semester anew with the belief that, “This time, I’ve figured it out!” My expectations would be high, and they would all blow up in my pretty little face.

A few years ago, I was at a workshop and people were introducing themselves. A man stood up and he said his name was Charlie. He explained that he had just recently left his job, “to take a year off and attend the University of Charlie.” People burst into spontaneous applause when he said this, and it is a phrase that has always resonated with me. It sounds so delicious, doesn’t it? Taking a year off, just to indulge our own whims, to attend the University of You, to take things s-l-o-w, to have teachers around us who will guide us.

And I think of this phrase often, and indulge in the idea sort of like this fantasy–how nice that would be. And it would be nice, except there is also the University of Kate that I am already attending, and there are so many gifts that I can still glean from teaching, even as I let it go in pieces to make the transition to full-time coaching and retreats. There is learning about how to take care of myself even in the midst of a job that routinely places demands before me involving subverting my own needs. There are all of those personalities in the room, wriggling in desks, or earnestly asking more questions, or whispering in the back, or not turning in work, or whatever, and the challenge of loving all of them for what they bring, and noticing myself in them. There is the challenge of knowing that all of them want simply to feel loved and accepted and like they’re doing an okay job, and smart (and boy oh boy do I hear a lot of pain in that area; I was told from a very young age that I was smart and could do anything I wanted to do, and so many of my students received all of the opposite messages, over and over, from parents and teachers and peers). There is juggling time and planning, and learning about balance, and questioning my ideas and attitudes about time. There is being frustrated with the system itself while not becoming a part of the problem with endless complaining. There is reaching out and establishing connection even though the job can be very isolating at times.

Teaching gives me so many great gifts–and–it is an actual exercise, actual practice, it is actual work for me keep that at the forefront of my consciousness rather than devolving into something else.

It seems to me that these courses at the University of Kate are perhaps the most important that I can take. There will be a whole other set of lessons for me to learn when I shift career paths. I already anticipate what some of those are, based on the semester I took off of work a few years ago. My lessons now have to do with living a highly external life, and the lessons that will come up for me when I am working predominantly from home will involve what to do when I am very internal, alone in the house all day, and not rushing from place to place.

I end this entry with just acknowledging that I “get” all of this on so many levels. And on another level, my spirit cries out for support, for knowing that I’m not alone. One part of me is so thankful for having some clarity around this, at least enough to point myself towards self-care, and another part of me–the little kid part, I think–wants to just lay it all down at someone else’s feet. Won’t someone else tell me what to do? Won’t someone else figure it out? Can’t I just quit it all and enroll in the University of Kate? Oh, how those old victim stories just tug and tug and tug. And meanwhile, I just breathe, notice, and remember to stock up on Aleve.