teacher

Exhaustion.

/ sugaronsnowmom / Leave a comment

I’m so tired. Not the kind of tired where you just need a few extra hours of sleep. Not the kind where a mini-break will fix it. Tired, tired. The sort of tired where it seeps into your bones and into your being and your muscles all ache from the weight of it.

I’m working too much. At my previous job, I was overstressed and overworked, so I opted for a career change for the betterment of my family. That may happen over time, but the immediate shift from lawyering to teaching caused a significant financial burden on my family so, as a stopgap, I got a second remote job. Then a third. These days I find myself up at 4:00 AM every morning, doing remote legal work until my toddler wakes up, getting myself ready for teaching and my toddler ready for preschool, working a full 8 hours at the elementary and middle school (mostly on my feet) with only a 20-minute break for lunch in the day, coming home, doing the toddler evening routine, possibly working more (though often I crash into bed at this time), then spending at least one full day every weekend working. All. While. Pregnant.

I feel like I could collapse at any moment.

My wife is as helpful and supportive as she can be. She is so good with Pidge. But she is also in graduate school and trying to work and her current earning potential isn’t enough, so we’re stuck.

I’m trying to remind myself that this is temporary; that we’ll get out of this rut sooner or later. But my body feels weak and my mind keeps circling around whether or not I made a bad decision trying to move from law to teaching, particularly at this time in my life. Something’s gotta give.

It’s not all bad, though. Amidst the exhaustion and frustration, I’m growing this little person inside of me who, by all accounts, seems to be thriving. We just had the mid-pregnancy ultrasound last week. I had been especially nervous because I had not yet felt the baby move. What if the baby had died inside of me? What if there was something terribly wrong? As I stretched out on the examination table, I held my wife’s hand and my breath. Then the baby appeared on the screen—wiggling and kicking and rolling and thumb-sucking. It was incredible to watch and so very reassuring. The next day, I thought felt movement. Was the baby really moving, or was my mind playing tricks on me after having spent an hour watching the baby do somersaults in my uterus? My wife put her hand on my lower abdomen. Just as I thought I felt something, her eyes got big and a huge smile crept over her face. She felt it, too. Our baby, saying hello.

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow to go over the results of the ultrasound. I’m planning to discuss my exhaustion, and see what I can do. Since this is my first year teaching, the school gave me one 90-minute class to teach and the rest is playground duty. 4.5 hours of my time each day is dedicated to watching 20+ kids play on the monkey bars. It’s mind-numbing, or it’s an exhausting stretch of conflict resolution. There is hardly any time to sit, and I am paid so very, very little. I think about how I could be doing my second job during those hours rather than at 4:00 in the morning. Or about how I might not even need the weekend job if I could use my time better. Of course, I’m thankful that the school allowed me to teach at all before I am licensed, and I love, love, love the class I am teaching, but the recess duty has got to go. One of my nurse midwives suggested that I talk to the doctor about this as it is not very safe to have a pregnant person outside and on her feet for that many hours, particularly when there is ice to slip on and the temperatures often drop below 10 degrees Fahrenheit. We shall see what the doctor says.

In the meantime, I just need to keep on keeping on. It is temporary. It is just a season. In March we will have a new baby to love and potentially some time to recoup. I just have to make it to Spring.

What’s Important

/ sugaronsnowmom / 1 Comment

“But you’re so good.” “But you can make so much money here.” “But… this doesn’t make any sense.”

Those were the responses I heard from the partners at my law firm when I told them I’m leaving the legal profession. In a way, they’re right. It doesn’t make sense. And yet somehow it does. Because more than success, more than money, more than anything, what I want is time. I want time with Pidge, time with my wife, time with my family. I want time to write, time to create, time to be me.

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about who I am and what is important to me. For so many years my identity has been wrapped up in being an attorney. But on August 14, 2017, I became a mother. My whole world changed.

And yet, it didn’t. I was still going to the office each day, still measuring life in 6-minute billable increments, still stressing about malpractice and procedure and the Civil Rules and the (dis)satisfaction of divorcing clients. I would spend time with Pidge on the weekends, or in the early mornings before I went in. At first, when I would leave her in the mornings, she would cry and scream for me, stretching her little arms my direction. Now she just says “bye” and waves. She expects me to leave her each day, and I hate that. When I come home late in the evenings, she’s already melting down. Maybe we’ll have dinner together. Maybe I’ll bathe her. Or maybe I will see her for 15 minutes before she needs to go to bed. I was missing my child. I couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, there was a better way. Maybe I should settle for more.

I’m not sure who said it, but there’s a quote I think about often: “Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a long time making it.” I spent a long time becoming a lawyer. I studied and studied and studied and took the LSAT and applied to schools and got in and studied more and stressed and cried and graduated and studied and studied and passed the bar. Phew. Then I went to work. I worked in private firms and for nonprofits and as a public defender and as a solo practitioner and then back to private firm. And to be honest, I’ve not loved any of it. The closest I came to enjoying my career was when I was working as a public defender because I love being in court. But even that was arduous. I worked very long hours for very little pay. It was unsustainable. For me, every way I have practiced law has been unsustainable because it does not sustain me emotionally. I find no joy in sitting in an office by myself, staring at a computer screen answering countless emails. I am simultaneously stressed and bored. I like being in court, but time in court is sparse. I sit and stare at a photo of Pidge I have framed on my desk and my heart yearns for her.

I’m opting out.

I’m choosing what’s most important to me. I’m choosing my family. Today starts the beginning of a new adventure: I’m studying and preparing to become a teacher. While the pay won’t be as good as attorney pay, I am looking forward to having a schedule that is better suited for my family. I am looking forward to being able to exercise creativity. And I know that I will be a damn good teacher. I just will.

But anytime there is a big change like this, excitement is always tempered by fear. And I am afraid. I am afraid of walking away from financial security and from my future as a respected lawyer. However, I look at what that future looks like and I don’t want it. I don’t want to be a partner at a law firm, a business owner. I don’t want to be hustling for the next dollar. I don’t want to be afraid to take time off of work. I want regular hours, summers off, and a pension. I want a lovely, modest life filled with family and love.

It snowed on Friday. Pidge, who is getting over her first illness, toddled over to the window seat and stared at her backyard. She was looking at the same space she has seen every day for 15 months, but today it looked different. It was shimmery and white and fresh with promise. Pidge placed her chubby little hand on the glass, knuckles dimpling in that adorable way that they do. That’s my world too, little one. The same, but different. The same, but new. Let’s build a snowman. Let’s eat the snow. Let’s put on our boots and our mittens and our hats and do anything we want. Let’s do it together.

Together.

That’s what’s important.

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