Time Out

We have survived January! Here on our remote little island, we’re celebrating the beginning of February with another power outage—the third one in as many weeks. It’s calm this morning; looks like a beautiful day. It is pretty common here to survive the storm and then have the trees finally give up and fall over, taking out a power line. So the sky is blue, there isn’t a wisp of wind and the power is off. The “calm after the storm” is very quiet indeed.
It’s quiet here all winter . . . but when the power’s out, school’s been cancelled , the fridge motor is mercifully silenced, and you have thrown up your hands and exclaimed, ”Well so much for vacuuming!” (even though you had no intention of doing so) . . . the lull in the action lends itself to reflection.
Being at the end of a three-week teaching assignment, I sit by the woodstove and think about the last three weeks which have been uncharacteristically stressful for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was my battle with a nasty flu bug. I’m looking back at this stint and all I can say is that I’ve survived. I was sick the whole time; I was not creative, not fun, and did not enjoy myself. Needless to say, the kids probably didn’t enjoy themselves either.
So what will I do with my one remaining day tomorrow? With three days of instructional time lost to school closures, we are not going to be at the neat and tidy spot I had hoped to reach for the returning teacher. Will I charge ahead tomorrow and try to tie up loose ends with the work? Or will I slow down, relax, and focus on leaving the kids with a positive and enjoyable day?
Not such a hard question is it? But I’m struck with the fact that I had to ask it of myself. So if I didn’t have this quiet morning by the fire to reflect, would I have plowed ahead, trying to get those curriculum outcomes met? Probably—I get like that when I’m stressed . . . put your head down and keep moving forward (it’s a prairie thing!)
So, I’m gonna pick one work project to focus on and we’ll go at it together at a reasonable rate. I will—as my partner reminds me regularly to do—look for the giggles in the day.
And in the big picture, I will think about how to create my own ‘power outages’. When life gets busy and I start motoring ahead, driven by my ‘shoulds’, how will I build in my own lulls? How will I create time to stop, zoom out, and refocus on what’s important?
I don’t remember anything from the curriculum of my own Junior High school days, but I do remember every teacher.


Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."