The Twenty-Ninth Post of Sisu

Daily Acts of Sisu: Ran 6 miles before work even after waking up terrified from nightmares, lesson prepped during my lunch break, doubled down on calm during stressful moments, wrote two blog posts 

Today was a pretty great day. 

I had been dreading summer camp as I didn’t want to spend my summer off lesson planning, but knew I had to, and didn’t want to come back after some time off.

I’m still not sure how much longer I want to teach and going into three straight weeks of summer camp after a hard year of school followed by the most stressful vacation of my life didn’t sound too appealing.

Especially knowing I won’t have another vacation until Christmas.

And it’s only August.

I was angry and deeply sad that I had yet again over committed and over scheduled myself when I could have just not worked and enjoyed my time off.

I railed against my choices until I had no choice but to accept them or bail out hard.

I didn’t want to sit with the consequences of that decision so I grimly went forward, feeling like a criminal who’d been on the run. Having just been captured, I was still looking for my escape. 

But anxiety is as anxiety does and it has turned out to be pretty fun so far. 

I may be writing from the pit of mental despair by week three, but we’ll let that happen if and when it happens. 

Hell, it may not.

While I’ve been trying to live my life more authentically as well as build my resilience, I often find myself caught in the crosshairs of not knowing if I am being true to myself or just gaslighting myself to get by.

Have I just gotten used to complaining and things really aren’t that bad or do I need to really examine and change my life?

Are there people who don’t think this way at all?

It seems like my whole generation, at least the Americans, are struggling with their mental health and happiness. 

How do we sustain it?

How much is mindset and how much is the actual life that you are living?

Is the grass just always going to look greener on the other side? 

These are the questions I wrestle with on a daily basis and it is quite exhausting, but so is staying in the wrong life. 

I used to imagine when I was a child that someone out there, some omnipotent force, existed that could tell me how to live the perfect life.

That they could come down and tell me what choices to make and what steps to take to live well and be happy. 

Deeply and permanently happy. 

It’s still hard to know sometimes if more happiness does exist elsewhere or if I just opened my eyes a little more if I would see it in my own life?

I think it can be, and probably is, a bit of both.

We all have unrealized dreams. 

We all have things we talk about that we would love to do or be or have, but aren’t taking any action towards.

Sometimes there are very real reasons for this. 

As much as the personal development hates to hear it, I think time and money can both be prohibitive. 

And I know I write from privilege because I do have enough to make ends meet and then some. 

I am not rich by any definition of the word (I’m still a teacher after all), but I’m doing okay.

And there were times when I wasn’t, so I think I can confidently say I know the difference. 

I am grateful to not still be in the days when the only food I could afford came from vending machines and I never paid a bill on time, choosing each month which one to pay that I was least behind on.

Those were hard and scary times and I worked hard to break my way out of them.

But I still feel like something is missing from my life. 

There’s a hole somewhere, a dissatisfaction, and I don’t want it to take me so far deep into the Dark Woods of Error that I lose myself completely, chasing after things that will never make me happy.

But at the same time I think that the saying is true: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

That is part of my panic about the end of my summer vacation. 

I tend to make very different choices when I am stressed out, burnt out, or exhausted than I do when I am happy, content, or hopeful.

I am scared of taking myself down the wrong path.

Afraid of losing or wasting more time. 

I feel older and older and like the lack of time I have left is reflecting back to me in a way I don’t like.

I can tell myself it is partly societal expectations, that I “should be” somewhere different, somewhere further with my life by now, but I know that isn’t entirely it.

My soul is calling out for something different and I hope that I can find it.