I. I will be attending a speech pathology conference tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. I have to go to this conference every year so I can obtain continuing education credits that are required for me to keep my speech pathology license and credentials. Although I sometimes enjoy the change of pace, of getting a few days away from my therapy routine and the endless amount of paperwork, for the most part I really don't like going. As I mentioned in a confession post last February, sitting in these conference sessions reminds me too much of sitting in my torturous speech pathology classes back in undergrad and grad school. I swear I suffer from a form of PTSD... LOL!
The best part of the conference is getting to see my speech path buddies. Although we work together in the same county, we rarely get to see each other due to... life. This gives us a good opportunity to hang out and catch up over lunch, dinner, and in between sessions.
II. Speaking of work, I feel as if I'm barely keeping my head above water. My caseload continues to grow. More students means more data to keep and enter online, more report cards to complete, more IEPs to write, more kids to test, more therapy to plan, more progress to monitor... I'm struggling to find a healthy balance between my work and personal life.
I'm not a work-a-holic, but I believe in giving an honest day's work and then being able to go home and leave work at work. With each passing year, that is becoming harder and harder to do because the district I work for basically expects us to be married to our jobs. I refuse to do that, so... Here I am, treading water and barely keeping the water just below my nose and seriously wondering if I'm going to be able to survive 13 more years.
III. Enough about work... Ugh! On to something more interesting.
As it turns out, this blog post is my 300th, which is very exciting and somewhat hard for me to believe. When I started blogging a year and a half ago, I never dreamed that my blogging would go in the direction that it has. I'm very glad that it did, for I've found a very valuable outlet for my sometimes overwhelming and never ending thoughts as well as a very supportive online community.
As of this writing, I have 44 blog entries in draft form. Granted, they all are in various stages of completion - some are just thoughts and others are more developed - and they range in topics from weight loss to books to confessions to the experience of a midlife crisis to little sneak peaks into my life. What I'm struggling with as of late, in terms of my blog, is reining in my thoughts long enough to actually finish a piece. It just seems as if my mind is constantly going these days and I'm finding it hard to focus. This has been a valuable experience, though, for I kind of have an idea of what attention deficit disorder is like.
If you are a regular reader, thanks for hanging in with me during this weird blogging roller coaster that I'm on.
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As always, thanks for stopping by!
I used to struggle with work/life balance but not anymore. I dedicate hours to my work and then when it's home time, IT'S HOME TIME. i don't log in or answer any emails unless we have a deployment or something is seriously screwed up but other than that, i'm sure it can wait until 9am the next morning!
ReplyDeleteThat's usually how I roll, even when I have brought stuff home to work on, 95% of the time it never leaves my bag. But, what I now have to do, since I don't bring it home, is work late. I'm trying to figure out a way to make it more manageable, to get more stuff done in the actual work day, but it's hard. Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteWork/life balance can be difficult to achieve. Good luck! Thanks for linking up!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
Deleteericka! a three-day conference on speech pathology. sign me up. that sounds like SO. MUCH. FUN. i'm glad you get to see your friends, though. that makes it a little more bearable right... i get by with a little help from my friends...
ReplyDeletei wonder if the pressure you're feeling at work is because they've cut staff and are putting more responsibilities on employees shoulders because of that? my father was a school superintendent for many, many years. he brought his work home with him a LOT. but he was captain of the ship, so to speak. he never really was off work. also, he's a workaholic. he LOVES working. he's weird that way. if only i had his work ethic. anyway... when there came a point that he felt he wasn't appreciated or couldn't accomplish things to his satisfaction, when he believed the city and the district would prefer to have someone else captaining the ship, he found another ship, another city, another district that could appreciate him. i have some idea of how retirement works in the education sector. that age and experience factor into it, and if you start somewhere else, you lose the experience, right? life is WAY, WAY too short to spend it on a ship going in a direction you don't want to go, with a team you don't like, in a role you don't love. that's not to say you don't like the work. i don't think that's the issue here. every district is different. maybe you should find a better ship? one of my father's biggest goals is to ensure the teachers he has on staff are content in their roles, in their classrooms, in their schools. he can't stand to see poor execution of policy, especially when it's breaking the backs of those who have to execute it. he took so much of his work home with him, so his teachers wouldn't have to take so much of theirs home. he'd want you dedicated and driven. not burnt out and broken.
C'mon up! You can be my guest at the conference. FUN TIMES, indeed! LOL!
DeleteYes, I'm too far into the state teacher's retirement system to change paths now. I'm only 10 years away from minimum retirement. I am hoping that a transfer will come through next school year, a transfer to a different school that will cut my commute down significantly. It's not that staff has been cut in my field in my county, but rather that the paper has literally tripled over the past 10 years. 60% of my job is working with kids. 40% is paperwork. Pretty sad, isn't it?
Enjoy the conference and congratulations on post 300! I used to find work life balance really hard but then I ended up quitting my job. It was hard at the time due to the circumstances and I know that not everyone is lucky like I am not to have to work but it was the best decision in the end. I think working long hours is pretty much the norm in education but my advice would be to try and not bring it home.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I will try. 95% of the time, I don't bring it home. I'm just trying to figure out a way to keep it more manageable.
DeleteCongratulations on number 300 I am proud of you
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteOkay, so this is probably going to be really strange...but I'm finding as I'm unemployed and job hunting, that I have less time for my blog world. I'd assumed that I'd have all this free time, and the blog world would be easy to keep up with. But, that hasn't been the case. I've asked myself "am I not managing my time well?" or "am I being overly productive with my time?", and I don't have an answer for either. So...I guess that means that I'm not quite finding a balance yet after getting out of my routine that I was in before. Thanks for the space to work that out.
ReplyDelete