I finally made it…the last 30-day challenge of the school year. I started this as a way of attempting to have some semblance of balance throughout the year, something I have never really been able to achieve as an educator. I’d love to say that it brought the balance I was looking for, but instead it provided some much-needed clarity into where this life might need to take me next. But that’s for another post.

I began this last challenge in the last month of the school year where everything comes to a head under the most excruciating time constraints. Kids are having meltdowns all over the place, and I’m using more energy than normal to be there for them and help them through. It would be incredibly easy to come home and numb out all night long, but that doesn’t serve me.

I had initially meant to just push last month’s challenge to this month and add more activity to the end of my day. That meant physical activity, but with more reflection I decided to make it more about any activity that lights me up. After spending the month of April feeding my body and listening to what it had to tell me, I wanted to spend a month listening to my soul.

The inspiration for this came at the end of April when a friend of mine said, “Let’s hang out this weekend.” Btw, this friend lives on the other side of the country. Previously, this is not something I would have even considered because of the job (and let’s be real- money), but I looked at the calendar and it happened to be over a weekend that we had a workday, so I said, “What the hell, let’s do it.” Off to FL I went for a weekend. I got there and felt how badly I had needed that getaway, and how often I ignore the pull of my soul begging me to just go do the thing (whatever the thing may be). And that is how this challenge came to be. The only requirement was that I had to check in with myself so that I would not come home and zone out all night.

• Some of the things I did: attended an online networking event and an online nutrition summit, jigsaw puzzles which I love but for some reason hadn’t done in longer than I can remember, read books, practiced the piano, wrote a lot, did crosswords, treated myself to yummy food (maybe too much lol), went for a walk at the park by my house, watched some baseball, went for bike rides, took a few half days at work and slept in- taking the day at my pace, worked out according to how I felt in the morning instead of following a program, attended graduation parties that students invited me to, went to food truck rallies, participated in the end of year golf tournament (I’m still terrible), colored in coloring books, and started the Essentialist 21-day Challenge to work on prioritizing all of the things vying for my attention.

Sometimes, yes, relaxing and watching a movie was exactly what I needed, but it needed to be done with intention rather than what had become the typical way: putting something on to have background noise but not actually watching a minute of it because I’m checked out.

Being a creature of habit and routine, it was quite a change to not know what each day would bring. Not only that but having to stay open to that spontaneity and embrace the question I’d ask every day- “What do you feel like doing?”- and then do that thing. Every day then had the potential to be an adventure. I can only imagine what I would have done if money wasn’t a factor- totally different ballgame lol 😉 But I made do with what is available to me and learned a lot about what I am wanting access to in my surroundings. As I always say, I’m a work in progress. Hopefully, I always will be because that means I’ve never become complacent in my learning and personal growth. There’s always more to know and explore. We will see where that exploration takes me…