Monday Mugshot Collaboration
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| PROMPT: My Struggle. What is something you struggle with? SHOOTERS: Shoot your mug all tied up. Use rope, twine, string... |
My struggle is STRESS: learning to still be creative while
dealing with the stressors of teaching.
As soon as the stress of teaching kicked in, my morning
reading ritual got pushed aside in exchange for grading papers and lesson plans. I stopped working in my journals because the
connection with my creativity got short circuited by the thousands of stressful
thoughts circling and recycling in my mind. I am startled at how quickly I fell
back into my old habits: not sleeping,
getting up in the middle of the night to grade papers or complete some required
task that I didn't have time to complete during teaching hours. When I got home my mind was too frazzled and
my body too exhausted from getting up so early to do anything more than lie
down on the couch and watch mindless TV.
After dinner I would inevitably fall asleep watching TV. My husband would wake me up to go to bed but
once there my mind would begin racing with thoughts of the next day, things
that happened the previous day or week, the papers I promised myself I would
grade as soon as I got home but didn't…. I couldn't sleep because I couldn't
get my mind to rest. Then the anxiety over
not sleeping yet another night would kick in and I would find myself once again
getting out of bed at 1:30, 2:00 a.m. to grade paper or complete one of many of
the endless required teaching tasks. The
cycle was broken only by the dawn of the weekend. I found myself looking forward to Saturday
mornings when I could make a pot of coffee and steal away in my office to work
on creating ATC’s or a journal for a swap.
This was the one day when my mind allowed the ticker tape to stop
recycling and allowed the bottled up creativity to let loose.
How
do you deal with work stressors and still stay connected with your creativity?
Whoooo! I'm tired just reading that!! Thank you so much for taking time to play along with our prompt!! Now BREATHE!!
ReplyDeleteThe picture looks calm and relaxing with the candles. I hope you will find a good balance between working and being creative.
ReplyDeleteI'm not working so I cannot answer your question, but I hope somebody will and that it helps you.