Shoe Personality of the Week: 1/17/2011

Teachers are always complaining about what poor listeners children are. We get tired of repeating ourselves 2...3...8 times, saying the same thing in as many forms as we can think of to try to reach those kids who just never seem to know what we said seconds ago. Taking stock of my own life, highly introspective being that I am, I have to admit that I have picked up this trait from my students. #blameitonthekids

I have this cycle. It plays itself out thusly:
1. work, work, work
2. grow increasingly tired physically
3. work, work, work
4. grow increasingly tired mentally
5. work, work, work
6. lose patience ever so slowly (sometimes fastly—yeah, I said it)
7. light bulb moment—take a mental health day
8. continue to what? Ignore the light bulb & work, work, work
9. get sick
10. [go back to] work, work, work

See, at #2 I was getting the 1st set of warning signs. My work ethic, however, says that if I can stand, I can work. My disease, Perfectionitis, doesn't listen to warning signs. It simply reads the issue as a FAIL against the goal & pushes forward, ignoring the parts of me it has labeled “slacker.” How dare I sit down when there's all this work to be done? Yeah... Then at #4 my mind starts to check out. It's begging, meekly, for the Perfectionitis cells to give it a break. “Ma'am...uhhmmm, Ma'am, we're tired back here & we're not sure we can be held accountable for what we say or do anymore. Can we please sit down for a minute?” SITTING'S FOR PUNKS!! BACK TO WORK, SLACKERS!! Sigh... Perfectionitis doesn't know how to ack.

You read the cycle. No need for me to break it all the way down. After all, it IS self-explanatory. To catch you up to where I'm at now is the point. Friday, I hit #9. I wasn't listening all the way through, not the 1st time this school year either, & pushed through. Perfectionitis hasn't figured out that my body has a much louder voice than it does & got a bullhorn to its ear. See, on Wednesday night, following the ski trip with the chirrens, I looked like I had been hit by a car. Blood sugar was low—I'm hypoglycemic y'all—so low that I didn't even have the energy to find sustenance & make it happen. Quick nod to BB. I started plotting then when I'd take the mental health day. Of course, Perfectionitis had decided that it would be after completing the work week. We had a built-in day without kids—which doesn't exactly translate to rest, though we try to convince ourselves it does—and the observance of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday tomorrow. Break, right? No. What do we do with those days? Handle the business that we can't get done while at work. My body knows this...that my logic means well but might don't make sense sometimes. Perfectionitis cracks a mean whip & I respond with the appropriate hustle. So...back to Friday. My body knew that I'd keep following the wrong master & broke out the aforementioned bullhorn. It then snuck up close on Perfectionitis, all sneaky & whatnot, & yelled SADDOWN! & that's what I did [against my will & bored beyond belief.] Shout out to BB for donning the nurse whites & holding me down.

It would seem that things are good now, right? Wrong. What I normally do is get punked by my body & then jump right back up. What I forget is that it's not just about recovering from the sickness my body lays on me. If I listen in English I can see how the sickness is always low-level, just to make me be still. When I jump right back up, it morphs on me & I'm carrying something for a month or better. A moment of silence for school year 2008-2009. The lesson is #sitchoazzdown for real.

So, the recap:
Sick on Friday. Better on Saturday. On my behind by design on Sunday. Monday is a holiday. & Tuesday will be committed to mental health. This week is devoted to Feet Up-isms, hence the deck shoes (& you knew they wouldn't be standard). You can't get too much more relaxed while actually still having to wear shoes than being on a boat with ya feets up. Boating is not my thang—moment of silence for Bahamian cruise 2010—but I do understand the concept of the chill. I can see the eyes rolling of those who know I don't actually do it. I said understand. That's different. Anyway...let me gon' get these sub plans together & get back to this nothing I have planned for today.

Lesson, boys & girls, if you plan to continue to stand, you must plan to SADDOWN sometimes. By plan I mean not waiting until you are forced into it, but while you still have your wits about you & can actually enjoy the moment. If it involves tissue, tea, or Tylenol, you waited too long.

Watch me move.