Busy!

You know those weeks when you are pretty sure you won't have a moment to breathe?  I have a few of those coming up.  Between teaching, life, and Sassafrass at Balticon, for which I still need to get some blocking and lyrics memorized, I am pretty darn busy!!

My students and I are still trying the experiment on staying organized and budgeting time, which really seems to be working for all of us!  We check in about it periodically.  I encourage my students to share both their successes and their failures, so that we can ALL learn from both.

On Wednesday, a friend of mine asked, "What's your secret to staying chirpy when you have so much going on?"  I had no idea what to tell her.  Checklists, chocolate, channeling your energy, even when you feel like you have none left.

The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized how important it is to take time for myself, no matter how much I have going on.  It is so hard, especially when you feel like you need to get everything done NOW. I used to sing a lot when I needed to relax.  Now, since I have to prepare a lot of music, singing has become an item on my work list, though I still enjoy it.  Can you still unwind using an item on your work list?  I think you can, especially if you space out the tasks.  Write, then sing, then write, etc....The tasks use different parts of your brain and make it easier to get through everything.  To be honest, I have no idea where I learned these coping strategies.

And I think about this in terms of my students.  They are so full, so busy, and have SO much that needs to be done NOW that they have no idea of how to handle it.  Ironically, we are so busy "covering material" in class that we have NO time to teach them how to study it and handle all they need to do.  As a result, we get less than satisfactory work.  Both they know it and we know it, but it may well be the best they can do under the tight time circumstances.  How do we make it possible for the students to do their best work?  How do we teach them how to cope?