So the play is over, and... CRASH!

So the run of A Flea in her Ear finished. It was rather successful: we had a good audience every night, we each put our all into each of the parts, we found ways to cover up our mistakes. There was a lot of laughter and sharing backstage and people seemed to be on the same page: adults working together to finish a project.

On Sunday night, I crashed, mentally and physically.  As soon as the responsibilities of the play finished, all the energy I'd put in to keeping all these tasks in the air seemed to melt away. I went to the school to start catching up on planning and marking, but couldn't seem to think straight. I tripped on the stairs a few times, walked into doorways, and stared into the middle distance. Clearly I needed a break.

One thing my brain keeps rolling back to: my kids didn't get to see the show. I'd like to think they would have enjoyed it. I don't know how to get over that, other than to think "That's just how life is." But all that's still confusing to me, no matter what.

So at this point I've fallen behind at work and am struggling to catch up. By the end, those rehearsals and performances took up over 20 hours a week of time, 40 for the week of the opening, and I naturally fell behind at my full-time job. In addition to that, I was still falling behind when we were merely rehearsing, even before we'd moved into the theatre itself. So I have weeks of marking and raggle-taggle planning to catch-up on and recover from. I don't have the energy to just push myself to get it all caught-up, so I'm scrambling every day.

Doing something as social as a play highlights the loneliness of teaching, the way one huddles in their room to mark and plan. Although I try to talk with colleagues as much as possible, I spend most of my worktime alone. This is particularly difficult at the end of the day, when I need to be the most self-motivated, but find myself drained. So far I haven't recovered enough to beat the loneliness. I feel myself aching for some company, like "Could somebody just sit with me while I get this marking and stuff done, so I don't wear my time away on the Internet?" I know that I'll be OK, particularly once I'm caught up on marking, but it's still very lonely right now.

I've attended a few different Professional Learning activities over the last few months. The speakers who most inspired me seemed to find ways to make their jobs more meaningful and holistic. I want that. I always wanted that. I don't think I'm good at this "be a teacher at work, be a person at home" thing. I want to be the same person in most of my life, not somebody trying to play different games against one another. I don't remember who said it, but somebody (perhaps here?) said something about how they hated the idea of a "work-life balance," because it implied a disconnection between the two, because it implied that work and life were disconnected, that we could divorce ourselves from life. I get that, because I've never wanted that disconnection.

Right now I'm struggling with it, though, because it feels pretty disconnected. I do my work stuff and it has little to nothing to do with my everyday life. 

On that note, I need to go attend a work-related meeting. And I hope I can make the best of it.