Settling Back Into the Saddle

Dear colleague,

During the summer months, I spent most of my days NOT writing or thinking about school. I instead pointed my soul toward things like outings with the children, home improvement projects, volunteering at a camp in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, taking dips into as many bodies of water as possible, and even riding horses for a week in Montana with Crystal and our 11-year-old daughter.

That horseback riding proved a helpful metaphor for what it's like getting back into a thing, be that thing writing or teaching. At first, there's soreness, there's difficulty; but as you keep showing up, you start to regain a sense of competence, direction, and momentum.

For example, during the few days I did block out for writing during the summer months, I always found that the first day back in the writing saddle was the hardest for me. I experienced more anxiousness than normal, more distraction by minutiae, more second-guessing. The best thing to do, every time, was to just get one article written. The second came a bit easier. The third, even better. And then I could reliably produce 5-10 blog articles for each day I spent writing.

Teaching is similar. It's an odd life, spending 180 consecutive weekdays doing a complex thing and then 10 or so weeks not doing it at all. As I enter my nineteenth year in the classroom, it doesn't matter that I've spent so much of my life up to this point thinking about the classroom. The reality of having been off the horse for a few months doesn't leave, despite my experience. There's just a soreness to getting back into the saddle; there's just some relearning and effortful remembering that I have to do.

So if your rear end is sore in the saddle right now, don't think you're alone. Mine is, too.

It's gonna get better, colleague. Adventure awaits.

Teaching right beside you,
DSJR