Oh, Book of Alchemy for helping me write when my brain wants to turn into mush. Although, in all honesty, I was supposed to write about this topic yesterday. But my jouranls were in the other room, my lap desk was sheltering a rabbit (yes, a rabbit), and I didn’t want to write about my struggles here.

Until five minutes ago. When I found the struggle that I can write about publically and not feel like I am trauma dumping. Trauma dumping is for therapy and my private, handwritten journal.

I can write, without being too vulnerable, about my fight against going to extremes, about driving myself into the wall because my father would talk about going “b***s to the wall.” Sorry…I just don’t like the profane. Not here. Not in my writing. Not in this public space.

Extremity has been my middle name. Hell (I don’t mind that profanity…), it is my identity. I can be extremely happy. Extremely depressed. In one day. I launch myself into projects whole heartedly and with absolute determination and ambition and won’t take no or slow down for an answer. If I’m supposed to do something, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability. And when the best of my ability isn’t good enough, then I’ll buy enough books or do the research or talk to ChatGPT and find the answer. Because, damn it (yes, I’ll allow that profanity too), I need to do everything that I can to the best of someone else’s ability.

My therapy goal for the summer is to not go BTTW. To live in measured, intentional footsteps that allow me to breathe. My goal for this summer is to find my peace and to live within that peace and all the potential limitations that will exist. I need to repair my peeling wallpaper. I won’t do it all in one day. Hell. I worked on two sections yesterday. And both are still peeling back. And I doubt that I’ll get to them tomorrow because tomorrow is next year planning day when I will meet with a colleague and we will plan out activities for next year’s classes. And I won’t be home for much of the day.

And that’s my next thing. I might not get everything planned out for next year. I’m certainly going to do my best. Peter did that. Peter would spend the summer planning and reading and prepping. And he really did amazing work. But I’m not Peter. I don’t process information at his speed. I don’t think the way he did. And…that’s all right.

At this point, I have the first two weeks somewhat planned out. I have a skeleton for the first nine weeks. I know in my head what I’m going to teach, I think, for the second nine weeks. And tomorrow, I’m going to hopefully be one week further in my definitive planning. I won’t have everything done. I still need to build editing plans, grammar lessons, and presentations on descriptive writing. I need to develop short writing assignments that will scaffold into the larger essay.

But I’m working. And I’m really proud of where I am.

My intensity of I must do everything and I must do it now creates a horrifying stress level. I live like a camel-octopus, carrying everything without stopping in all of my arms. And I fail. I drop a few things. And as I strive to pick up what I dropped, more spill out of my arms. And I flail until everything is on the floor. Or maybe not everything. Maybe just 50 percent….but it still feels like everything.

Everything is a word I’d like to remove from my vocabulary. But I can’t. Won’t. Because that is another round of extremes.

I’m learning the joy of hourly living. Play phone games for an hour. Write for an hour. Work on the peeling wallpaper for an hour and then take my dog on a walk for an hour. And I don’t time those hours. I inhabit that quiet space and migrate from activity to activity. And maybe I won’t get to everything or get everything done.

But what is complete I am proud of. And I know that I can come back to what is incomplete and try to finish it later. And if I don’t….then I won’t feeel like I have run into the wall.

I just realized that I wrote about walls last fall. Hitting the wall. Finding the wall that I should hit because I was pushing myself so hard. I was living BTTW. And I exhausted myself. I didn’t finish the novel I was planning. Hell, I’m still working on it six months later.

I’m learning how to give myself peace and to live within that peace as well. I’m learning to measure myself by the standard of “good” to “good enough” to “good for now” to “damn, that is great.” And I’m proud of the measuring tape that I taped to the wall because somehow I always seem to reach the mark.

Damn….