Max Out Happy

2022

by Whitney

How in the world is it 2022? I feel like we are still stuck in 2020, waiting for the pandemic “to blow over in 2 or 3 weeks.”

Here we are, 2 years later, still worrying about rising cases, wearing masks everywhere we go. My students are dropping left and right, either testing positive or having to isolate due to exposure. Our school is trying to find coverage for so many teachers, and we have exams this week. What a continued mess.

I’ve started so many blog posts the last few months, and I’ve just let them sit in my drafts. Almost every year since starting Max Out Happy, I’ve written a post for my birthday, a holiday gift guide, a post with inspiration for the new year…and this year I just haven’t felt up to it. I haven’t written in months, I haven’t been feeling creative, and life has just been moving fast. Life is busy and stressful at times. When you add an ongoing global pandemic amid teacher strain and shortages, a toddler, 3 dogs, and a husband who coaches 2 sports, there isn’t a lot of down time for self care or inspiration.

The pandemic is definitely putting a strain on everyone. My family has been fortunate and blessed in many ways, but it’s frustrating to be a teacher right now. I’ve always loved my job – so that has been really hard. I just feel zapped. So here I am, writing about it 😉 In all seriousness, though, I know many of us are feeling this general slump. It’s understandable! I wish we had an end date for all of this mess, but that’s not how the world works.

How are you doing? This is your friendly check in. For 2022, I am shunning the societal pressure of setting intentions or resolutions. The things that are important to me now are the things that I’m always working on: Being a good person, showing kindness to others, showing kindness to myself, keeping my body strong, being honest and setting boundaries…the list goes on. Since these are my “forever goals,” there’s nothing new that I really want to focus on. I think we’re all doing the best we can. This year, I’m happy to just keep going and enjoy the moments I am given. Piling on a bunch of new resolutions and promises seems overwhelming to me this year. I know some people thrive with that motivation, which is great! But if that’s not you right now, that’s great too. What are you doing for 2022?

Davis will be 2 years old this Saturday. It’s insane to me because I feel like we just brought him home from the hospital. We have all come a long way since that 4 night stay at the hospital, the sleepless nights with a newborn, and trying to navigate our new life with a baby at home. So much happened in 2020 and 2021, but I had my two best guys by my side through it all, along with support from family and friends. We all need that; I hope you have a support system, too, and one that will carry you through whatever 2022 has in store.

One of my favorite bands in college was Death Cab for Cutie, and I’ve recently been listening to their station on Pandora with my students. They have a song called “The New Year” – here’s the music video if you’re interested. It’s how I’m feeling right now: I don’t feel any different, I don’t have any resolutions. And that’s okay! If you’re feeling the pressure to do all the things, be super productive, reach all of your goals, and continue setting new ones, please let that go. Do what you can, do what feels good, and do what you can be proud of. Everything else can wait.

Here’s to 2022. I hope that this year brings peace, joy, and love to us all, and that we all take the time and the care we need to experience our emotions and name our needs. I’ll be here with you, fighting the same fight and keeping my hands sanitized between each round 🙂

Back to School Feelings

In just a couple of weeks, we’ll be heading back to school. I’m having a LOT of mixed feelings about it. Everyone keeps asking if we’re excited and ready, and my answer is, “it’s complicated.” 2020 was supposed to be the best year of my life: Welcoming our first baby into the world, taking some time off from work, and then finishing out the school year before summer break – but right after Davis was born, Covid-19 made it into the U.S. and schools started closing across the entire world. Everything has been messed up and different for so long that the idea of going back to school is really unsettling for me. No one knows what it’s going to look like or what to expect, and I’m someone who likes to know what’s coming. I think we all are, to a certain extent.

In the past year and a half, so much of our guidance has changed. Teachers are stretched thinner than ever, and more and more keeps piling on us. We have been unable to do our jobs well and keep children as safe as we need to. Meanwhile, we worry about our own children and families at home while we work in a large population every day. We are trying to teach children at home and in person at the same time. It’s impossible. Relationship building with students has become more difficult than ever. Our in-person students are even more addicted to their phones, so teaching feels like a joke at times. I don’t know if this is true for younger grades, but I teach high school, and it has been unreal.

My anxiety went through the roof last school year, along with everyone else’s. I couldn’t access any of my favorite things about my career. I love the pace of the classroom: Walking around and checking on my students, sitting next to them while they work, speaking to each of them as they walk in. Conversations with colleagues in the hall or the workroom keep us sane during the day. With virtual teaching, there was of course none of that – but even when students returned to the building, it was so strange and difficult. The end of the school year couldn’t come fast enough.

Of course I realize that parents are also stressed and stretched thin. We all are! But teachers are parents, too. And we are helping other children in addition to our own. I don’t say that to say teachers have it harder than anyone else, but to shed light that we are dealing with the same things everyone else is.

There is no perfect answer, but it got really disheartening constantly hearing people badmouth teachers throughout the last school year. We were doing our jobs. We were working just as hard as we ever did before. Many of us spent hours transferring lessons and documents to an online format. We worked hard to make things smoother for our students, recording videos, and checking in through messaging apps. I made myself extra available and sent newsletters home every couple of weeks. To hear that parents thought we were doing nothing and collecting a paycheck was such a slap in the face. And there was A LOT of that going around. Of course there are bad teachers – there have always been bad teachers. But there are also bad doctors, project managers, business owners, and everything elses out there in the world.

I have written about mental health and taking care of ourselves a ton on the blog, most specifically in this post. Students are experiencing anxiety and depression at higher rates than ever before; so are all of the adults that take care of them. As soon as we felt a sliver of normalcy with vaccines and the slowing of the virus spread, the new Delta variant came. Now everything seems like it is backtracking again. I have always loved my job, and I do still have hope. Y’all know I believe in hope and positivity, but the last year and a half has made it difficult to be optimistic. I wish there was a little more time between the last school year and this one, but here we are.

One good thing amidst all of this craziness is that we are moving back into our real school, which has been totally rebuilt. It’s definitely exciting to be moving into a beautiful, brand new school building. However, even that has its stressors! Settling in, making a new home in your classroom, learning the building, helping students find everything. But I’m really excited to do all of those things, even though it brings a little bit of stress to the table.

As we head back to school, I am wishing all my teacher friends out there the strength and hope they need to make it through those first couple of weeks. I’m also wishing all the parents that same strength and hope – we all need it. We have done this before, and we’ll navigate as we go. I still believe in us, I still believe in our kids, and I do believe that things will improve.

I won’t throw all the annoying buzzwords from the last year and a half at you, like “grace,” “new normal,” “unprecedented,” etc. BUT I do think that since we have to do it, we will. It’s our only choice. And I think it’s okay for that to be the reality right now. So get out there, grab yourself a nice planner to keep everything organized, find an outfit (and mask) you feel good in, and just do the dang thing.

The Pandemic Babies

by whitney

This post has been in my drafts for a long time, and I wanted to finally finish it out and give it a home on the internet. I saw a post early on in the pandemic about how insulting and disrespectful it was to call babies conceived or born during 2020 “pandemic babies,” but I have called Davis that on my own since the pandemic hit last spring. For me, it was a way to keep things light as I mourned the idea of what I thought my son’s first year of life would be like. I know that sounds dramatic, and we have been truly blessed in so many ways, but it has been very different raising our first child than I ever could have imagined. For instance, when your one-year-old’s idea of a good time is playing with the forehead digital thermometer and rolling around in the dog bed like a dog, you kind of ask yourself if these things are normal or if they’re a by-product of his circumstances! During my pregnancy, I imagined taking him places, showing him off, bringing him to school to meet everyone…but none of those things were possible. Even seeing family was hard to do, and we avoided it for a while because there was so much uncertainty. We had his first birthday party at home by ourselves on a Zoom call with our family. Like I said, I know it could be worse, but these were the things I struggled with on top of being a first time mom and adjusting to a whole new life.

Davis lived with just us and our 3 dogs for the first several months of his life. He was born in January, so thankfully he did get to meet all of his grandparents before everything shut down, but it happened quickly. I can’t even imagine being one of the women who had to give birth alone, or who couldn’t even have one visitor in the hospital as a brand new mother. Mentally I don’t know how I could have handled that, especially because Davis spent his first four days in the NICU. Once all the shut downs happened, we did eventually see close family, but when we did, it was with stress, fear, and guilt. Do we wear a mask? Do we ask what everyone’s exposure has been? What if we expose them? What if they expose us? Are we being irresponsible? Our child care plans changed, as well as work, life, family adjustment…all of these things are difficult with any new baby, but especially a first baby. Throw in having a newborn, the first baby, a global pandemic, and both spouses teaching online…I was at a loss. It was hard, but of course I knew it was hard for everyone. Our story is not unique or different from many other new parents’ stories, and many others had it much worse than we did and had huge losses of life, livelihood, or well-being. With all of our hardships, we have been blessed to be able to spend so much time with Davis, especially at the beginning of his life when I don’t think I would have been ready to go back to work full-time. For that, I’ll always be grateful!

Davis still has several family members he hasn’t met because of Covid. He hasn’t even been able to see his pediatrician’s face! He is so used to masks that he thinks it’s a game to try to pull them off your face. All of these things are different than I thought they’d be, but they’re our only experiences, our only memories. We don’t get another chance on Davis; this is it. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, and trust me, we have had our share along with the rest of the world – but there is so much to be grateful for. At the end of the day, if your baby is a “pandemic baby,” and if you feel offended, okay with, or indifferent to that, then you’re still normal. We have never done this before as a society in our time. We are all navigating new waters. It’s okay to be sad about what you may have lost, but there has been a lot we have gained, as well.

This one’s for all the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and loved ones of the pandemic babies. And if your child thinks he or she is a dog, too…join the club 🙂

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