"Who needs sleep?"....ME! (and so do you!)

On Wednesday, after I created that very unhappy post, I got to take part in one of the best professional days ever! The best part was that at 10:30, we were able to take a yoga class with one of the dance teacher at my school! It was excellent (and I was able to check one thing off my "30 before 30" list!).

I totally did that pose.

Ok no I didn't.

(I am the most inflexible person ever. I'm amazed that anyone can sit and reach their toes. Seriously.)

I really loved it - it was relaxing, challenging, rewarding and most importantly, stress relieving! I've since then looked up the schedule of yoga classes at my gym and am planning on trying to make that a part of my week on a regular basis. I think that it will be great for so many reasons.

I've also just kinda chilled out the last couple of nights, which is great. I've loaded up the first couple days of the week. On Monday, I teach all of my private lessons (4 voice students) and on Tuesday I have choir rehearsal for 2+ hours. So Wednesdays have become my evening of doing whatever I want. Tonight I actually fell asleep and woke up too late to go to my church choir rehearsal :-/ but I know I needed the extra nap.

It took me a few years to realize just how bad it is to not get enough sleep. It was at the point where I was teaching and would lose my voice almost completely by Thursday because I was going to some kind of rehearsal almost every single night of the week while also waking up at 6 am. I would probably get an average of 6 hours of sleep a night, which is just NOT enough for me. Besides losing my voice, being tired also makes me cranky and irrational. It makes something that normally wouldn't be a big deal seem like the end of the world.

I would love to go back in time and tell myself this. I think back to the days in college when I would be awake until well past midnight having deep conversations and making all these emotional decisions. How ridiculous! Now whenever I'm on Facebook and I see my former students posting sad or depressing messages at 3 am, I just want to shake them and say GO TO SLEEP! I guarantee whatever is on your mind can wait until tomorrow, and it will DEFINITELY be a lot easier to deal with after you get some sleeeeeeep!

So it's all about balance. I love feeling rested and relaxed, but now I have to start working in some exercise. I think yoga will be a nice way back in, because it is something physical and challenging. Plus I'll be at the gym already, so maybe I'll make the effort to walk 20 feet and hop on a treadmill!

...maybe...

Tired...

So here we are in the 3rd week of school. We have a professional day and I probably should be using this time to work on my classes or administrative stuff. But I've been itching to write for awhile, as there's lots of things on my mind since the start of this year.

I knew it would be a big transition going from part-time to full-time. So many people congratulated me when they heard the news and while I was happy about some aspects, I kept going back to thinking about how I would miss sleeping in and being able to leave in the afternoon if I was finished teaching. Those kinds of things made such a difference in my overall level of energy and happiness. And sure enough, I come home every day feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, and I wake up every morning wishing I could sleep more.

Being part-time is just so much healthier for your body, even if it's not as healthy for your bank account.

Of course I'm writing this as I'm tired, which means it will be much crankier and bitter than it would be if I was writing this on a Saturday morning at 10 am.

It just frustrates me that I'm so wiped out after a day of teaching. I mean I know it's great that I'm dedicated to my job and that I care about what I do, but I would certainly like to have more energy at the end of the day. I haven't exercised in weeks, because when I have any amount of time to myself, I seem to fill it up with either doing more schoolwork or sitting down. I used to love exercising and I felt like I needed to do it every day to feel good about myself. Now it's completely at the bottom of my list of priorities. And while I try to convince myself I'm okay with it, I'm clearly not, since I get extremely jealous and sad when I hear about someone else I know getting up early to exercise or going for a run or signing up for a race. It makes me feel like I should be doing the same thing but I can't seem to make myself to do it anymore.

I know part of it is that I'm new at this job, and therefore going a little crazy figuring out how and what I want to teach. And it's not like once I do it for the first time, I've got it down. It takes constant tweaking and revising and analyzing. And I never feel like I'm prepared enough. I can spend a lot of time getting ready for one class, but oh wait, there's three more I haven't thought about for that day!

So I guess I'm just venting. I'm sure every full-time teacher feels this way at some point. I just need to figure out what's important to me, and clearly, sleeping and exercise should get much higher ranking on my priority list! I can't wait until some time has passed and I feel more comfortable with my classes. (So, like, 25 years from now...)