u/Single-Swordfish-578

Sup yall- I am entering my 9th year teaching elementary art and will be starting at a new school in a different district this year.

I have been the new teacher in a big school district before and I know the feeling of getting bombarded and overwhelmed with the onboardings, the trainings, learning a new classroom, curriculum, ordering supplies, not to mention navigating student and coworker relationships. It can be a lot and I feel like the last time I did this I got pretty overwhelmed, especially being more of a rookie teacher (I know I still kind of am haha).

As I start up the year in this new district, I am feeling all of those similar “in the weeds” feelings coming back to me. With school starting in 3 days, I find myself wanting to go work on my classroom over the weekend, waking up at 5 AM with anxiety about finishing compliance trainings and working on lesson plans just to “stay ahead of things”.

So I’m wondering…is it wise to just bite the bullet and work my ass off to front load things so I don’t feel WAY in the weeds by October? Or do I just take the approach of “everything will work itself out, take it one day at a time”?

On one hand, there’s A LOT of work to be done. The classroom I inherited LOOKED like it was stocked with materials, but as I go through everything I begun to realize a lot of it was trash. I am a super organized, regimented art teacher so I really need my space to be tidy and accounted for to feel balanced. I’m also questioning if there is even enough supplies to serve my 650 students and know that I need to get the ball rolling on supply orders pretty soon.

On the other hand I am in this career for the long haul. Stress has impacted my health in the past and I want to approach the workload responsibly and sustainably. I’m trying to avoid burnout and I value my peace and calm more than ever. I am willing to protect my sanity and I understand the value in doing that 9 years in.

So…how balls to the wall do I go? Do I just accept that year 1 (or maybe even 2,3…) are going to be a little stressful and work my tail off? Or do I just do as much as I can and know it will probably never be “enough”?

17 days sober from weed here, 3 years from alcohol. Have been drinking and smoking weed since I was 15 years old, now I’m 33.

I’ve seen some folks say that vacation is the EASIEST time to quit, but I find it to be the hardest, particularly when I visit my family in California. I was just there for a family reunion, and usually it’s just non stop partying, as a good chunk of them have some serious dependencies on weed and alcohol.

When I initially quit 30 days ago, I told myself that I would allow myself some fun over vacation, and then get back to it. I relapsed about 15 days in, smoked a joint, and then woke up to a hangover-esc headache that lasted 3 DAYS. Experiencing this made me truly re-evaluate things and decided I needed to quit for good. If not only to never ever experience that headache again. The hangovers are actually the major thing that got me to quit alcohol as well.

So I restarted the clock, and when vacation came around I stood strong, but was still unsure how much I would be able to enjoy things. Looking back, it was hard in the moment. Seeing people be “able” to enjoy all of the things without a thought was difficult. Looking back in hindsight though, I realize how present I was, how calm and relaxed I TRULY was, how much I remember, how touching the time was with my husband and my daughter, how fresh I woke up each morning, but most of all…how PROUD of myself I am.

I always leave those trips feeling like “man…I’m just like them aren’t I…why can’t I just control myself”…this time? I left feeling like “I’m proud of myself for doing the best thing for ME and I love them all regardless.”

Here’s to following through, facing challenges head on, and getting to know myself again. I love this life.

EDIT: to mention that NA beers helped tremendously during this trip to make me feel like I was socializing without the guilt and physical effects

Hi all,

I’m writing this partially as accountability for me and partially as motivation for you. Maybe not motivation, but just an ounce of light at the end of your tunnel. Something perhaps to look forward to.

Our experiences will all vary greatly, but I did want to share some of the benefits I have seen just 8 days into this journey, along with some strategies that have helped me along the way.

I am a teacher, so I have summers off. Every summer for the last 4-5 years (since my daughter was born) I’d tell myself this is it. I’m going to get my shit together, lose weight, get healthy, and really a take a look into all of this unhealthy habits I’m participating in, including weed. I wanted to find the root cause of this unhappiness I felt. Summer is the perfect time to just focus solely on myself and my healing.

Despite this, every summer was the same. Fun, carefree, smoking weed whenever I wanted (all day out of a vape). And the end of the summer was always the same- disappointed that I had not fulfilled my goals, but also a sense of “whatever at least you had fun”.

That was until this year. In the months leading up to the summer, I kept going through these cycles of telling myself I was gonna quit, hiding my vapes, waking up in the morning saying “NOT TODAY” but then the afternoon came and that plan went out the window, and I just got…so exhausted. This was paired with the fact that my husband began experiencing a mental breakdown, and was essentially begging to quit weed himself. We were both in it and begging for a way out.

I’m not sure what flipped the switch in me on July 1, 2026. Perhaps it was the new job I got at a new school, prompting me to think “what if I just start fresh?” Perhaps it was the weight that STILL needed to come off, and as I approached 35, I knew it was now or never. Perhaps it was when I looked myself in the mirror and understood that as my husband was crumbling under the weight of his mental illness, *I* was the one who needed to be strong. To be an example. To lead the way.

So I just threw everything away. I pronounced to many people that I was quitting, just to make it real. I made a list of “dopamine inducers” and realized many of them were things connected to my childhood, things I enjoyed doing when I was young or even things I *wished* I could do when I was young but couldn’t for whatever reason. Just typing that out makes me tear up a bit because…for so long I was depriving my inner child.

Things like learning to play piano again. Kicking the soccer ball in the yard with my daughter. Reading fiction. Doing puzzles. Exploring my city. Making plans with friends and even a new friend and actually showing up.

And it kind of makes sense, right? I started smoking weed at 14, the exact age of my parent’s divorce. Looking back, I believe this was the time stamp where I stopped being a child. And I think I lost so much that I am somehow, 20 years later, rediscovering, or at least beginning to.

I am not stoner mom. I am not stoner wife. I was stoner teen and stoner young adult because I think I had nothing else to cling to. It was an easy, cheap way to feel like I belonged.

So here I am, 8 days in, wanting to go another day. I want to learn more songs on the piano, lose more weight, learn more about myself. I hope my feet continue down this path and that you all can find a healing path of your own. You and your inner child, deep down inside, deserve it.

Hi there! We’re doing the RR library reading challenge (anyone else?) and one of the suggestions was to read to an elderly person…I would love to do that! I was searching around and it doesn’t seem like there is any place that explicitly offers that volunteering opportunity, so I have emailed a few facilities to see if they’d be open to it. In the meantime, does anyone know of a place we could go to read to some old folks?