bad work days

I've had plenty of bad workdays. I'm sure you have too. 

Today was one of those days. I've gotten used to the bad moments, but I know it's been a bad day when I feel like crying in the middle of work. You know that overwhelming feeling that starts in the back of your head and quickly rushes to your eyes and before you know it the tears are forming? How do you deal with that? How do you stop yourself from getting to the point of a breakdown? 

It's not that I don't love my job. I love what I do. Believe it or not, I look forward to being in my classroom early in the morning listening to music as I get ready for the day. Of course, that joy slowly starts to fade when the chaos starts to rise and if I don't get it under control quickly the balance is thrown off for the entire day. Hence why I'm writing this. It has been one of those days. 

I've only been in-person teaching for about three weeks. Correction, I just checked my calendar and it's actually been five weeks. It seems like every day students are testing the boundaries. Some days are better than others. I know it's going to be one of those days as soon as I step out and get a feel of the vibe amongst my students. You can just feel the chaos looming like a gray cloud.

Usually, I keep it together. It's not very appropriate to roll your eyes at a student who throws a tantrum because you didn't call on him or yell at a student who continues disrupting the classroom environment. Yes, these are real scenarios. Scenarios that happened today. But I am calm, cool, and collected. I usually come home and forget about it. Today, though, any little thing was bound to push me to the edge. At some point, the bottled-up feelings do erupt like mentos in a coke bottle. 

I don't like to dwell in those scenarios even though sometimes it's really hard not to. Which brings me back to the question, how do you stop yourself from getting to that breaking point? Or once you're there, how do you get yourself out? Because I need help! 

Here's what I did. I went to Starbucks, got an iced chai with vanilla sweet cream cold foam, and sat in my car listening to music. I just needed to spend some time by myself before stepping into my house; time to strip away the negativity. Time to remember that work stays at work. 

This year I've tried my best to think about work as little as possible when I'm home. This is ironic because the majority of my school year was worked from home. Even though I can't stop myself from subconsciously thinking about work, I try not to think about the issues that rose that day. After all, I'm not paid to think about work when I'm at home. Again, this doesn't apply to when I was working from home and I had to literally think about work at home. 

Unfortunately, as the school year comes to an end and students continue getting comfortable being in-person, there's been more chaos than joy. All this said, I still enjoy my job. The little moments make it worthwhile. The smallest moments of joy are a win. If I didn't care about my students or my job I wouldn't get so frustrated.

I wanted to shed light on the rough workdays, the idea that work should stay at work, and to find joy in the little things.

Every day is a new day.