Yellow Legal Pads

Hello, all! I know it's been forever since I posted last, and that was after I made a certain commitment to posting regularly. I guess that all went down the metaphorical toilet quickly, right? There is a pretty good reason for that: teaching. Honestly, I have never been more tired in my entire life. It wasn't this bad when I was working at a summer camp, getting very little sleep and dealing with energetic elementary school kids all day and all night, it wasn't this bad.

My life has become so structured in the last few weeks, it's ridiculous. I've always had a certain affinity for yellow legal pads but nowadays I live my life by them. I seriously have a whole stack in my room, filled with checklists, addresses, notes, prayer lists, Bible verses to look up, students whose parents I need to call or whose papers I have yet to grade, and all sorts of other little things (like the number of the mechanic I had to scribble down today after I had car trouble).

Seriously, I had no idea being a grown up was like this. At the same time, I really enjoy the amount of structure. I like the checklists and the prayer lists. It actually helps me get stuff done. Oh, of course I still procrastinate. Heck, I am procrastinating on grading some spelling tests at this very moment. But I'm still able to get all the work I need to get done done. And honestly, I've never felt more assertive and in control in my life. It's quite liberating in a way.

One thing that I think intrigues me about my newfound reliance on checklists is that it gives me a certain view of how much a person can get done in a day. There are so many little interactions that one barely ever notices, but writing them all down on a little legal pad makes you realize just how much stuff human beings do in a day (especially those who work a job as stressful as teaching English to high school students).

I don't know if there's anything particularly profound or interesting about that. I'm still learning how to deal with everything. I do intent to blog every day this week. Not long posts, and probably nothing too deep either. I just like the structure of it, and I like the idea of getting back into a daily blog habit, which is how this blog first started. I hope you all stick around for the adventure, because let me tell you, it's pretty wild!