Keeping my head above water.

Most days I feel like I’m drowning. Drowning in work, kids clubs, packed lunches, to-do lists, chores, more work and so on. Even just now as I just sat down to write this, I checked my work emails just in case I’ve missed something important. I went through them yesterday morning (yesterday was Sunday) so there shouldn’t be much. I had 8 new ones, most of which require some sort of action from me. My heart is doing it’s familiar race. Last year when the chest pain and heart palpitations started I thought I was having a heart attack or that there was something really wrong with me but now I’ve come to expect it. The doctor says it’s anxiety. I know the horrible feeling I get as I open my work emails. The racing heart is familiar to me now and although it annoys me, it no longer scares me when it happens. Of course it should! It really, really should! It is my body going into panic mode over and over again. It shows how often I am seriously stressed and over a longer period of time this will start to do damage. Long term stress increases your risk of heart disease and stroke. It causes chronic inflammation and in women it can cause menopausal symptoms (yep – I can vouch for that one – ugh!). Another scary one that I didn’t know, is that it can increase your chance of developing Alzheimer’s!

I thought it was just me that felt this way and that it happened to me because I am particularly useless at keeping on top of life. But over the past few months, after talking to various people I have come to realise that a large percentage of people live life like this. I thought I was the only one who feels like I’m constantly struggling to keep my head above water, always about to drown. But I’m not. In a way this reassures me because I’m not alone in my struggle to stay on top of everything. I’m not totally useless compared to others. But in a way it really worries and depresses me that this is becoming the norm. I’m watching friends, who I love dearly go through similar struggles and I don’t know how to help them because I have no idea how to help myself.

I’m reading Dr Chatterjee’s ‘The Stress Solution’ and read his first book ‘The Four Pillar Plan’ and it certainly makes a lot of sense. I’m trying hard to use some of the strategies he talks about and some days it helps. The problem I have is that I manage this on the days I’m not at work and on the days I am at work it just all goes out the window. Yes, a morning meditation and routine is a great idea, but on the days I’m dashing to get to work as early as possible to try to stay on top of my increasing workload, it just doesn’t happen. I’m also so utterly exhausted every second of every day at the moment that I feel like I have nothing left for anything else.

My mum sent me an article the other day about how teachers will be encouraged to job share in the future, as the workload gets too much to manage when you’re working full time. I’m supposed to still be part-time. I can honestly say I have no idea how anyone does this job full time anymore. Not a clue. How ridiculous that the workload in a profession gets so much that it’s no longer possible to do it full time!

This blog wasn’t meant to be all doom and gloom! It really wasn’t! It’s actually me trying to set myself some goals and a plan. It was also for anyone else who feels like they are the only one struggling to be good at their job, at being a parent, at keeping their house clean (man I’m shit at this one), at being a good wife/husband, being a good friend/family member and all of the other things that we try to juggle.

Someone told me recently that they didn’t know anyone who spent as much time as me trying to improve themselves. I took it as a compliment but I don’t actually think it was meant as one. I think sometimes we need to cut ourselves some slack and accept that we will drop the ball sometimes. It probably isn’t possible to succeed at everything all the time. But I am going to try some different strategies to see if it is possible to stop the constant feeling of panic. I’m also going to look at why so many of us feel as useless as we do (and I truly believe social media plays a massive part in this). I’ll be totally honest here – the number one cause of my stress is my job. I love teaching but I cannot articulate how stressful I find my job and the workload … and that is a nationwide problem, that is not just me. I can’t solve this one but I can try out some different steps to see if I can improve things.

So the plan for this week is as follows:

• Go back to keeping a quick diary. Just jotting down the highs and lows of each day to try to get things out of my head.
• Make a schedule and stick to it. Block out time to do things. If I plan to exercise then do it. If I plan to stop working at a certain time then I stop at that time. No. Matter. What.
• This one’s for the teachers – marking with the children. Try to mark during lessons with the children as much as possible. Verbal feedback is far more valuable anyway and this reduces mountains of books to mark at the end of the day…hopefully!
• Eat the rainbow, or alphabet or whatever. Just eat a shed load of different types of fruit and veg. I’m really interested to see how an improved diet improves stress and energy levels.
• Finally, take digital holidays. Have a day a week with no social media and if possible, no phone at all. Limit checking my phone to 4 times a day (no idea how I actually train myself to do this). The amount of time wasted looking at my phone is insane!

So that’s it folks, I’m hoping that by the end of this week I’ll be totally zen. Seriously though, none of the above is rocket science and yet when we get stressed, we stuff our faces with junk food and lose ourselves in social media (oh, or is that just me?!) and it makes us feel like shit. I’m a woman on a mission because, well, I do love a mission.