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Holiday Break

I have been teaching for 37 years now, and I go through many of the same things at the end of the Fall semester each year.

There is relief at the completion of a significant task (teaching each of my classes) but there is a good deal of physical and mental weariness and aches. I could sleep for several days straight if not for my sleep disorder. By and large my mind is not very sharp and as an introvert I try to be pleasant with loved ones but am not outgoing at all. With age the feeling of being drained deepens in more and more ways.

Of course this is when we have, almost every year, taken a road trip to visit birth families in the Northeast, a full day of driving each way, often involving winter weather far worse than what we are accustomed to in NC.

I love my birth family members as well but as with my created family I am weary and not very outgoing. The conversation is rarely about me and my day-to-day life but rather about younger family members and family friends that I do not know well if at all. I get my rest surrounded by love ones feigning participation and trying to keep my eyelids open. I am more present at summer visits as a rule, which often come more than a month after the end of the Spring classes.

After holiday travels is when I start to thaw a bit; more sleep; more work that has no daily schedule but must get done. It is always a milestone to have my class preparation for the first day, the first week, the first month, the whole semester completed for my classes that begin in February.

I almost always give one or two talks at conferences in March and so January is often a time to work on that as well.

So, for a variety of reasons, my Break really doesn't start for me until January each year.

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