Here’s me, playing my music through my amp and trying to let the day go.

It worked.

I got sweaty and did a sequence I’m designing to the Xanadu soundtrack. I was so frustrated and angry still, so I put on some of my favorite rock: Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam.

I raged out for a while to the music while in savasana. There are no rules saying that you can’t lie in corpse pose and listen to music that makes you feel more alive and doesn’t sound like what “typical” yoga music would be. I plan to bring my brand of yogi to my community, and it is about being human.

I cannot believe we have only been in school for four days. It has not gone exceptionally well. Wednesday was ok, but the rest has been really rough. The school district is having a hard time, the superintendent is having a hard time, the teachers and our union is having a hard time, the kids are having a hard time, the parents are having a hard time. It is truly a real CLUSTER.

I’m scared. I’m scared that I’m going to soak up all the stress and it will effect my body. I spent all summer working on tuning in more. In four days I feel a major shift backwards.

I went for my fateful mammogram this week last year. My cancerversary is coming up in September. After this last surgery, and seeing my family during the funeral, I realized how little I’ve really processed the experience.

Because I just don’t wanna.

But it comes up, anyway, as things do.

I laid here listening to Chris Cornell sing with his beautiful voice. I thought about how he’s gone, like so many of my favorite musicians. And it made me think about my 20s and all the naive hope I had for the life I had ahead.

Yet, here I am living alone and trying to forge a path by myself. I never saw this for myself in my 20s.

I told the school secretary today (when leaving at 5:30 and she was still there, working, too), that I don’t know how I’m going to do it. That I’m literally scared my body is going to fail from stress again. Last year I started the year clueless of what was going to come.

Now I know what my body has been through. I am not capable of living with much bullshit anymore.

For example, my students used my tattoos/body as a way to try to avoid work today after lunch. We were doing science. They tried to get me to talk about my tattoos and made personal remarks in order to derail me.

Kid: How much did it hurt when you got your tattoos?

Me: That is not the topic we are learning about. And my body is not a topic for class discussion.

[The end, kid.] #veteranteacher

They don’t know what I’ve been through, and I am probably not going to share it. And it pissed me off.

They are LOUD. They talk when I am talking, tap pencils, pencil boxes, markers, papers, scissors, erasers, etc. They are excessively fidgety, blurty, young and impolite. They are also very sweet, funny, massively creative, FIRE babies. Half of my class is fire signs.

Multiple times today I told them I was dysregulated and in the red zone (my head was splitting for half of it), and sat down and breathed my yoga breathing. Some little peanuts did it with me. Bless them.

They’re just being kids. They’re still learning. They are being normal humans humaning and learning.

And for the record-NO I do not think kids are “harder” to deal with because of Covid. It’s just another layer of trauma they’re dealing with.

Several kids complimented my music today. AC/DC, Randy Newman, Prince, Soundgarden, Al Green. Some try to get me to play their tunes. One kid keeps asking me if I’m going to play country. I’m like “Maybe someday. Today you’re listening to my tunes. It’s good for your brains. You’re welcome.”

We’re all just doing the best we can do.

Namaste.