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Whui-Mei Yeo's avatar

I recognise myself in what you wrote regarding the need to be productive even when not working now. That was a lesson I had to learn throughout 2023. It still is a lesson for me to learn but I think after a whole year of shaming and pushing myself to work (write job applications) using different strategies to get some outcome and feeling exhausted and burnt out, even if I was not doing paid work, I managed to bring all that awareness training I got from 3 months of meditation practice to "know" how to rest. I think it's a learning journey for many of us to discover how to rest. We aren't taught that.

I was quite sick two weeks before Christmas. What I noticed was the more I thought about work while lying in bed feeling cold even until the thick duvet, the more I felt pain and discomfort in my body. The moment I relaxed my mental grip/focus on "I am sick and this is so annoying that I can't do anything else", I noticed that there was an easing of mental weight on my forehead and immediate sense of my mind relaxing. It was a moment's bliss. And I was back to thinking, noticing and giving up/relaxing my mental grip again and again. I was challenged to practise beginning again.

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Hannah Ashe's avatar

Sorry to hear you've not been well, Sarah and I really hope you're on the mend soon.

Reading your words about calling in sick to school and how you feel about it are exactly the same for me. My husband often comments that it's more stress to call in sick for teachers than to just go in and work whilst feeling ill. It's true! I've had times where I've dragged myself out of bed at 6am feeling terrible, but needing to call in before the deadline and then spent an hour or more setting suitable work for my classes and also worrying about the extra strain placed on my colleagues having to cover my lessons.

Now that I am 'just' a teacher on my 3 days, I get put on quite a lot of cover (and I only have 3/18 lessons 'free' for prep time across those days). When I see a cover email in my inbox, my heart sinks and I know that the time will be lost to an hour of babysitting. I've also covered too many lessons in the last term where there was either minimal work set or even nothing at all. Not great when you've got 25 rowdy 15 year olds in front of you and they don't know who you are... "Are you new, Miss?" they snigger.

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