(Funnily enough, the children in my class love this song! They rock out super hard when it's played for our end of the day dance party.)
Look, I don't mean to brag, but I was an awesome paper writer in high school and college. I enjoy writing, and it came easily to me. Almost regardless of the topic and the type of deadline I was working with, I could crank out a solid paper that usually earned me an A. It was a really satisfying experience, a pretty formulaic one that followed me for many years over the course of my education.
There are other memories of that sense satisfaction from my early adulthood; that exhilarating feeling of knowing that you've totally nailed it. Finding an apartment in Manhattan that you can actually afford on your bakery salary? Awesome! Earning a role you desperately want and going on to complete a successful run? Well done! Go enjoy that cast party. Getting hired by a professional company that will pay you to act? Pinch me, I'm dreaming!
Satisfaction looks different for me now, more than a decade down the road. I'm a mom and a teacher. How do you enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done when your job is never...well, done?
Take my house, for example. I love a clean, organized, welcoming home. I've made my peace, however, with the knowledge that the entire house cannot be clean at the same time. In fact, in order to have a period of time to myself in which I can clean one part of my house, I am almost certainly offering up another part of the house to be torn apart by my children who are playing.
The same logic is true of my parenting and teaching. I can spend a few hours of quality time with my children on the weekends, OR I can prepare a week's worth of nutritious, homemade lunches. I can adjust our classroom's daily schedule when my students look really engaged in their play, OR we can go outside and play in nature. I operate in a constant state of prioritizing and choosing, and I long for that linear, predictable process of writing a paper - a process that has a clear ending and clear feedback on how good a job I'm doing.
So, how have I changed the way I look at satisfaction? These days, it's in moments, sometimes tiny little pockets of time. It's buying a beautiful bouquet of my favorite flowers that sit on an otherwise-cluttered countertop. It's having a dance party in the kitchen where, for three minutes, the whole family is happy together. It's laughing with a student as she tries, over and over, to keep a drop of watercolor from dripping down her paper. It's running just a bit faster or longer than last time (and, barring that, just enjoying that I got out there at all). It's making a really beautiful meal, even if it's only once a week. It's welcoming the love and beauty and joy I see in the span of sometimes just a few seconds.
Satisfaction may not carry the sense of accomplishment that it once did. But I think my life is richer for all those satisfying little moments that I make the conscious effort to embrace.
There are other memories of that sense satisfaction from my early adulthood; that exhilarating feeling of knowing that you've totally nailed it. Finding an apartment in Manhattan that you can actually afford on your bakery salary? Awesome! Earning a role you desperately want and going on to complete a successful run? Well done! Go enjoy that cast party. Getting hired by a professional company that will pay you to act? Pinch me, I'm dreaming!
Satisfaction looks different for me now, more than a decade down the road. I'm a mom and a teacher. How do you enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done when your job is never...well, done?
Take my house, for example. I love a clean, organized, welcoming home. I've made my peace, however, with the knowledge that the entire house cannot be clean at the same time. In fact, in order to have a period of time to myself in which I can clean one part of my house, I am almost certainly offering up another part of the house to be torn apart by my children who are playing.
The same logic is true of my parenting and teaching. I can spend a few hours of quality time with my children on the weekends, OR I can prepare a week's worth of nutritious, homemade lunches. I can adjust our classroom's daily schedule when my students look really engaged in their play, OR we can go outside and play in nature. I operate in a constant state of prioritizing and choosing, and I long for that linear, predictable process of writing a paper - a process that has a clear ending and clear feedback on how good a job I'm doing.
So, how have I changed the way I look at satisfaction? These days, it's in moments, sometimes tiny little pockets of time. It's buying a beautiful bouquet of my favorite flowers that sit on an otherwise-cluttered countertop. It's having a dance party in the kitchen where, for three minutes, the whole family is happy together. It's laughing with a student as she tries, over and over, to keep a drop of watercolor from dripping down her paper. It's running just a bit faster or longer than last time (and, barring that, just enjoying that I got out there at all). It's making a really beautiful meal, even if it's only once a week. It's welcoming the love and beauty and joy I see in the span of sometimes just a few seconds.
Satisfaction may not carry the sense of accomplishment that it once did. But I think my life is richer for all those satisfying little moments that I make the conscious effort to embrace.
