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Think Your Day is Tough? Try Seventh Grade
Refresh your perspective: Radical Gratitude, day twenty-two.
I’m awash in projects.
All are in some insistent stage: the novel I’m trying to wrest into form; a collection of short stories; the middle-grade chapter book that has been complete for two years but has languished on my hard drive awaiting my time and attention. Plus writing for Medium and, oh yes, my full-time job at a middle school.
As I try to sip from the firehose I’ve aimed at myself, all the other elements of life intensify at this time of year: friends, family, my involvement with the horse rescue for which I volunteer. Not to mention things like impeachment hearings, climate crisis, and the world at large.
And the holidays that will be upon us in, what, ten minutes?
It’s kind of overwhelming.
This is when I remind myself that 99% of the stuff I have to do is because I choose to do it. You want to see real pressure? Real overwhelm?
Hang out with a class of seventh graders confronted with end-of-the-trimester projects, looming grades, and fall sports, all competing for attention with the intense drama, shifting allegiances, and hormonal chaos that is middle school.
