Back to school, seeking balance

I could not believe how hard it was to wake up early again after the summer! My alarm whined like a hungry dog. I stumbled up, tightened the muscles in my legs to stop the lightheadedness, managed to gather phone and sweater and water cup. I set the water boiling for tea. I made it to the sofa.

It was 6:15, Monday of the first day back at school, although students would not arrive until Wednesday, and normal teaching still won’t commence until Thursday the 19th–but with meetings and discussions and teacher planning time, and then later this week the greeting of students, guiding them through an orientation program, sorting classrooms and class lists, meeting colleagues to collaborate, a new learning management system we’re onboarding this year–things have begun in earnest now. I am back to my 6:15 writing sessions with my pot of tea and my tired eyes. But I am ready. Let’s go.

An evening walk on a new trail–we’ve passed this trail a hundred times but never taken it. It’s on a farmer’s land, so I always would have felt awkward. But in Norway, the concept of “Every Man’s Right” means that one is always allowed to walk on land, and even to pick berries or camp, as long as the land isn’t disturbed. I felt a bit nervous when we set out down the trail, but it ended up being a really beautiful walk.

In the transition from an unstructured summer, I am looking forward to the dependability of this morning routine, but I also recognized in these first few days that my mind is different in its sleep-befuddled state. I may not write as lucidly, nor as quickly. And one hour a day isn’t as much as I would really hope for myself. I would like to see what I can do to add in more.

Back to cooking. In Bergen before we drove home, we stopped by a global market and found, among lots of other tasty things, these Hungarian wax peppers. We made up a good batch of lecsó, which we have been eating all week. Luckily it made a lot, as we’ve been too busy already to cook again.

Teaching everywhere is a struggle to balance time, and in my experience especially at a school like this, with its residential program, its great teacher autonomy (which is exciting, but also means I find myself developing almost all of my materials from scratch every year!), and its high academic expectations. If I add more time to writing, I’ll surely be taking it away from somewhere else. These are questions I will have to navigate.

The Albanian bookshelf in the school library. This year, I am teaching School-Supported Self-Taught Literature or, as we call it here, World Literature. Students study literature in their home languages–we’ll be a community of around thirty students studying twenty languages together. Amazing, chaotic, exciting, overwhelming. I’m doing an online course right now to prepare myself to lead this class, and one activity involved the creation of a possible student reading list in another language. I chose Albanian, and I started with a survey of what we already have in the school library. This was one of my many tasks of the week.

But for now, I am just enjoying the reestablishment of a routine. The sourdough starter spent its summer in the freezer, but now it is thawed again and bubbling. We picked up a few new plants in Bergen before we drove back home, and they are settling in to this new place. Our colleague-friend-neighbors have returned too, and things are bustling. It’s good to be here. Wish me luck.

How do you find balance between writing and other parts of life? I would love to hear others’ advice as I navigate things myself. Best wishes for the coming week,
Jimmy