you ever

put on a shirt to go running and remember that you got it for Christmas and get hit with a wave of "I love my family so much!"?

anybody?

work reflections

I can get sappy if I want. This is my blog. It's for me. I can do whatever I want.

Anyway, having said that, I was thinking about how it's really great that at afterschool and at art class, I get interactions with the students that show me, at least to them in that moment, that I'm doing a good job.

I think I tend to ignore and downplay positive feedback and I'm thinking I should work on slowing down to appreciate and reflect on those moments.

What I tend to fixate on are moments like yesterday when a mother was picking up her kids and came to me in the gym and reported that her child had told her that he and his friends had been going to the bathroom in the woods during outside time. It kind of caught me off guard and I don't think I did the best job switching gears and reassuring her in the moment that the situation had been managed and things of this nature would not be going on. I knew about it and I work really hard to make sure the kids are supervised enough to not let something like that happen. I think what happened was that it was a new area for the kids and it coincided with a time when we were unexpectedly down a teacher so I was really strained for supervision. Now, I should have adjusted and not given the kids as much freedom in that moment.

I also think what the mother was told was probably an exaggeration from what was actually going on. Overall it's just a really weird situation. And she was really understanding but I think I'm going to follow up and just assure her that the kids are being supervised in a safe environment.

well, that wasn't really sappy it all. it was more about writing this thing down that I'm trying not to fixate on all weekend.

true chaotic neutral

yesterday at snack we had cheerios and milk. as I'm walking by a table a 4th grade girl says, "look, Andy! now someone else can use it."

and she using a spoon to move her leftover cereal milk back into the milk carton. big smile on her face. 

she said, "I love recycling!"

and I said, "that is true chaotic neutral. "

another good moment

yesterday we were heading in to the new afterschool woods and to be dramatic I said, "we claim these woods in the name of afterschool."

And this boy goes, "no , andy. it's cooler if we're trespassing. then we can be arrested and go to jail."

And I said, "okay, we're TRESPASSING."

And a girl over heard that and she was very excited about the dress she wore to school that day and she said, "no, Mr. Andy. I'm DRESS-passing."

And I said, "that was very clever."

and my life is a cartoon. 

a good moment from today

today the kids met up in the woods and held auditions to see who would be the next judge on our judge show that we film.

a boy was auditioning and I thought of a question that I hoped would stump him.

I said, "hey, you know judges have to wear dresses, right? is that going to be a problem for you?"

And he pauses for a beat and says, deadly serious, 'maybe'.

probably not funny to anyone but me but it was an answer I was not expecting. his confidence made it a complete power move. 

boil me down

it was one of those days where I ate a whole bag of kale for dinner

and I'm FEELING it.

I did pretty much everything I like to do today. I made art. I went climbing. I ran. I bought groceries. I did laundry. I ate a lot of kale.

a near perfect sunday.

the kids at afterschool have gotten really into the dungeons and dragons game I've set up for them. when we left on Friday they were preparing to enter a gigantic evil looking tree where the alien/insect/robots are believed to reside. It's great. Most likely they're going to end up being swarmed by bugs.

ran a good race today

I ran 26:14 for 8k, or 4.95 miles. It felt really good. I hit 5:13 for the first mile and didn't deviate too much in pace and it very gradually became less comfortable. 

It was a promising performance and in line with where I was in the Fall. What I need to do is find a way to build off of it. Which should be pretty straightforward. But I feel like I've been stuck at this plateau of performance for a while. I'm optimistic though. 

I have two and a half weeks until Costa Rica so that's a good amount of time to do some good workouts. One thing that's been helpful is to think about how I'm healthy and fit enough to be able to push myself and enjoy it. I think I'll keep focusing on that and hopefully that will lead to exciting training that will lead to exciting races.