Closing a Chapter

 

Today would have been my first day back at work at the high school library after the summer break.

Would have been... however, I quit over the summer. It's a long story and I don't want to bore you with it. I did feel though that this job no longer was healthy for my own well-being.

The past year, which definitely was the weirdest school year I ever experienced, gave me a lot of opportunity to re-assess what is important in my life. At the beginning of 2020 - when no one was talking about COVID-19 - I had turned 60 which for me was the point where I seriously thought about what to make of the time that I still have. When I started this job in the high school library - right after my daughter had graduated from the same school - I enjoyed it even though every now and then it was quite a drag. Except for the first year, every year I worked there was marked by major school closures due to wildfires (the Tubbs fire in October 2017 that burned down several neighborhoods in our city was the first one), smoke and preventative power shut-offs. We dealt with it, grateful for the long summer break that gave us the opportunity to relax and start the next school year with new energy.

I started with that same level of new energy after last year's summer, but something changed profoundly during the pandemic school year. The workload was okay and I finally had the time to get tasks done that I had wanted to accomplish for a long time. But I did not enjoy it anymore. Yes, there are always periods when the job is not particularly enjoyable - but this was somehow different. 

I wrestled with the situation for a long time, tried to tell myself that this would be temporary, that I am a positive person who is resilient and most of all, who DOESN'T QUIT. I even started to meditate hoping that it would help me with my anxiety that I had developed (very new for me) and that would get me back in the "right mindset". But there was another voice, first quite low, but eventually getting louder and demanding to be heard. It was a constant "do you really want to go on like this?".

So I thought - one more year. That perked me up for the remaining weeks of the school year. And then, at the end of the last day of the school year, when I was ready to go home, I took all my personal stuff with me - not that there was a lot, just a couple photos of my daughter, a couple pens and a notebook. There was this thought, "maye I don't come back for another year, so take your things just in case".

Five days later I wrote my letter of resignation.

Now I can solely concentrate on my teaching job at the German School which has become considerably more work intensive over the past 15 months and which is the job I truly enjoy and love. The overwhelming emotion at this point is relief. This morning, when I woke up my first thought was "I'm so glad I don't have to go to the high school anymore!".

Just like my daughter said five years ago after graduating, I say today "I'm done!"

Looking Back

 

Only a few more hours and 2020 will be history. What a weird and strange year it has been. While this was not the worst year in my life - there were years far worse than this - it certainly was the most unique.

Much has been said about 2020 and I don't want to waste your time with repeating the same old sentiments about the virus and its consequences. The circus about the election still hasn't stopped. The life of too many people has been disrupted in a terrible way.

When I look back at the year I am surprised how quickly it passed, even though there were times when we thought nothing was moving. Despite stay-at-home orders and lockdowns I had more work than before. The new situation of teaching online had its fair share of challenges, but also many opportunities. While preparing classes was taking a lot longer, teaching was still a positive experience. It forced me to keep an open mind, to learn from my mistakes, to see what worked and what didn't and make amendments. It was interesting and exhausting at the same time. I was able to offer new classes which added to my work load, but boy! did I like it!

My Esty store also took off this year in a way I hadn't experienced before. While at the beginning of the year it was mainly Valentine's cards that I sold, customers were asking for hand knitted socks once the pandemic was under way. I knitted 68 pairs of socks for the store alone, plus some more for friends, famiy and myself. Add to this some hats, scarves, mittens and photo cards you can see that I was busy.

Since there was no way we could go anywhere I spent a lot of time in the garden whenever I could. I was digging and planting, changing the layout of the garden and enjoying the beauty surrounding me. That certainly kept me sane! Due to the unhealthy air for several weeks due to the multiple wildfires in our state and beyond, this time was cut short in the second half of summer, but by then the new school year had already started and I didn't have that much time for this kind of leisure anyway.

When I went to see Kaefer in Davis on Valentine's Day and we had a nice lunch on the patio of a restaurant, I had no idea that this was the last time I ate at a restaurant this year. After that it was me preparing meals every single day (sometimes, though, it was just a frozen pizza from Trader Joe's). I think we only picked up food from a restaurant two or three times. Since I had subscribed to the Morning Briefing of the New York Times which includes one recipe each day, I didn't run out of new and inspiring ideas. I tried many new dishes and some of them quickly became favorites.

Good thing that Kaefer had given me a fun apron! I wore it almost every day.

The big event in our family, of course, was Kaefer's graduation from the University of California, Davis. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Global Disease Biology which is a good foundation for her new undertaking, studying for her Masters in Epidemiology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. She left right after Labor Day - bittersweet for us and I sure miss her a lot.

When I look back at the time since the beginning of the pandemic, I am amazed at the creativity that I saw during those months. First it was just the "communal howling" in our neighborhood every evening at 8:00. Then the virtual wildlife turned up, including the tiger in our backyard. Everywhere something was turning up - sidewalk art, people playing music from their balconies (Italy), others reading to kids via Zoom etc. The creative solutions we found at work and new ways to exercise. We started a Happy Hour in the street with our neighbors that we only stopped a few weeks ago with our holiday lockdown that didn't permit gatherings of any size, even outside.

What did I miss most? Certainly being together with our friends - that was worse than the cancelled trip to Australia. We had a few social distanced get togethers, but this simply wasn't the same. I miss the spontaneity of "normal" times and I wonder when or even if we will ever experience that again. I miss not being able to hug my friends. 

I sure hope that 2021 will bring vaccines to all of us and we will be able to hug each other again, to be together without being afraid to spread a virus that we still don't understand. 

To all of you I wish a happy, peaceful and healthy 2021.

High School Madness

The last few weeks of the high school year are usually extremely busy and often quite chaotic. Our library is closed, but we have the back windows open (those are the windows to the textbookroom) where students can return their textbooks and English novels, pay fines for damaged or lost books and seniors get their clearance so that they can walk in the graduation ceremony.

The first day of this madness I worked on my own since my colleague had a day off, and when I came to work in the morning I was greeted by this:

A non-working computer. Yay!!!

That meant that I packed all the books I received on a cart, wheeled them to the computer on my desk in the library where I checked them in, brought them  in the workroom to clean them and finally back into the textbookroom where I could finally put them on the shelves.

 Please notice the empty shelves...

Our IT guy arrived an hour later, fixed the computer and after that everything went a bit more smoothly.

We usually put the books on carts according to section before we shelve them. It's a more efficient system since we always have to move the shelves. They look strong, but they're very sensitive, and the one thing we don't want during these weeks are broken shelves that don't move anymore. That happened to us last year when we couldn't access the math section anymore.

No matter how many books we received during the day, every evening before I left work most of them were cleared away and the carts were empty, ready for the onslaught of the next day.

The shelves filled up more and more each day.

I actually love working at the back windows because I can see what's going on. Some students were painting the ground and one day during lunch break the band played a couple songs.

The last few days of the school year were minimum days when students went home right after finals. It was lovely to have the campus to ourselves and wander along the empty buildings.

Even the crows enjoyed the quiet.

I finally had time to admire the impressive artwork of our students.

Every evening when I came home I was ready for this before dinner - I think I deserved it after the madness of each day.

An Image and Its Story: May 2019

Since I have joined The 100 Day Project I have mainly shot pictures for my theme "100 days in my garden" throughout the month and not much else. May is also the month of high school madness due to the end of the school year and the high amount of work in the school library. Ergo - not much else was going on in regards to photography. No wonder then that my chosen photo - actually two of them that I collaged into one image - is from the garden, but also connected to work. Both were taken on the very last day of the month.

Friday was the last day of school which meant we had a steady flow of students wanting to return their books, paying overdue fines and getting clearance slips for their graduation ceremony in the evening. I opened up earlier in the morning than usual and the first time I could actually sit down for a couple of minutes was almost four hours later. When I finally got home another four hours later I was totally wiped out, my feet and hips hurt and the only thing I was able to do was lying down on the sofa and within minutes I was fast asleep. Oh, the bliss of a good nap! It was early evening by then, the Geek came home from his work and we just had a lovely quiet hour outside in the garden, sipping a glass of rosé and reading - a book I had brought home form the library that was just returned a couple days before. It was pure bliss and the perfect start in the weekend.

I have a few more days at work until my long summer break - almost eight weeks! - will begin. There is always work for the German School to be done during the summer, but it is far calmer and slower than the end (and beginning) of the high school year.

A Year Ago I Thought I Was Done

It has been a year since Kaefer graduated, and it's only three more days until her last final and she will have finished her Freshman year at UC Davis. I still remember her graduation from high school so vividly. The excitement, the heat, the bittersweetness.

And I remember that I thought I was done with everything high school. Finally we would be able to take vacations in the spring or fall when schools all over the country would be in session. We could enjoy lower prices and lesser crowds. Ah, pure bliss.

Of course what followed didn't match that picture.

In the spring of 2016, while Kaefer was still a high school student, I volunteered at her school's library once a week. I enjoyed the work, the environment and the super cool textbook room that I re-organized at that time.

When in August - while we were in Hawai'i! - the school district started to look for a part time library technician for this high school library I didn't hesitate and applied for this position - and I got it. I started working in October, two days a week, which is just perfect since this gives me enough time preparing for my Saturday German classes and work for my Etsy shop. Only the last two weeks and the first two weeks of a school year do I work full time because there is so much to do.

We're pretty busy here. There are only two of us who work in the library and it can get rather loud when the students come in to hang out during break and lunch. Classes come here to study, the computer lab is also in the library and in high demand throughout the day. Most of the students are nice and quite funny teenagers.

While I do like the main library, my "true love" is the textbook room which is the part of the library with the books most often used. Here are all the big textbooks for science, math, history and foreign languages as well as all the reading material - novels, short stories, plays and poems - for the Language Arts. The textbook room is my realm, the part of the library I'm responsible for.

These heavy shelves are movable - just a short click on the handle and they move with a low mumbling sound up to the aisle where I need to get into to get the books a class or student needs. It's like magic and so far it hasn't ceased to fascinate me.

This is what it looks like when you stare through the shelves:

Well, and of course with this kind of work we're back to taking vacations during school breaks. I guess we have to wait to retirement for a chance to go on trips at other times. A big sigh in one regard, but I am also so happy to have found a job that I actually like.