The pool was packed. It was full of people swimming furiously. Swim to wash the rubbish out of your head; swim all the lengths for the next month; swim fast; swim hard. It wasn’t a particularly pleasurable experience but it was therapeutic. There was a county swimmer in my Lane who kept grabbing my ankle every time she wanted to get past. I started to imagine her as a shark and fantasised about being brave enough to punch her on the nose. I didn’t though, I just kept swimming.
In our house, we all deal with anxiety differently and in ways that make each other worse and so the last few days have been challenging.
No teacher sleeps well the night before going back to school. I don’t know why, although I expect it’s a version of performance anxiety. In the current world teachers are the only people allowed (and expected) to put on a show.. We went into this half term holiday in desperate need of a rest. The emotional challenge of teaching in the current climate was huge and no teacher could quite believe they hadn’t done a whole term. Now we are going back to teach children in a lockdown world and none of us know how this will be. We are all still holding our breath. It’s like underwater swimming.
I wish I had answers. It’s just going to be hard but we just have to keep swimming (even if that’s only metaphorically) and breathing.
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