Sabbath

Roadside on the Million Dollar Highway, from Ouray to Silverton, CO.

Long time no post, #amirite?

As you've potentially gathered, I'm a full time teacher and full time graduate student, which means I spend about 80 hours a week doing something English and/or education related.

And, as you hopefully realize, it's exhausting.

The biggest upside of teaching is having summers off, which has given me plenty of opportunities to rest, rejuvenate, and [finally] log back on to this blog.

This post, titled "Sabbath," is a draft lying around from March 2017, and I finally have a moment to sit down and write about that. now is the moment I'm choosing to finally sit and write about this.

If you're unfamiliar with Christianity or Judaism, the concept of "Sabbath" may be slightly foreign to you. It shares a root with "sabbatical," and comes from šāḇaṯ, which means ‘to rest.’ in Hebrew (thanks, Google, for that history.)

Sometime in March, I went on a Saturday climbing trip with a few friends (one of whom is a teacher, the other of whom practices Judaism) and the discussion rotated around to the idea of rest.

All three of us are familiar with the idea of Sabbath as a day of rest, and I started considering when the practice of taking a day of rest went by the wayside.

Initially, the Sabbath was created as a day of rest to reflect how God rested on the seventh day of creation, which is a pretty cool idea. Taking a day to rest, pause and reflect sounds like a great idea in the hustle and bustle world of 2017.

Which is why, in March, I started observing Saturday as my Sabbath. I would wake up, go to yoga, then go home and do everything or anything except grad school homework or grading papers. And, magically, it didn't make it any more difficult to get my work done by the times I needed to have it done.

I pushed all my essay grading to one weekend day, and it made me focus better. I held on to weekday nights for my grad school homework, which wasn't much of an issue when I was able to sit down and do it while eating dinner.

By prioritizing rest and carving out a full day of my week FOR rest, I was able to manage my time and work more efficiently. 

I'm not sure what my Sabbath is going to look like this school year. For one thing, I want to prioritize travel and getting into nature. It's my goal to spend at least two weekends of every month somewhere outside of Phoenix, but in all reality--I'll be happy if I make it out of the city at least one weekend every month.

This year is also different because I now have a boyfriend, and while I want to say that won't affect my Sabbath, it probably will. He's a teacher, and we're going to have to discuss our working habits so we can plan time to work, grade, and do everything else while also finding time to spend together.

Thankfully, he loves Jesus and also seems to be on board with the idea of observing Sabbath as a day of rest, so this should be a great thing for both of us in our busy schedules.

Parallels

Ask anyone I know--I recently got super into rock climbing. 

A month ago, I got back up on a rock wall for the first time since my fall, and I've craved to return ever since.

On a whim, I invested in a pair of shoes, a chalk bag, a bouldering gym membership, and a roll of tape. It's pretty rare for me to jump head-on into something so quickly, but I'm so glad I've invested in this hobby because it's starting to pay off.

When I hit the rock gym, my mind is instantly cleared. I'm no longer focused on student essays, lesson plans for the next week, or how my lesson may have crashed and burned that day. Instead, I'm faced by different issues--how to climb a particular route, how to best bandage a blister, how to catapult myself over a ledge--the list goes on. Rock climbing gives me a physical activity that embodies problem solving, and helps me process along the way.

Granted, not all problems are solved in a quick and clean fashion. Some problems take a few falls or a few fails before being solved, and I've learned to grow comfortable in those times.

I'm learning to grow comfortable when I fail at teaching as well.

Don't get me wrong--I hold myself to a very high standard, but teaching is a try-and-fail setup. If you try an activity and you fail, you try again or you move on to something that may work. If you fail at getting a point across, you stand up, brush yourself off, and come back the next day to try again.

I'm so thankful I found rock climbing in my first year of teaching so I could learn to fall, learn to fail, and practice getting back up time and time again.

What now?

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit." Edward Abbey explains why I feel most alive when I'm out there in the trees.

A photo posted by Amanda (@mandalyn93) on May 2, 2016 at 11:38am PDT

Holy schneikes. I'm embarking on the final week at my job and realizing what is ahead of me.

This summer is going to be crazy.

For starters, I'm going to spend a month in Tulsa for the Teach for America summer institute. I'm going to be spending a week in Ecuador on a mission trip. I'm going to spend nearly two weeks on a Midwest train trip. And, to cap it all off, I have to take a huge standardized test and complete a 45-hour online course before the end of May.

I will be home, at my apartment in Phoenix, for three weeks total in the next three months. That's really hard for me to process. I'm not a homebody, per se, but I like having a physical location to come back to and drop things off at.

On the other hand, I've spent time traveling and housesitting and living out of a backpack, so this is nothing new--it's just something I didn't expect myself to be doing so much of this summer.

The more I think about it, my apprehension and anxiousness is replaced by curiosity and excitement.

In six months from now, I will have grown so much I'll probably be an entirely different person.

• I will have lived in a city where I don't know a single soul (albeit only for a month and a week).
• I will have gone through an effective yet condensed training program and placed in a classroom as a teaching intern. 
• I will (hopefully) have been accepted to and started grad school at ASU. 
• I will have stopped draining my savings and relying on my credit card and finally will have a paycheck after going all summer without one. 

And yet, I'm still asking myself...

What am I doing?

I don't know.

But it's certainly going to be a grand adventure.

Salir/Irse/Dejar

A photo posted by A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Sep 1, 2015 at 6:14pm PDT

When I was a chubby, long-haired sixth grader, I swore I was moving to Alaska. I couldn't take any more of the darn Arizona heat. I wanted snow! Husky dogs! Polar bears! Ice fishing!

At least, I wanted all those things until my mom told me about giant mosquitoes living in Alaska. After that, I was content with the sunshine.

Come seventh grade, I wanted to go to California. I did a report on Pepperdine University in seventh grade. I toured Biola, California Baptist University and some other California college during the spring break of my sophomore year of high school.

Junior year, I started dating a boy and suddenly didn't want to leave anymore. He captured my heart and my focus shifted away from Biola and over to Northern Arizona University and Grand Canyon University. Relationships and feelings foiled my plans of escape!

Seriously, if I could go back and mentor eleventh grade Amanda, I would tell her "Don't change your plans for a boy. Go where you want to go, do what you want to do. Don't stay here for him," because that's life advice every high school student needs to hear.

And that's the story of how I ended up in Arizona and haven't left yet--but I've always wanted to leave. Deep down, I've always wanted to leave.

The reasons have changed. When I was young, I hated the sun and heat. When I was a little bit older, I wanted to get away from my parents and establish my independence by putting a few hundred miles between us.

Now that I enjoy the sunshine and have established independence from my parents (with only sixteen miles between us) I'm grappling with this question:

Why do I still want to leave?

I've actually, oddly, fallen in love with this city and state.

Phoenix is full of kind and quirky characters, from the owners of coffee shops to the managers of plant and oddity stores, to the kids who live and work in at an urban farmhouse down the street from my friends.

The art district has eaten me alive, but in the best way possible. It gobbled me up and spat me back out, covered in paint string glitter photographs guitars video footage ceramics and every other medium you could think of.

The roles are reversed when it comes to the food scene--I've gobbled it up, and nary have spat it back out. I've stuffed my face with doughnuts, drank plenty of $5 pitchers, and cried when Paz Taqueria's building was torn down.

Maybe I have Stockholm Syndrome. 

I've spent so much time living in Phoenix--captive--I grew to love the place. I had no choice but to make the best of what I had, where I was--and I can't help but think this dusty sprawl town has done the same.

If you know me, you know I love mail...and I got a lot of exciting stuff today 😁

A photo posted by A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Feb 19, 2016 at 4:34pm PST

Now, as I look into routes of escape (aka grad school plans for 2017; see the giant white envelopes in the photo above), I can't help but notice all of the little signs telling me to stay in state.

Up until today, I was looking into two different graduate schools--University of San Francisco and St Mary's College of California. Both offer a Masters' of Art in Teaching with single-subject credentials and an emphasis in social justice. USF goes a step further and is participating in a program called the San Francisco Teachers Residency, where program participants attend a year of graduate school and are then employed in the San Francisco School System for three years. Living and working with schools in the Bay Area sounds like a dream to me--I love it. I've only visited once extensively but I love it.

But there are so many tiny reminders pushing me to stay here, stay home, devote myself to a life in Phoenix. 

I had coffee with my friend Claire a few weeks ago. She's graduating soon and is also looking at becoming a teacher after graduation. Neither of us majored in education, so we're looking at alternate routes together.

While I expressed my passion and desire to move out of state, she shared her desire to do the exact opposite--she wants to stay in state and work here because of how badly Phoenix schools need help.

Example: Program to funnel kids out of the public school system and into private schools rather than improving public schools. 

And as Claire was saying this, my heart went ~boom~

Who else wants to invest in her community? Me.
Who know the needs of her community? Me.
Who loves this dusty little city with most of her heart? Me.

So why would I want to leave?