Inaction

At the end of 2022, my life was in the midst of a lot of change. I felt as if I was constantly chasing my tail to meet the new expectations that had been thrown upon me as the state's POY, while also trying to figure out how to do my job back at school and be a parent and spouse at home. I was doing everything and felt like I was achieving very little. I'm a pretty reflective person and with all that I was doing, I hadn't taken time to assess how I was doing. I decided to deliberately carve out some time each day to refocus and reflect and the best way that I knew to do that free of distraction was to go for a run. I went for a run every day in 2023 and it did wonders for me. I made time for myself and the physical activity helped my mental health quite a bit. But this story isn't about the action of daily running, it's about what I didn't do before; the inaction. 

It was no revelation to me that I was drowning in the months leading up to my decision to make a change. I've been there before and we all probably have. We have something new come into our lives, maybe a job, a relationship, or a child, and it drastically changes our daily activity and how we spend our time. The new thing demands something of us and we somewhat subconsciously stop doing other things. We change. But change isn't always good or easy and some of the things that we left behind were good for us. They provided a sense of identity or a distraction from the stresses of life. That's exactly where I was. I had let go of the things that gave me joy and filled that space with more expectations. The inaction of taking care of myself was taking a toll on me. I knew that I should be doing a better job of managing my life, but I thought that I could be everything to everyone and I was wrong. 

Inactions can be found everywhere and they usually aren't a surprise to us when we realize the consequence. They can be inactions in our personal lives or inactions in our professional lives that jump up and remind us of something that we should have done. I chose the start of the new year in 2023 to turn that inaction into action that I knew would be positive for me. It had a trickle-down effect as I reprioritized how I spent my time in my personal and professional life. Simply put, I knew better and I decided to do better. The start of a new semester is a great time to do the same for us all. Each of us probably is aware of some inaction that jumped up and bit us at some point. Perhaps you put off making contact with a student's parent the way you should have and they didn't pass in the end. Maybe you didn't invest your time into something that you told yourself you would do at the start of the year and now it's still staring at you as a reminder. Yours could have also been personal and it impacted your professional life. Whatever it is, now is a great time to change that thing. It's never too late to turn inaction into action and we often just need a good push to make it happen. This is your push. Do that thing that you know will make you better. I promise you'll be happy that you did.