Cups of Tea

What do you sacrifice when you go into survival mode?

There are many things that take up space on our plates, and there always comes a time when what we have to handle exceeds our feasible ability to handle it. When you reach that point, you have the option to re-prioritize or go headlong into burnout until you hit the wall that forces you to re-prioritize. I don’t know about you, but I've already gone the burnout route too many times in my life. It’s time for a healthier path, but figuring out what that path is remains a challenge.

My old pattern relied on pairing down to “necessities.”

Necessities, meaning responsibilities. It is too easy to cut out the things I enjoy in favor of the things I feel duty-bound to complete. For years, the first thing on the chopping block was my writing. It is not actively paying my bills. It is not keeping me or my house clean. It is not creating my lesson plans or filing my taxes for me. So, it was easy to let go.

However, now I have made new commitments, and I am in

a zone of my life that is really testing the boundaries of what I can handle. On the commitment side, I have made a promise to myself to treat my writing as a career, even if it isn’t paying the bills yet. If I ever want to actually get published, I can’t keep de-prioritizing my writing. Besides actively pursuing publication, my writing serves a different function. Writing has always been a source of joy and fun. Besides not paying bills, I tend to cut out fun when I go into lock down. My rationale: Fun isn’t necessary for survival. Is that true?

Fun is a part of health. It is soothing for the nervous

system, it fills your well when it has gone dry. It can’t always look the same when we are in a survival mode, but I am learning that it is too important to cut out entirely. I was tempted to do this again recently. I am overwhelmed with teaching responsibilities, mountains of paperwork, home responsibilities, health, and personal responsibilities. Because of the overwhelm, I considered cutting back my writing time to spend it on the paperwork part of my responsibilities. I had to remind myself of the promise I made to myself. I had to fight myself for the time to do all the tasks on my list. However, instead of cutting all of certain categories, I redrew them.

If there is too much paperwork, divide it by priority and set

deadlines that are manageable based on how much I can handle in a day. If I can’t unload and reload the dishwasher because it makes me dizzy and fatigued, split it into two jobs instead of one. If I have to send one query a week because the research is too time-consuming, so be it. That is not as easy as saying it, and there is still a lot that feels impossible to manage, especially as I head into the busy season at school. However, it can be done. It will be done. I’ll make it. So can you.

The other day, one of my students asked why I drink tea in

every class. My school is not one of the ones that prohibit teachers from having a drink while teaching. Frankly, the tea largely sits by me cooling until after class is over, and I remember it is there. However, I found myself in the position of having two answers to offer, the truth in part and the truth in whole. The partial truth I offered is that it helps keep me from losing my voice with the winter dry air and projecting all day. The part that I didn’t say, and that I only realized when asked, is that it was a coping mechanism. I was keeping my sanity intact with cups of tea. It may sound ridiculous, but I like tea, and warm beverages are comforting. I can’t cocoon in a fluffy blanket all day, but I can drink tea. At first, I wanted to criticize myself for using tea as a coping mechanism. Then I gave myself grace. If tea is helping me get through the day, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is not a forever state. Eventually, things will level out, and I can cut back on the amount of tea I’m drinking. I can also make sure that my tea choices are healthier. I can make sure I have green tea more than black ect. I am realizing I shouldn’t banish things that help me. I have a twisted conception that needing help, even if it’s just tea, is a shortcoming or problematic. How did I get to that place? Is it actually a problem or a misconception? I can’t be sure. Life doesn’t come with a manual, and we are all very individual. The health world can’t make up its mind on how much tea and what kinds of tea are too much, but largely, it is considered healthy, so I should be okay on that side.

The question is: what are you cutting that would help you

manage the stress that comes with being in survival mode? We get into a survival mode loop for so many reasons that our problems never look the same, and our solutions may not either. I am hoping that as I get older, I get wiser and will find better ways to take the curve-balls sent my way. I hope to pass on that wisdom to those around me. For now, I may be able to track my path back to being a healthy space in cups of tea. I find that hilarious. I don’t have the answers on how to make the challenges we’re facing easier. However, I hope that even when I am in the thick of my whirlwind, I can encourage you during yours. Don’t compare. There is always someone better off than you and someone worse off than you. Your challenges are something to surmount, not to criticize yourself over. You have too much else to manage to add self-depreciation to the list. If you must cut things from life, let it be the barnacles from your hull.