The Struggle

Struggle: to make strenuous or violent efforts in the face of difficulties or opposition. This is also the name of my memoir that I have been working on for the last two decades. This is what life is all about, right? How boring would it be if life didn't have any obstacles?

So this past week The Struggle included an inability to sleep, trying to ride bikes in Anchorage, and a mini-lesson gone awry.

All of my issues this week are rooted in the fact that I have had a very difficult time sleeping since I arrived. And when I say, "difficult," I mean that I haven't slept more than six hours straight at one time and the majority of the time it's more like four hours and I wake up all the time. It's annoying to say the least. I've found that my patience and critical thinking skills diminish with every lost hour of sleep. I've had had a lot of time to think (mostly at night) of why I'm having such a hard time sleeping. I think that there are three main reasons. First, I'm in school ALL DAY (7:30-5:00), I'm not getting much exercise, I'm overwhelmed with student teaching and going to school, AND the real culprit is the GD sun. It just won't go down. I guess that is four reasons. I'm super sad to admit this but the sun is making it very hard to regulate my schedule.

Trying to ride a bike around Anchorage is extremely annoying! The main reason is because Alaskans don't ride bikes in the street like normal people. They ride on the sidewalk. So as a result any bike trip includes the awesome experience of dodging pedestrians and other bikes. Ant that's just the beginning, because you are on the sidewalk and not on the road, you can't flow with traffic, you have to stop at every intersection, get off your bike and push the crosswalk button. ANNOYING! It's makes any trip take about twice as long as it should.

Now, why it is beyond annoying to commute around Anchorage, it should be said that they have miles of bikes paths that are totally awesome and beautiful and for this I am very grateful. The only problem with these trails is that sometimes they turn into dirt or gravel, which would be fine if I was on a mountain bike, but I'm not. This explains why I've hardly seen any road bikes.

This high-light (for story telling purposes) or low-point (if you consider the fact that it's a true story) of the week came Thursday when in front of a group of my peers, I destroyed my lesson on finding the percent of a whole number. When I say, "destroy," I mean that I couldn't do the problems that I created and couldn't really talk, and spent the last five minutes trying not to cry, only to sit down and completely lose it when one of my colleagues tried to comfort me. It was MORTIFYING!

I came home Thursday and realized that my life had once again gotten way out of balance. I haven't been sleeping nearly enough, haven't been eating regularly, and haven't been doing much for exercise. Since then, I've gone for several bike ride, went to a yoga class, bought some sleeping pills and took a bath. I'm doing a lot better now. I think that this experience was a real reminder that I need to take care of basic needs before I take care of the world. So don't worry, I'm taking care of myself.

I still love Alaska and my program. I am surrounded by some really great people, more about them soon. Life is good.

Pic: This is my attempt at looking crazy.

I will leave you with this quote, "Opportunity follows struggle. It follows effort. It follows hardwork. It doesn't come before."

~ Shelby Steele