Could you tell me a time when you have gone under?

I have gone under, driving myself away, not just from my students, but from friends and family too. I worked harder and harder and, with the best will in the world, the job became everything to me. At points I have even felt resentful and undervalued, ever more conscious of my position and status, more po-faced, more tired, more proud of my service, more running, more proud of my self-sacrifice, more running and, of course, more tired, more marking, more photocopying, more late nights, more time that has elapsed since I last spoke to my friends and family on the phone, more early mornings, more running… 

However, I am not a better friend, father, son, husband, teacher for all of this, I am unquestionably worse. I know that nobody wants to be friends with me when I have ‘gone under’. As a runner where balance is crucial, I am therefore making a pledge (on the TELL ME A TIME blog) to be more balanced. No longer will I devote my entire life in term time to the school and then recover my sanity, friends and health in the holidays (as I seem to do at times)…I see too little of that Real World that my parents talked to me about around the kitchen table as I grew up. I could all too easily go for two weeks without leaving the school grounds). True, friends kindly visited and we took them to a restaurant, Twickenham, a nightclub, but I was seldom absorbed or fully enjoying myself. Being 100% for school does not make for good teaching either. 

Sometimes I would find my alarm going off at 5am (at the sleep-deprived time I almost feel like this is the central plank of my achievement) and out running in the dark in the pouring rain, with a head torch on, mulling over my lessons and to-do list for the day… My running and obsessions in general are attempts to bring order to an unruly mind. Without an outlet I tended towards reticence, and my reticence can manifest itself as gloominess. Sophie respects this, I think—even appreciates it, in theory, but she struggles, understandably, with the specifics. I run because I need to run, blitzing through mile after mile. Of course, I want to be impressive, a credit to the school, a credit to the profession, I want my school to be immensely proud of me, but sometimes it might be better to run the risk of seeming a little uncommitted or a touch semi-detached, I will try not to selflessly take on everything; but I am sometimes so scared of failure that I daren’t even contemplate it.

I am determined not to sell my students, friends, family short in this way. Real discipline, I am beginning to think, is not necessarily driving oneself on; rather, it is pacing oneself (I should know this as a long-distance runner!). At times this year I have been in a puritanically self-obsessed rut, I have found it hard to relax and even wondered whether I should. I did not speak to some of my nearest and dearest friends for two months and I did not even notice, until, one day, a rather churlish email came through telling me to sort myself out. The truth is, at the time, (and I have probably only admitted this to Sophie) is that I’m only truly happy when working; reflection brings dangerous thoughts, so, back to burning the candle at both ends. Occasionally I’ll apologise in a postcard to my mates and tell them how much they do really mean to me and justify it to myself by telling myself that I’m only ‘trying’ to do a good job.

So, this is me vowing to do better next time. I’ll end with two lines from W. H. Davies who captures everything I have just discussed in his famous aphorism, made even more famous by its use in a Centre Parcs advert. Of course, Davies had an advantage over me, he wasn’t a teacher but a homeless guy: “What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.”