The longest night of the year is meant to be celebrated by candles to light the darkness and roaring bonfires to keep us warm. Today, I got a bag of mandarin oranges and some donuts for my high school kids (oranges are kind of like the sun, and hey, we can all use the vitamin c). They have been generally lovely classes and we celebrated going into the break.

After school, I celebrated by turning on a fireplace live stream on YouTube that had some soft music and projecting it onto my wall in my classroom, lowering the lights, and grading a bunch of stuff so it doesn’t sit on my shoulders over break. It was good to read their writing, and I’ve set up my dark classroom with some Christmas lights and a salt lamp, so it felt warm and happy. Everyone had left for break, so it was quiet everywhere else and I could just calm down and take care of things. I really like my classroom at the high school – it’s a good place to work.

I’ve felt so flustered and hurried and overwhelmed by so many things going on lately that just sitting down doing some basic work that didn’t take too much brainpower felt good. I didn’t have to rush because there wasn’t a deadline, and I could quit any time I felt like it because I have a week and a half to do things if I need to. I just got into the zone.

I need a space like that at home. Something to think about as we look at moving sometime.