Living on Caffeine and Kindness

About a year ago I wrote an Instagram post about my unemployment. It was hard to write but it felt important at the time. I was unemployed by choice, but that didn't make it any easier. My mental health had been struggling for about 3 years at the point of the decision. I chose to leave a career that had been my only passion for a such a long time because I know longer knew how to take care of myself. The decision was made with support and urging from mental health professionals and those closet to me. The decision was made because I thought the root cause of my unstable mental health was the field of work that I'd chosen to go into. Before I get into this post, it is extremely important that y'all understand something. Teaching is 1000% my passion. I have never doubted that I made the right choices when going to college and choosing this career path. This post has been really hard for me to write because I want it to be clear, that while teaching is a stressful career an...

It's been quiet around these parts for a little while and I'm not sure what to say in regards to that. Except that I have been writing, just not publishing because sometimes the words flow easily but they share a little differently. Those who don't know. I'm doing okay. And I read something this morning on Instagram that I want to share because it is incredibly important for you to understand who I am to my core. "I observe the different thoughts and emotions going on inside of me and I'll verbalize all of them to someone and a lot of times, they'll start to get worried about me, when really I'm perfectly fine because I'm not allowing those thoughts to rule over me. It makes a lot of sense to me, but I can see how it would be confusing to someone else." -  enneagramandcoffee So this post is a letter that I wrote to an old friend, but really I wrote it for myself. Partly because that's how I process life and partly because I sometimes...

Oh y'all this post has been on my mind for months... but somehow the words kept getting scrambled and the message wasn't clear. So I sat with it. And for a long while, I let that be enough. Me and my thoughts. It really was quite that simple. Then this past week, I did a lot of reflecting. I sat with my morning coffee and old notebooks every morning. And then I got to work in the evenings. I went through a ton of things on my external hard drive and found the delete button to be so refreshing. I went through my closet and filled a bag for Goodwill. I finalized my grad school apps (yes multiple, because why apply for one program when you can dual enroll and drive yourself crazy for 2.5 years). I wrote a letter that has been on my heart for a while (and I'll share more about that at a later time). It can be so cleansing to get rid of things, not just physically but emotionally. I feel lighter this weekend and I promise it's not because of cutting out dairy -- I may ha...