December Rush!

I don't know about everyone else, but my run up to Christmas has just been insane. Yesterday was the first day that I had nothing on since the start of the month (and that was only because the Women in Business event I was going to was cancelled) and I was so exhausted I slept in until 2 pm! I can't remember doing that since I was in my teens!

So what's been going on for us in December?

• Helping Mama Scribs tidy and organise her house in preparation for my "exchange sisters" arrival (lucky her, she gets my Bee Of Service skills for free)
• Getting a few loose ends tied up for Bee of Service, now in hiatus til after Christmas
• Hanging out with my bestie, having pedicures and going for beach walks before baby arrived
• Throwing our annual Christmas BBQ
• Bachelorette Day Out with gorgeous friend J, doing a scavenger hunt in Auckland City then celebrating throughout the afternoon in a vineyard on Waiheke Island
• Attending a Year 8 mixer of all the contributing schools to my new high school - they had all been learning to ballroom dance and it was so adorable!
• Spending a day learning about the new school's peer support programme and finding out about some of the more interesting characters in my new form class
• Finding out my bestie had given birth to her new little boy and literally squealing - for those of you who know me IRL, you know I'm not a squealer (btw, my cluckiness has hit new heights!)
• Trying out a new hair salon and loving it - have found a new hair home!
• Spending time with my adorable friend Ange - she's a make-up artist so we caught up with all the goss while she did my makeup for...
• Watching J & V get married and have the cutest little reception up in the Waitakere Ranges - the view was amazing, we even got to see the Christmas in the Park fireworks (although they looked tiny from so far away
• Fulfilling our church service obligations - we're on the greeting roster which is fun, we just get to say hi to everyone and hand out programmes as they enter.
• BBQ for Papa Scribs' birthday - just great to spend that time with the family
• Going to the hospital twice to visit the new baby - so adorable and squidgy. Very cool to be back in the place of my birth too!
• Spending two days on a professional development course on how to raise Maori achievement in high schools - to be perfectly honest, I had thought that, given my background, it wouldn't be of that much use to me but it's really opened my eyes to some of those conversations I have with students in my classroom.
• Attending the Foo Fighters concert - it pissed down with rain and I am so grateful to my bonus brother (future bro-in-law) for packing some plastic sheets. I ripped a head hole in one and managed to stay vaguely dry LOL. The concert was well worth it though!

No wonder I needed a solid sleep! The 2 pm things sounds really bad but in my defence, I didn't get to bed until 2 a.m. after the Foos - had to drop Bonus Brother home and then have a shower to warm up before bed!

There's still plenty to look forward to in the December Rush too:

Dinner with old uni mates - SB's work do at the races - Cupcakes and Cocktails party for my dear friend Missy - more cuddles with babies - my exchange sisters arriving in NZ - midnight mass on Christmas eve (tradition for SB and I) - Christmas Day - the Boxing Day Blowout party that's tradition in my fam - Mama Scrib's Birthday & New Year's Eve (haven't the foggiest what we are doing to celebrate that yet!)

Waiting, waiting, waiting

If you know me IRL, you'd know that patience is something I struggle with. Why put off tomorrow what you can do today? I'm sure I drove SB up the wall while I was waiting for him to propose. I was mentioning to my mum the other day that sometimes I feel like saying "Stuff the wedding, I just want to be married now!". I'm sure I would ultimately regret that decision but it does show my impatience when waiting for exciting things!

I'm trying to foster patience at the moment for a multitude of different things:

• my business logo is currently being designed by Nikki Hassett. As soon as I sent the email I was so excited to see what she could come up with... now I need to be quiet and let her work!
• launching the business - once I've created my corporate identity, all systems are go!
• more sports bras from We Love Colors (free shipping to Australia and New Zealand at the moment) but I need to wait until next payday when it isn't so much of a stretch
• trying on wedding dresses! I set a size goal to get to, I'm going to make myself stick to it!
• my students! They can be a trying bunch, they just don't seem to realise how serious their assessments are this year and it can be so frustrating!

I am aware that when I am "waiting", I'm also avoiding living in the moment. I keep telling myself to focus on what I can do and not what I cannot yet do... or in the case of my students, what is completely outside of my control!

Scribblettes, do you often find yourself waiting? What are you waiting for?

Time slips by...

It's the evening of the last day of the school holidays. Plenty of parents out there will be rejoicing that their sweet little darling are heading back to school tomorrow. There will be some teachers who are tearing their hair out, nervous for the term ahead. Me? I'm feeling zen. I know, weird right? Who is this person?

Last term I was stressed out by a whole load of things I couldn't control. Part of me wonders whether me taking better control of my health has lead me to stress a lot less about my mother's health, something that I can't control. I'm also proactively dealing with the crappy job market by setting myself up a side-hustle business - Juliette and Amanda have been invaluable resources during this process! I'll let you all know much more about it when everything is sorted (LOL I do need to pimp my own services, it's true) but the thought behind it is that having this side hustle will give me greater career flexibility in the future.

It's not that I don't like my job - for the most part, I really do! But I think I was equally happy relief teaching as well and what I enjoyed at that time was the flexibility to do what I needed for myself and my friends and family. Anyone who thinks that full-time teaching is a 9-3 job is kidding themselves, there's frequent late nights involved, even if the location is flexible. The reality is that I don't think that's what I want when I have kids. I want the flexibility to schedule a day off and go on school trips. I want to be able to work from home so I can be there when they are sick. Having kids is still a wee way off for us but with all the talk that goes along with getting married, it's part of the discussion we're having.

If I love teaching and yet want more flexibility, how is this going to work? My plan is to get my teaching registration and continue to work full-time before we have kids while working my side-hustle up to a viable part-time business. I'll continue to grow my side hustle when the kiddies are little and return to teaching as a relief teacher (meaning that I can pick and choose my days that I am available) or a part-time teacher for a couple of days a week when the kiddies are a little bit older. To me, and to SB, this seems like the most effective way to get where we want financially while upholding the values of family that we think are important. Big epiphany right? It's taken a couple of weeks to come to grips with it but we're feeling pretty confident we can make it work. Wish us luck!

What about you, Scribblettes? Have you found a way to have a career that reflects what you want in life?