Loose Ends

It's the time of the year to wrap up loose ends, finish up things undone.  I suppose for most people this happens in December, but for teachers, the year ends in late May/early June.  We run on a different cycle altogether.  Occupational hazard.  Maybe that's why New Year's never feels very much like a new start, or it feels like an artificial, forced one, anyway.  The true new year for me is always the when the new group of kids hits my room.

This is the time of the year to sort, file, clean out.  At the end of last year, I was so sick from everything that had gone on that I think I just sort of locked my door and ran away.  I found piles of stuff this year that I have looked at and thought, "Why in the WORLD is this still sitting here?"  My room looks better now than it has in a long time.  Then there are the chores that accumulated during the course of the year that I pushed to the side for later, unboxing new equipment and putting it neatly away, setting up notebooks of resources, passing along interesting tidbits I found here and there to others, dealing with the ever-rising tide in my inbox, and so on.  I am working along on it.  Every task completed brings a feeling of satisfaction.  Before I left school yesterday, I cleaned away two tote bags from conferences I'd been to over the last two years, and finally folding them away  and not having to see them staring at me accusingly from the corner was a good, good feeling.

It is also time to take care of a couple of non-school related loose ends, too.  Today was close enough to six weeks after my piercing (I hardly think two days makes a difference one way or the other) to change out my earring.  The tiny silver hoop I got on Etsy over a month ago is now in place.  I love the way it looks, and it feels worlds better than that jabby little stud.

The thing that makes the biggest difference in me feeling peaceful today was finally being able to tie up the biggest loose end of them all, though, the situation that had so bothered me with the student I mentioned previously.  An opportunity presented itself for a conversation, and as far as I'm concerned, anyway, there is resolution.  I could not let the year end the way things were.  I would have always regretted it.

Today, then, is all mine.  There is no grading, no schoolwork of any kind.  I might go to Dunn's Falls or to the junktique.  I need to mow the grass, start work on things left long undone here at home.  As all the bits and pieces fall into place and the darkness of the previous year falls away, whatever I do is all good.