Summer vacation is quickly coming to a close and as it does, I reflect on what I’ve done during this time off from work.
Walking, walking, and more walking. It’s a healthy habit I renewed on Memorial Day of this year. It was my first real day off from working and I saw several people out enjoying their walks and decided to take it up again myself. Two summers ago I had done much the same and it didn’t take long before I was taking more than one walk per day. All told, I will have walked over 300 miles since that point and think it is a habit I’ll continue in the months to come.
While I am walking, I enjoy listening to music and audiobooks on my phone with the use of air pods. I have a playlist of favorite tunes and am consistently adding music to the list. I also am subscribed to an app that allows me to listen to quite a few insightful books. I’ve discovered quite a few texts that I’ve actually ended up buying the hard copy of the book and enjoy listening to and then reading or vice versa. Most of the books are what I guess you’d call self-help or spiritual in nature.
I’m preparing to start yet another interim position to begin my forty-third year in the classroom. It’ll be an eighth-grade social studies maternity leave. I’m presently scheduled to work through the first week in October. There will be some in my classes that I’ve been with for four years now in an interim capacity. I first taught this group of students when they were in the fourth grade, the “year of covid.” I then had them again in the sixth grade, when I taught them for half of the school year. Last year I once again did a half-year interim position. And now there’s this one. There will be a handful of students who I’ve been in contact with for three of their past four school years and I think that’s pretty neat.
This past week I celebrated my twenty-first year of sobriety from alcohol. I joked with my recovery family that I was now of legal drinking age…ha ha. I had ordered a fancy medallion, but had left it in its packaging until my actual sobriety date, August 10th. I contemplated writing a blog about my journey in recovery, but at present am just leaving it at this mention. I figure anonymity serves a purpose and if you’ve made it to this point in my post, you’re not anyone I would mind breaking my anonymity with.
So as I sit here at Barnes and Noble, I’ll enjoy these last few days of vacation and it’s off to the races again.
David Lee
David Lee 