Well, It's My Favorite 5K of the Year - Run for Refugees in New Haven, CT. Now, About that Running Part...Not Quite Sure What I'll Actually Do

It's a Super Bowl Sunday tradition. Drive to New Haven, run 3.2 miles in support of a phenomenal cause, then come home, grade, and hopefully find chip dip somewhere. I picked up my shirt (which will be added to all my shirts - I seriously could dress myself in Run for Refugees attire alone...I have enough of them). 

Yesterday, Karal and I went for a long hike, too, and upon return and sitting all day grading, my bones started to ache. It's age. Whereas once upon a time I could go for my run any minute of every day, as I've grown older, I've learned I am better for running at peak moments. I just don't what they are anymore.

The last time I ran the race was 2021, when we ran virtually. Last year, still injured with a sliced head and other shenanigans, I walked, all with the goal I'd be ready for this year. Um, nope. But I may try to jog/walk. I'm simply afraid that if I run, something else will happen to my body that will set me back. It's hard living in this fear...I suppose a race day is not the time to find out. I will go, do what I can, and totally soak in the joy of the moment. It is remarkably inspirational.

And I set a goal to get all grading done so I could take Sunday off, and hit Monday hard with planning and writing. I went to bed, though, knowing I didn't meet my grading goals. That always puts me in a foul mood, and I begin cursing myself. But, I did as much as I could, wondering how many other professions need Saturdays and Sundays to actually DO the work we're paid to do. There's little time in the week, especially when meetings are called and monopolize all the minutes. Then there's the teaching thing.

I'm not sure if 14-hour days, 7 days a week, 364 days a year (with Christmas off) are sustainable. But that's what I've been doing for 13 years at the University....and they keep piling more and more on the faculty, with less and less support. My colleagues across the nation are reporting the same. If you run a non-profit as a for-profit to pay administrators more, well, this is what we get. It makes the trustees happy, but people are breaking, cracking, leaving, and stressing...so, perhaps this is historical. It can't last this way, I don't believe. 

Same for K-12 schools and they run completely different. They are so inundated with top down mandates and with their horrible pay, they are realizing it is not worth it any more.

For these reasons, I need to run. Sweating the worries away is helpful, and I don't really sweat when I walk. So, we'll see what today will bring.

People are still dying for a chance to have an opportunity in this dream. And I know I whine from a very, very privileged space...it simply makes me want to do better for them and their children in our schools. But these cultural and systemic divides are are to comprehend sometimes.