back to (un)school
for when you need a new routine but are burnt out on routines
Hi, hello, welcome, it’s been awhile.
Are you writing? I have not been writing.
I have not been writing, because I have been burnt out. According to the team of researchers I work with at Duke University, the condition is measured by three things: 1) emotional exhaustion, a.k.a. nothing left in the tank syndrome, 2) depersonalization, a.k.a. she who cares less wins syndrome, and 3) reduced sense of personal accomplishment, a.k.a. I’m garbage, we’re garbage, garbage always be garbage.
When I realized this—when did I realize this?—I stopped everything. Stopping everything can be a good kind of inventory. Consider it an energetic elimination diet. You stop expending energy on every kind of garbage you can identify—alcohol, people-pleasing, giving your teens even a shard of advice—and then you, slowly, slovenly, breathe in your bare life. Other people are going back to school. You are out to get unschooled.
Getting unschooled has become a hobby of mine as of late. Hobby is maybe too jolly a word. To get unschooled has been a necessary remedy for the overwhelm. The overwhelm just won’t quit for some of us. Geopolitically, interpersonally, perimenopausally. We’re aging, gracefully or not. We’re neurodivergent, diagnosed or not. We’re sandwiched, caring for youngers and olders and neighbors and lovers. Everything but our breath is too damn loud. We need ear plugs to think.
My two youngers had their first day of school this week. “Oh, gawd,” I say to Rush. “Do we need to enforce our regular routines again?” Chores done by 3pm on Sunday. Phones docked by 8pm on weekdays. Laundry folded and put away, lunches carefully packed and made, homework checked and rechecked. Why did it feel like our rule of life was ruling me? I wondered if my newfound hobby might hold an answer, to eliminate any routine that felt like trash and try again. To let my bare life lead.
Both in high school now, both with phones now, one able to drive the other now, the youngers are moving ever quicker to a lovable, uncontrollable autonomy. And the more they learn, bless, the more I have permission to unlearn. To say, I don’t care when you do your laundry or if it’s folded or if the laundry room becomes your closet. Here, you get a basket and I get a basket and it’s on you now if your sheets smell and I may decide to offer help, but I don’t know, I’m not committed, I’m connected. I’m reconnecting.
How do you want to get unschooled this year? What rules, routines, and patterns are no longer panning out, are worth laying down? I don’t know for you. I’m only beginning to sort through the dumpster fire of me. But I can tell you the resources that are companioning me. I can tell you the resources I want to companion you with. (They are books, all books, because books will never stop being my school.)
For the spirituality unschooling.
For the patriarchy unschooling.
And about that burnout? The fog is slowly, slovenly lifting. And in that clearing has emerged another kind of longing. The longing to be unschooled in how I work. This longing has found a container over the last six months in a series of late night conversations with my best facilitator friend Janell. How we work isn’t working, she tells me. What would it look like to get work sober? she asks me.
Don’t be surprised if you hear from Janell in this space in the coming months. Don’t be surprised if we companion you with micro-resources for your work place, work routine, work script unlearning. It is something of an obsession of ours: to celebrate the less shiny bits of a life well-worked. I do not prefer work. But, together, I wonder how we might move toward full tanks, more tries, less garbage.
Unschool is in session.
XO,
Erin
I see a bigger Erin. She has no specific shape (like not a circle or human shape) and she's empty but open to being filled with whatever. In with one, out with one:-)
Whenever! Great rule. Good for you!