Twenty Years Walking

When I first started teaching in 1986, I knew that I was going to spend a great deal of time at school – and I did. For my first decade or so, I would arrive at school around 7:40am and leave sometime after 7pm. Often, I would leave at 10pm or later. One day, after a long rehearsal, I sat down on a couch and awoke at 6am!

Spending this much time at school was one thing; spending more time in a car commuting was another. My first apartment was about ten minutes from school. When my wife and I married, we lived in the center of town. In 1996, we moved to the neighborhood immediately south of our school. For the past twenty years, I have walked to school almost every day.

While I know this is not possible, practical or desirable for many people, being so close to my work has been wonderful. When we moved, we had a two-year-old who was attending the nursery school in our building, so the three of us walked together. In all kinds of weather, we would make our way down our street, through a short pass-through, and into the rear parking lot of our high school. We didn’t have to fight a car seat, traffic, or horrible early morning departures. Yes, sometimes walking with a two-year-old can be maddeningly slow. Yet the experience was significantly different than when we were in the car.

For much of my daughter’s early years, my mother-in-law was very ill, and we would make long trips to hospitals in Chicago. We sat in traffic during rush hour. She ate, cried, played, and did many other things in the backseat of our car. I drove and tried to keep her happy, but it was very difficult and uncomfortable for both of us. I thought about doing that every day, and I was thrilled to walk, even if sometimes at a beetle’s pace.

We walk in all weather. If it rainy, no big deal. It is far better to walk in the snow than to drive. First, some students and parents are terrible drivers. Second, it takes a while out in the cold to clear off and warm up a car. Many times I have left the building chatting with a colleague. I walk home, and my colleague walks to his or her car. As I put down my school bag in the kitchen, I can see my colleague driving away. 

My van just turned twelve years old. It has about 94,000 miles on it and is still in great shape. Both the savings in gasoline and wear and tear on our vehicles is another fantastic advantage of walking to school.

I know that many people’s commutes afford them time to think, catch up on the news, or decompress. I do those things too, on my walk to school. Getting into the air, walking down my street, greeting kids and their parents, and chatting with my neighbors puts my school day in perspective. It centers me on the real importance of a school.

Often my wife and I walk together. Sometimes, our son joins us. We joke that his dorm in college next year is further from his class buildings than our home is from his high school. He will miss his walk to school. I will miss walking to school with him. His absence will make my gratitude for the years of walking with him, his sister, and his mother all the more poignant.

I’ve been walking for twenty years. That little amount of exercise and short break from the stress of the day has made a big difference in my life. When I retire, it is my plan to move immediately next door to retirement!

The Tyranny of the To Do List

I confess that I am a list maker. I have a to-do list, lists for specific tasks, procedure lists, travel lists, important date lists, class lists, shopping lists, and countless other lists. I like to be organized, and I do not like to forget important things.

I use Wunderlist as my primary GTD (getting things done) tool. However, the truth is that my email is also a to-do list. My school planner is another to-do list as is my in-tray at my desk at home, my calendar, and even the open tabs on my web browser. And then there is my wife’s to-do list.  I am married to another list maker and, frequently, her list is my list.

I am very efficient. I am productive and focused much of the time. Yet, there is a downside to all these lists and this intense focus on productivity. My lists loom over my head like a sword of Damocles. Even if I finish all of today’s tasks, empty my email box, and clear all the items in my school planner, I will think to myself, “I can get a start on tomorrow’s lists!”

The list is like a never ending roll of paper. It will spool out into infinity. There is always another item on the list. There is always another task to be done. Sometimes I wonder who is in charge, me or my lists?

My joke became that I set aside every third Tuesday from 7:30 to 9pm to be spontaneous. I have it as a repeating list item. The truth is that I have to make a conscious decision to leave the lists behind. Forgetting them and just relaxing has almost become the last item on all the lists.

The lists do reduce my anxiety about forgetting things. They are a very good technique to help me manage my many roles and responsibilities. I believe they help me use my time more effectively.

But they are not the best choice for balance. Lists are addictive. We get a little dopamine kick every time we check something off our lists. I strive not to feel guilty when I open my pleasure reading book, turn on the TV, or do something off the list.

It is far easier to put things on the list than take them off. Sometimes I move things down my list until I realize that I don’t want to or cannot complete that task. Deleting a task feels like failure and probably costs ten of those little dopamine kicks.

I don’t think a “fun” list is the answer. Balance means setting the lists aside. The same strategies I use for efficiency may not be the best choice for leisure. The lists have an addictive quality and it is easy to see them as the solution for my challenges. I have tried the fun list approach. It doesn’t get me to have more fun; it gets me to make more lists. The real skill is letting go of the lists. I am still working on that.

Life is about far more than a never-ending roll of administrivia. It is unhealthy to think of the items on my list as standing between me and what I really want to do. So I hereby resolve to put all the lists in their proper place, just as soon as I get this blog post finished!