A short one, because it is Sunday, and the beginning of the week beckons.

Though I am traditionally really bad at it, our family has started saving Sundays for “us time.” We’re in a period of life when we aren’t rushing to soccer fields to play or officiate, and when I’m not traveling, we also aren’t racing against the clock to shop for groceries, prep lunches, or run laundry through the wash. Between the two adults and one toddler, we get enough chores done during the week to let them drop a bit on Sundays.

There are still things to do — run the dishwasher, ignore the piles of toys, go to church, feed ourselves, obsessively shop Facebook marketplace — but we kinda give ourselves permission to care less about it on this one day.

What we’ve done for “us time” today:

• Eaten banana-walnut scones a neighbor baked.
• Walked to church, where I was informed by a solemn three-year-old that “kids’ church is more fun than regular church.” (Uh, yeah. They pass out lollipops sometimes at kids’ church. Why do you think I go with you, kid?)
• Made pour-over coffee (which quickly became iced coffee, because the toddler measured the grounds).
• Read some of the New York Times. (My favorite Sunday newspaper.)
• Spent some time at the playground.
• Planned a pizza and bonfire night with friends, so we can dissect the home opener of St. Louis City SC.

It’s so easy to get lost in the “I need to do, I must do, Y will happen if I do not do X” of teaching. It’s rare to meet the educator who can hold off those pressures: there is so much to do in order to meet students where they are, support every learner, differentiate, remediate, commentate, educate. Teachers enter the profession because we care, but it makes it incredibly difficult to draw the boundary between core elements of our job, passion work, and (the real culprits of burnout) all the other little, naggy things that “need to get done.”

I started tracking how many hours I worked in a week sometime mid-career as part of an online course in teacher productivity & wellness. I found I was sacrificing my own time for work time…and not really getting that much more accomplished for it. Though that was a painful experiment and realization, I’ve found so much value in it as time has gone on.

I find that I am a more whole human being, and certainly a better teacher, when I resist the pressure to sacrifice “us time” for “work time.” Once I finish this blog post, I do have a little work to accomplish — Slides for Monday, some scheduled Classroom posts, a little of the grading I’ve been postponing — but I’ll do those with the time I have left after prioritizing my family and myself.

Time to get (just enough!) work done for a Sunday.