At some point this week, something will happen that would produce a genuine emotional response in any human being. A conversation that carries real weight. A situation that is sad or frightening or infuriating under the surface of its professional framing. A moment where the stakes are high enough and the human cost real enough…
When was the last time you were genuinely excited about something at work? Not satisfied. Not relieved that something went well. Not the functional okay that comes at the end of a day that didn’t produce a crisis. Actually excited — the feeling that brought you to this work in the first place, the feeling…
There is a student you still think about. Maybe it has been a year, maybe longer. They are not in your building anymore — they moved on, or they moved away, or they are no longer alive — and you still think about them. Whether you did enough. What their life became. Whether the decisions…
You are surrounded by people for most of your working day. You are rarely physically alone. There is almost always someone who needs something from you, someone in your office, someone in your hallway, someone waiting for a response. By any external measure, the role of principal involves an enormous amount of human contact. And…
Someone asked you a question last month — or maybe it was a few months ago — that you still think about sometimes. Not a hard question. A simple one. Someone who knows you, in a non-school context, asked: so what do you like to do? And you paused longer than you expected to. Not…
You used to work out. Or you used to walk. Or you used to have some kind of physical movement that was yours — not a commute, not walking the building for monitoring purposes, but actual intentional movement that you did for yourself because it made you feel better. And then the school year happened….
You slept eight hours. You know you slept because you checked the clock when you woke up and did the math. Eight hours. And you got up still exhausted — not the groggy kind that clears after coffee, but the deep kind that coffee doesn’t touch. The kind that has been there when you went…
There is a specific feeling that most principals know and almost none of them have a name for. It is the feeling of never fully landing. Of being technically at rest — sitting down, at home, not actively doing anything — but still somehow not off. Still alert. Still listening for something. Still a half-second…
You have a headache that showed up on Tuesday and hasn’t fully left. Your shoulders have been carrying tension for so long that you’ve stopped noticing it except when someone points it out or you catch yourself mid-roll trying to release it. Your jaw is tight more mornings than not. Your back hurts in that…
It’s 3:17pm and you just realized you haven’t eaten since 6:45 this morning. Not because you were dieting. Not because you forgot food existed. But because the day happened — the conversations and the crises and the emails and the decisions and the people and the problems — and somewhere in the middle of all…