Some days, I really do love my job. The kids are comedy. My lessons are starting to hit. And (on good days) I feel like I’m actually making a difference…

But then there are those days:
The no-water, just coffee and TikTok kind.
The kind where your to-do list grows legs and sprints past you in the hallway.
The kind where joy feels like it’s gathering dust in the back of the copy room…

The kind where you wonder if you accidentally left your joy in the lost-and-found next to the broken stapler.

That’s when I know: It’s giving Grinchmas. And I’m not letting it win.

I won’t let the Grinch steal my joy. Not by hiding it under a pile of lesson plans, not by stuffing it in a Google Doc that never sees the light of day, not by letting my purpose grow cobwebs in my drafts folder. Not by silencing that wild little dream in me just because I’m “too tired” after school.

I’ve got dreams. Not just standards and rubrics and 72 unread emails. Big ones. Bold ones. The kind that tap me on the shoulder in the middle of the day like, “Hey, remember me?”

So, I’m learning to prioritize those dreams within my day..
Writing before school (yes, even in traffic).
Scribbling ideas between bells (my desk looks like a sticky note explosion).
Building something of my own: slowly, after hours, with love.

you can’t grinch my joy