Living Life Vegan Style: Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work. (Horace)

Lately I’ve been thinking about work and success. When trying to be a successful teacher, and a success at eating healthy and exercising and losing weight, how much work do I need to do to be successful?

As a teacher who cares about her job and her students, I feel an obligation to grade papers, and plan, and teach, and provide support, and keep organized and do all the other things a teacher has to do. And because I do all these things, during the school year I never check everything off my “To Do List”. There is always something I should be doing or something I haven’t done yet. I skip household chores or errands or time for myself because I’m working. I see other teachers who seem to go home without bags of papers to correct and don’t seem to spend hours planning and don’t seem worried about not getting things done. (I know I don’t go home with them so I don’t really know what they do but I get the feeling they don’t spend the majority of their weekends working.) Am I working too much? Or are they working too little? Or do we just work differently?

And it isn’t just teaching. What about eating healthy and exercising and losing weight? Can you have a treat once in awhile and still be successful? Can you skip a day of exercise here and there and still lose weight? Is it obsessive to worry about every bite you take or is it necessary if you want to lose weight? Again, I have to ask, am I doing too much or too little?

Life shouldn’t be just filled with work but without work nothing gets done. I don’t know how to be a good teacher without spending most of my weekend working. And I don’t know how to lose weight without spending a lot of time preparing foods and exercising. Is there a way to get what you want without working at it?

I get the feeling that some people think I work too much, and sometimes I think I work too much too, but I can’t figure out how to work less and feel good about what I’ve done. This week I went for a walk in the gardens on Tuesday after school. Someone was filming a scene for a movie there. The whole left side of the parking lot was filled with white trailers and trucks. The place where they were filming was filled with people, and equipment, and trucks, and wires, cameras, lights, and a generator, and a young man with a walkie-talkie – who needed me to walk quickly so I didn’t get in the way of the filming. So much work had to be done to film a scene or two for a movie. If it takes that much work for a single scene in a movie, I guess it isn’t really that surprising that it takes a lot of work to teach 175 students the complexities of science.

I know I wanted to find balance this year but I’m not sure I know what that means to me. I know it isn’t possible to have equal parts of work and play. The more I’ve thought about the importance of my work, (at least to me and maybe to my students), the more I realize it isn’t really balance I’m hoping to achieve. I do want to make sure my life is the best life I can make for myself and that it is satisfying and joyful and not JUST filled with work. However, I’m not exactly sure what that life looks like. I guess that’s what this year is about – figuring out what I want my life to be. I have realized that a big part of my life is going to be my teaching and that is going to involve a lot of work. I have also realized that it is going to take a lot of work to get healthy and get to a healthy weight. And when I really think about it, work is a good thing. Lots of people right now wish they had a job and I'm lucky enough to have a job I love. And there are people who are wondering when they will have their next meal, and I'm lucky enough to be able to prepare healthy foods on a regular basis. I realize now, that the kind of success that matters to me involves a lot of work and that's not a bad thing.

It's been several weeks since I've updated so here's how I'm doing on my goals.

I've struggled with eating healthy. I got sick and I wanted comfort - and comfort to me involves food. I ate healthy foods but too much of them. However, I did exercise most days even when I was sick (however the exercise wasn't too energetic). I have lost weight but I've been losing it more slowly.

10/10

10/17

10/30

I've really been cooking simple comforting recipes. Here is a super quick and easy sausage wrap I like for breakfast or lunch.

Quick and Easy Veggie-Sausage Wrap

Sausage Wrap

1 whole wheat tortilla (fajita size - 110 calories)

2 ounces Gimme Lean soy sausage (60 calories)

1/4 c. (or more) cooked veggies (I used leftover zucchini, corn, soy beans, red onion)

2 TB Daiya Cheddar "Cheese" (40 calories)

A few dashes of your favorite hot sauce (mine is Cholula)

Fresh Salsa or Pico de Gallo

Directions:

1. Spread the soy sausage down the center of the tortilla.

2. Top w/ the cooked veggies, Daiya, and hot sauce.

3. Fold the tortilla to enclose the veggies & sausage mixture.

4. Place on a microsafe dish and cover. I cooked mine in the microwave onion for 1 1/2 minutes and everything including the sausage was cooked. (I imagine the time depends on your microwave.)

5. Top with fresh salsa or toppings of your choice.

I've been to the gardens at least once every week. It's been fun to see the fall decorations. And there are still so many beautiful flowers.