Focus on the good luck
The rocket lands in the ocean
By sheer luck nothing catches on fire this weekend,
We are healthy- alive- under quiet dry skies,
Birds chirp, leaves rustle, even as you scroll the News like you know you shouldn’t
You see the tragedy, worse than you can imagine in terms of Doomsday Scenarios,
But somehow you give yourself permission to not let it send you back into the cave,
You’ve got the walk, you’ve got the talk,
Time to be brave.
Sea level
By Jenny Hynes
My calves were convulsing on the couch Monday morning.
I already knew I wasn’t going to make it to work.
I could barely walk. My throat hurts. My chest felt tight. The kind of tightness that arrives at the end of May when you work in special education and have spent months carrying too many nervous systems at once.
It felt like I might cry.
Not dramatic crying. Not cinematic crying.
Just that strange wave that suddenly rises in your chest when your body quietly admits it is exhausted.
I felt this kind of sadness during Fiona’s kindergarten year during the pandemic, when I was drafting desperate emails to teachers, administrators, advocates, lawyers. I understand the system from both sides now. That’s part of why this work can feel so physically heavy by spring.
I decided to stay home.
Sea level again.
And everything lately feels slightly underprepared.
Slightly too soft for the terrain.
The day before, I had spent hours climbing through fog above Stinson Beach carrying a twenty-pound pack.
Fifteen hundred feet of relentless ascent.
Wet grass. Loose rock. Wind.
Every time I thought I had reached the top, another dirt shadow appeared through the mist. Another climb slowly revealing itself.
One foot in front of the other.
One foot in front of the other.
At first, I felt strong.
My clothes were dry. My boots felt sturdy. I kept thinking I had finally worn the correct layers, bought the correct gear, trained correctly.
Then the mountain shifted.
We entered a forest of pine trees, ferns, and a soft path, not as slippery as the grassy hill.
Mist sprayed sideways through the trees until my clothes soaked through completely. My merino wool base layers clung to my skin like wet animal hide. My leather boots slowly filled with water.
By the descent, my legs were shaking too hard to comfortably bend down and retie my laces.
The trail was steep, muddy, poison-oaky, and strangely beautiful.
I hated that mountain for at least half the hike.
Screaming. Panting. Slipping. Grunting. Spitting sweat into the fog.
I kept going.
I was not going to turn back.
The Pacific rumbled somewhere below us the entire time, hidden behind walls of moving fog. I kept thinking eventually the trail would flatten out beside some cinematic ocean overlook.
It never did.
Instead, there were giant banana slugs, thorny thistles grabbing at my socks, and a sign at the edge of one muddy section that read:
NOT A MAINTAINED TRAIL.
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Which honestly felt like a fitting metaphor for my current state of existence.
When I got home that night, I unloaded all my gear into the garage.
Wet sleeping bag.
Wet backpack.
Wet boots still stretched out from the hike.
The guy at REI had warned me that mold destroys camping gear, so I hung everything carefully to dry and immediately started rereading the itinerary for my mountaineering trip.
Excellent physical condition.
12–14-mile hikes.
5000 feet elevation gain.
Steep off-trail terrain.
I reread the supply list and suddenly realized I had misunderstood the boot requirement entirely.
Not leather hiking boots.
Stiff hiking boots.
Light mountaineering boots.
Real alpine boots.
The kind that sound serious even sitting in a sentence.
I immediately panic-bought a new pair from the REI sale.
Because after spending three miles sloshing downhill in wet leather boots at sea level, I could suddenly imagine exactly what would happen on snow.
Frozen socks.
Frozen feet.
Frostbite.
I spiraled.
And yet, somewhere underneath the panic was another realization:
I am becoming someone who trains anyway.
Not in ideal conditions.
Not in peaceful mountain monasteries.
In ordinary life.
In crowded parking lots after work.
In early morning Orangetheory classes.
In exhaustion.
In grocery store lines.
In the space between difficult meetings and making dinner.
Last August I started waking up at 4:30 in the morning so nothing could interfere with training.
The year before, I always tried going to the gym after work, but meetings, stress, parenting, and emotional exhaustion kept swallowing the plan whole.
So, I changed the system.
Three or four mornings a week since August, I have gotten up before sunrise and gone anyway.
My husband told me at first he didn’t think I could do it.
Honestly, neither did I.
But somewhere along the way my body started changing.
Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
Measured adaptation.
The same kind I spend all year tracking in students.
Progress monitoring.
Data collection.
Incremental growth.
Repeated intervention.
Confidence, I’m realizing, is often just accumulated evidence.
Evidence that you returned.
Evidence that you trained.
Evidence that you kept showing up.
At the climbing gym this week, I made it farther than I ever have on the 5.11 auto belay.
I’m past the crux now.
There’s only one section left near the top where my arms start shaking and my brain begins insisting I am too high, too tired, too weak.
But I know the rope is holding me.
I know I’m safe.
And still, I’m scared of falling.
On Wednesday I’m going back.
And this time I’m getting to the top.
I don’t care how many attempts it takes.
My legs will shake. My forearms will feel like they can’t understand what my brain is asking them to do.
My skin sore from the holds.
I’ll count the same way I counted on the mountain:
1-2-3-4.
1-2-3-4.
One movement at a time.
And maybe:
So is conflict.
So is disappointment.
So is not pleasing everyone.
The strange thing about hard days is that they keep becoming other days.
Later that afternoon, Sunday, the same day as the hike, the kids and I rented wetsuits and boogie boards and stayed in the freezing Pacific for hours.
I had warned the kids earlier that I may be too tired, but when I saw the waves, I could not resist.
The freezing water soothed my legs and feet, the churn of the ocean felt like a whirlpool.
Cold. Salty. Violent.
Perfect.
The waves knocked us around for hours.
Fiona and I used ASL out in the water while the kids screamed every time the waves crashed over us and filled our ears and mouths with salt.
I felt like a sea creature.
Like something old in me was waking back up.
At one point my son looked calmly at my face and said:
“Mom… your nose.”
Blood was pouring onto the sand.
For one brief second, I thought:
Oh good. Sharks.
I rinsed my face repeatedly in the freezing water while the Pacific kept pulling at my legs.
My chest still hurts today.
My throat hurts.
I’m getting sick.
And somehow, I still want to go back out.
That’s the part I’m trying to understand about myself lately.
Not toughness exactly.
But this strange willingness to keep entering difficult landscapes even when I know they will expose every weakness I have.
The mountain exposed my conditioning.
The ocean exposed my body.
Life lately has exposed the limits of my emotional endurance.
And still, underneath all of it, I feel myself becoming more capable.
Not stronger in the cinematic way.
Stronger in the animal way.
The kind of strength that breathes slower.
Adjusts the pack.
Buys the correct boots.
Keeps climbing anyway.
Friday Morning Light
I get myself out of bed.
I can feel the tightness across my back, neck, and head.
My stomach kind of hurts. My legs ache.
I remember I signed up for OT, then I remember — it’s supposed to be my rest day.
My wall is plastered with printouts of my schedule.
I rattle the dishwasher open, freeing my cup from clanking glass, tin, and white rubber-coated dish holders gripping it in place.
I put on the kettle and the toaster, another morning ritual.
Once my coffee is ready, I say to myself, “I’m just gonna drink this. I’m gonna have this. I’m gonna try to go to the gym.”
Next thought: “Maybe I’ll cancel the gym because it is supposed to be a rest day.”
I sit on the couch after trying to wake myself up with coffee and toast. It feels good. My kitty cat comes and lays by me. Everything is OK.
My son wakes up, comes and sits by me, and watches TV.
I can’t keep my eyes open and say to myself, “I’ll just rest my eyes for a few minutes and cancel the gym.”
I lean back and use my son’s blanket. I think about how I normally avoid my kids’ blankets — sticky with old food, snot, life — but at this moment that dirty blanket feels like the best thing I’ve ever touched.
I lay my head back, and it’s that kind of exhaustion where I’m so tired it seems like I can’t get comfortable. I decide to call in sick to work too.
Only after I finally admit I’ve hit a wall do I notice the morning light again. There is a slight breeze outside. Garbage trucks whoosh gently through the neighborhood, old brakes screeching somewhere in the distance while crows gather in the trees, crying out in that strange way they do before sunrise.
As the crows crow, I watch to see if my cats lift their furry heads toward the sound, but they don’t. They continue sleeping, ignoring it altogether.
My legs are heavy under my blankets. I sit in bed writing and worrying:
What about work?
What about the emails?
What about the people counting on me?
What about all the unfinished things?
I take a deep breath. I start trying to come to terms with my need to rest. And not feel guilty.
Yesterday after work, I took my daughter to the climbing gym.
I smell the climbing gym before I even reach it, passing the batting cages where I leave my son. Ropes hang high from above, dangling loose or attached to gravity-defying bodies. Soft, squishy mats sit beneath brightly colored routes with sculptural holds. Overhangs my daughter can do. I look at them and think I will never be able to do an overhang like that.
Voices shout reminders to the top floor of the cavernous space. A few teen boys launch themselves off bouldering walls with fearless bodies that still trusted gravity.
And there I was.
Middle-aged.
Exhausted.
But determined and proud of myself for sticking to the plan.
My daughter moved confidently across the wall, explaining routes, encouraging me, teaching me things. A quiet confidence I hadn’t seen before.
This morning I sat under the fig tree by the sandbox. I like to take my cats for walks down there. In summer, the blue jays leave figs ripped open, exposing red and green flesh warm from the sun. Figs lay across the ground in varying degrees of decomposition.
I can smell the sweet lantana blooming nearby. I used to bring my kids down to the sandbox. As the fig tree grew, it started giving us shade.
I would write out there and draw in my notebooks while the babies buried trucks and played with water, making mini lakes.
Now the sandbox is mostly used by cats.
The fig tree’s branches are thick and strong. The leaves overlap and make a beautiful, soft rustle in the wind.
Every year the leaves fall.
Every year they return.
It’s always been one of my favorite places on earth.
This week stretched me thin.
Professionally.
Emotionally.
Physically.
This is what I needed today. To rest under the fig tree.
The jasmine is blooming outside.
The crows are still arguing in the trees.
My arm still hurts.
My body is tired.
I can feel parts of myself returning.
The artist.
The writer.
The woman who once painted during nap times because making something beautiful felt necessary for survival.
I don’t have a polished ending for this.
Only fragments.
The smell of chalk dust.
The sound of crows.
Morning light through a cracked bedroom door.
Teenagers laughing.
Cats wandering in and out of the house.
The fig tree growing quietly while none of us noticed.
And somewhere inside all of it, the realization that a meaningful life may not be about balance at all.
Maybe it’s about returning.
Again and again.
To the people you love.
To the work that matters.
To yourself.
There are years that pass in a blur,
and then there are years that crack you open.
This was one of those years.
I was cracked open like an egg.
Yellow yolk dripping down my body—
thick, warm, impossible to contain.
Hansa yellow.
My yellow.
The one I use in my paintings.
The one that feels like sun.
In my studio, in Martinez California, my happy place.
I set up my paper, I pin a piece to the wall, I mix my yellow paint, add some water so it loosens up. I smell opening and expression.
My eyes feel a rush of lightness as my brush glides over the paper; yellow drips slide down and drip on the floor as if they were meant to be there.
Bright.
Alive.
Still there… even when everything else feels like too much.
The washing machine beeps.
The dryer stops.
Time to switch the laundry.
Home Again.
Again.
And again.
And again.
There is something about that repetition that keeps me tethered.
Even when I hate it—
I need it.
I spent most of this year inside a classroom,
holding space for kids who are trying to exist in a world
that doesn’t always fit them.
Kids who need more time.
More patience.
More understanding.
Kids who, in many ways, are braver than most adults I know.
It was my first time having chairs thrown at me.
Water bottles.
I saw a child in so much anguish—
not yellow, not light—
red.
Seeing red.
And something in me broke open again.
That egg cracking.
That yellow spilling everywhere.
But this time it didn’t feel like light.
It felt like I was losing something.
Sinking.
Deeper.
And deeper.
How do I hold all of this?
How do I help them
without losing myself?
Is there enough yellow inside me
to keep shining
while I’m absorbing so much of their pain?
I missed my studio.
I missed the quiet.
The canvas waiting.
The feeling of picking up Hansa yellow
and placing it—intentionally—on the surface.
Not spilled.
Not accidental.
Not leaking out of me.
But chosen.
Placed.
Bold.
Alive.
I haven’t really been back since my fall show.
And that absence…
has its own kind of ache.
Some days I came home
and went straight to bed.
Still in my clothes.
Under the covers.
Answering emails I shouldn’t have answered.
Trying to hold everything together
from a place that had nothing left.
I thought about quitting more than once.
Maybe three times.
Maybe more.
And yet—
alongside my students—
I kept working.
We did social emotional lessons.
We wrote.
We tried again.
And I did it with them.
Not above them.
With them.
I started therapy.
Every week.
I fought for myself
the same way I fight for my students.
And slowly—
I realized something uncomfortable:
I was asking them to do hard things every day.
And I had stopped doing that for myself.
So I signed up to climb a mountain.
A real one. Near Mammoth Lakes.
With ropes.
Ice picks.
Fear.
I signed the waiver.
I paid the fee.
I said yes.
I’m 55.
My body has stories now.
Diagnoses.
Fears I didn’t used to carry.
Family history that sits heavy in my chest.
But something in me shifted.
I don’t want to live afraid anymore.
I want the sun.
I want the yellow.
I want the climb.
I’ve been training.
At Orangetheory Fitness
On treadmills.
On inclines that burn.
At Gravity Vault
Where I’ve learned that strength
is not the same thing as confidence.
I took a class and had my worst fall.
And ever since—
I hesitate.
I question every step.
Every hold.
Am I doing this right?
Which feels familiar.
Because that’s what this year has been.
Am I doing this right—
as a teacher?
as an artist?
as a leader?
as a mom?
And still—
I kept going.
I kept choosing light.
Even when it felt thin.
There is still a stain of that slight yellow tint.
The stain that makes you wonder, when did that happen?
Can I excavate it and make it bright again?
I kept believing that something better is possible—
for my students,
for my school,
for myself.
Some days I got it right.
Some days I didn’t.
But I didn’t stop.
And now I’m here.
At the edge of something new.
Training to climb higher than I ever have—
and realizing
I’ve been climbing all along.
I used to write more.
I even wrote a book once—Naptime Paintings —
in a different season of my life.
I stopped writing
because life got full.
Because I wasn’t sure what I had to say.
But maybe this is it.
Not the mountain.
Not the perfect version of anything.
But the crack.
The spill.
The mess.
And the choice—
to take that yellow
and place it back into the world
on purpose.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 