"How are you, (insert own name)?" you ask yourself.

Hello, it's been a while, I know.
Anyway, what led me to this post was actually a really short lesson on metaphors with my Form 1 students. After they understood the concept, I told them to come up with a metaphor to describe themselves. Now as you can imagine, this was met with some distress, because they were required to think! But given some time, they came up with answers like I am a fly (because she loved being annoying) I am lightning (because he moved and talked really fast) I am an owl (because he is more active at night) and I was pleased.

Then someone asked. 'Teacher, what about you'

So thinking about that, I realised at that moment , I was a clogged drain hole, in severe need of some plumbing.

"How are you, Lizamaria?"
When you ask yourself this question, it is unlikely that you can bluff your way with a pre-programmed "fine, thank you". Your brain in all likelihood, would slap you on the face with its pre-programmed lie detector.

So I sat down and thought about that question

How was I doing?

On coming back to school after the holidays

I was emotionally becoming a clogged drain. I had all these feelings of exhaustion and anger, and frustrations but I wasn't letting them flow out of me, I never spoke to anyone about them. So there they remained bottled up, until EYE felt overwhelmed.

a week into second term

And it wasn't just the negative emotions, even the positive ones weren't being discussed and shared.
Which makes me believe that we are social beings, and need to get in touch with others to get in touch with ourselves (if that makes sense)