I’m listening to the drums from the band rattle against the window.…

Today was a rough one, the kind where I probably shouldn’t be putting as much weight on myself as I am, yet I can’t help feeling responsible, almost like I failed in the decisions I had to make.

We have digital testing coming up for two major exams, the SAT and the ACT. Both will be administered on campus, both online. We’ve handled the SAT before, so that process feels familiar. The ACT, though, has been a different story. It hasn’t been working well, and all signs point to a setting I’ve configured wrong in our management system.

I spent so many hours last week trying to fix it. I poured over the setup, ran test after test, and finally got it working. I left the office on Friday feeling confident that I’d found the problem. But yesterday it didn’t work. And today, it still didn’t. Time ran out, and I had to make the call that we weren’t ready for digital ACT testing. We’d have to switch dates and move to a paper test.

I keep reminding myself this isn’t entirely my fault. A lot has changed, including an application we’ve never had to use before. Still, I feel the weight of it. I thought I could meet the deadline, even though it was tight. I’m usually not wrong about these things, and that’s what stings the most. If I had known there was still an issue, I could’ve kept working through the weekend. Maybe that’s part of the problem though — not knowing when to stop, not knowing when to say no, holding on too tightly.

After giving it a lot of thought, I’ve come to believe this isn’t about personal failure. It’s about not having enough time or resources to manage this role effectively. What I’m really talking about is a workforce issue.

After that mess, I went right back to working on report cards, as if the day hadn’t already been hard enough. The layouts had all shifted because of how the grades were stored, and I couldn’t fix them right away while juggling all the testing conversations and meetings.

Right after lunch, Jackson and I took a short break to visit Owen and Aronov’s house to plan what we’d need for the school event there next week. It was every bit as ostentatious as I expected.

When I got back, I finally fixed all the report cards, though it meant creating a separate one for each grade level. No rest for the weary. By the afternoon I hit that familiar wall where everything catches up with me. I got home with no motivation to do anything. I don’t feel well, and I don’t know how to rest. I don’t know how to be still, even though I need rest so badly. I’m not sure how to make those ends meet.