Everyone in our household is walking into something completely new for the 2022-2023 school year. It’s a good thing we had practice for this in the most extreme way during the pandemic. This isn’t our first rodeo for kicking off a school year that doesn’t feel like the “normal days” of pre-2020.
My kids are starting milestone grades, kindergarten and sixth grade.
My husband and I are both still in education, but we accepted jobs for roles that are new to us in different school districts/organizations. We thought that we had locked in our “forever jobs” in the school district where we reside, but at the end of 2021-2022, we both made the decision to move on, mainly to protect our career morale and mental health.
2022 Summer Break was especially sweet because we embraced the unknown on our own terms. The blank canvas far outweighed the angst and anxiety that we would have had if we rolled out another school year pretending to do business as usual.
When I think of the four of us facing our new adventures with little or no background knowledge of new daily routines and learning opportunities, I feel refreshed and confident about our endeavors.
My son is the only person whose situation is somewhat familiar. My daughter was once a kindergartener. We also know the campus, staff, and school community very well because I worked at the school for 7 years.
I saved some of the lunchbox notes that I wrote to my daughter years ago:
The rest of us on the other hand, will need to jump right in and figure it out. It feels really good to know that the default to “go with what you know” in unavailable. It’s a similar exhilaration that someone might feel when traveling internationally to a new location, or stepping on to a thrill ride for the first time. Expectations are instantly put into check because they would be based on information that may not be true yet.
Back in March of 2020, we all had to learn to navigate the unknown. It was extreme, but since then, I definitely learned that the “I don’t yet” moments in life are completely acceptable and they have healing properties.
What situations in life have you enjoyed because you didn’t quite know what was to come?
Thank you for reading and may your unknowns be tolerable,
-Jenn
Until Jenn 
Best of luck to each of you this school year! I often find myself having to traverse the unknown, because I throw myself into new ventures every now and then, whether here in the States or abroad.
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