Time to Recharge

"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes… including you."

— Anne Lamott

The end of the school year is almost here.

Everyone’s running on empty. There are assemblies to get through, displays to take down, children saying goodbye with handmade cards, and the quiet sense that somehow there’s still too much left to do — even with the finish line in sight.

And underneath it all sits a particular kind of tiredness.

Not just physical tiredness, but the slow, quiet fatigue that builds over weeks and months of holding so much. Timetables, decisions, emotions. Behaviour plans and performance data. Other people’s stories. Your own, often pushed to the background.

In schools, it becomes second nature to carry on. To meet the next need. To hold it together. The work is constant, but so is the care. The invisible effort of steadying everything around you — sometimes without even realising it.

So when the summer break arrives, the feeling isn’t always one of celebration. Sometimes it’s simply relief.

And that makes sense.

We don’t often pause long enough to feel the full weight of the year. But it’s there. In the early mornings. In the quiet worries that linger. In the feeling that you’ve been running on reserves for longer than you meant to.

Which is why these weeks ahead matter — not as a reward or a perk, but as a pause that’s needed.

A time to let the year settle, and notice what’s left behind.

Some days might be full of plans, others quiet. Some restful. Some restless. That’s okay. There’s no one way to recover.

But somewhere in the stillness, something begins to shift. The noise quietens. The mind slows. And space returns — for small joys, for fresh air, for remembering who you are outside the role.

The new term will arrive soon enough. But there’s time first. Time to exhale. Time to reset.

Time to come back to yourself.