I do believe strongly that taking care of yourself means that you can take better care of your students.  Sometimes my students and my duties get in the way of that.

The most important thing I do to recharge is train and show my dogs in dog agility.  What does that have to do with computer science?  Well, training a dog isn't all that different than programming a computer.  Seriously, but you'd have to try it and think about it before you get it.

I took a teacher workday off to go to a dog agility trial and boy, am I glad I did.  My new dog, Macy took two first places in Jumpers with Weaves and she was good enough in Standard that I can figure out what it takes to fix it.

One of the reasons I have dogs, is that they give me unconditional love -- well Macy does, I'm not sure Maggie has the capacity to love, but she is an insane rescue dog - I can prove it, Xanax makes her behave better.  After a tough day at school, I feel instantly happy when I come home and am greeted by my dogs.

Training them gives them more of a personality, and it gives me a release.  Every Monday night I'm at dog agility and very few things can interrupt that.  I only do local trials, though fortunately I live in an area where I can get a decent dog fix.  We have two trials in August, a couple in October, a few in November and December.  We start up again in February and have trials in March and April.  I only do AKC, so that does cut down the number of trials I attend.  I might try Teacup, but haven't had time to do that.

My advice, if you don't do it already, is find an activity that you love, and that takes you away from school.  And if it shows unconditionally love, all the better.

And yes, I'm quite sure the "unconditional love" is truly love, but a inherited behavior that occurred because of natural selection.

It still feels good to come home to it.