Pitfalls of Finding a Balance and Failing to make Substantial Art during Study Halls

I am trying to find a balance in teaching trying to pair a theme with some fairly technical projects, for what ends up being overall a fairly technical class. I'm tasked by the curriculum to teach my students good composition along with strengthening their skills shading with a pencil. I'm trying to pair the book which they will be reading in their American Literature Classes "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, and "The Things They Carried" exhibit at the National Veterans Art Museum. I'm expanding it include the Gulf War, Afghanistan & Iraq in the past decade. I am at an awkward juncture where too many of my students are not finished with the previous project for me to pull a proverbial plug on studio work, but I also have close to half the class who is now finished and ready to begin a new project. I'm hoping tomorrow will be a better on this front.

In other news: I am failing at finding an artistic something I can do besides decorating my hall passes during my study hall periods. I am usually reviewing my notes for how class went that day, or lesson planning, or composing presentations, or teacher journal logs, or reading the myriad e-mails I receive. I do get a few moments in which I can sit and observe and let my gears turn, and creativity percolate, sometimes. My issue is that nothing worthwhile has brewed up that is not a lesson plan or image presentation. I have nothing I have created that makes me squee with delight, and proclaim "I made this!" like a kindergartener bringing home a piece worthy of the refrigerator door-and this bothers me.

in my nightmares I.....

With the very little I recall of some of the dreams that I have had in the past years, an ongoing trend I have noticed is whenever I have a dream which I can undeniably consider a nightmare because if the true childlike fear and helplessness they leave me with are dreams in which I am back in the service during a training exercise which involves the use of, or possession of a weapon. usually what ends up happening is either I lose said weapon, have a first time user's non-lethal, not-necessarily-dangerous-in-a-training-environment-but-potentially-harmful-in-a-non-training-environment incident, like swinging a weapon in such a way that I basically put someone in the business end of a rifle unintentionally, or the weapon I have is not the serial number which I was assigned. Misplaced or lost weapons are serious security risks, and they will shut down bases to recover unaccounted for weapons. But with this dream comes the same sense of helplessness of you have a career making meeting or something to get to, and you lost your keys. You cannot remember where you left them, you have turned the house upside down looking for them, and they are NOWHERE to be found. In my nightmare usually, I am usually retracing my steps, and checking every nook and cranie of my environment for my weapon, or at least the weapon which has my assigned serial number. I usually end up either getting caught not having my assigned weapon, or I wake up from the sheer palpable fright which is physically making my heart race like I just finished a Tabata set.