Summer 2025 Newsletter

Hi peeps!

I am starting to realize that I am on a different cycle than the the sun in regards to the seasons. The summer solstice is on June 20th – but I am already in the mindset of summer. Well, not the mindset, but like – I am preparing my summer plans, and thus felt the need to send a newsletter!

Also, I have so much to update you on!

I moved. Again! I’m dating someone new. I’ve had an existential crisis about my career as a teacher. Dropped out of Improv school! Ran for local government (and lost). And become a bona fide yoga hoe. And other poopy things.

After the tragedy of the fires and now that the fucking dismantling of the American government is taking place, I’ve been getting politically engaged, meeting some engaging people, and also just really thinking about what’s my role in this whole thing. Should I leave the country? So many Americans are fleeing. What’s actually in my control and what do they want me to think is in my control so that I am paralyzed by shame? What are we fighting for and who are my comrades?

It’s a time!

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

Before you get into this newsletter, I just wanna share that I use 3 categories to manage my time and energy. There’s life stuff (things I need to do to survive), job (things I need to do for money), and passion projects (things I do for passion/joy/purpose/meaning and am intrinsically motivated to do). My updates are organized in this way.

Love you lots,

Sammy!

Life Stuff Updates

I define life stuff as anything I need to do to survive, which has been rebranded by the wellness industry as “self-care”. I break it into 7 categories: housing, physical health, mental health, passion projects, transport, finances, and relationships.

I do a monthly what’s working | what’s not working | actions reflection on these areas and then set priorities and take action to improve my quality of life & self-care. Here’s the template I use! So here are my updates!

I’ve moved again! My cousin and I found a 2-bed in Los Feliz/East Hollywood walking distance from Tabula Rasa (laptop friendly wine bar with monthly poetry readings), KurryPinch (delicious Sri Lankian food), and Obet & Dell’s (a family-owned Filipino coffeeshop). As well as Jumbo’s (a very famous titty bar) & the Griffith Park! We’ll be having a housewarming in June when the school year has properly wrapped up (tentative June 14th!), but for now we’re just decorating.
I have an unlimited membership at Yoga Vibe so if you wanna go to yoga there, HMU!
Still vegan except for joy, tradition, and convenience.
I am wanting to take a dance class or be more serious about hiking, if this speaks to you – get in touch!

Job Updates

I am still working at the Zoo Magnet. It’s been a rollercoaster that at one point I wanted off. Again! I thought that my first school was the problem, turns out, it’s all schools! Wahoo!

This realization made me think about changing careers AGAIN and becoming a librarian, but turns out that on top of the Department of Education being defunded and dismantled, so is the Institute of Museums and Library Services! There has been a hiring freeze on librarians across the country.

In addition, to become a librarian, I would have to do another Masters costing from $20,000 to $80,000, and then there would probably be NO JOBS!

And it would be risky to leave my position as a teacher because there has been a 1.2 billion dollar budget cut for education for next year, I’ve already heard about first year teachers being let go. I have four years of seniority and am tenured. So it’s really not the time for a career-change.

This led to a larger realization: any job that I want to change to will be underfunded and undervalued because the things that I love and care about are traditionally feminine industries (education & social services & the arts) – and thus in our white patriarchal capitalist society, are going to be underfunded and undervalued. Until our society changes, a career change won’t fix anything.

Thus, I have decided that instead of spending $80,000 for another Masters and two years of my life, I’m going to dedicate myself to trying to improve and update the system/society that we’re currently living in and bring it into the 21st century.

Which led to the final realization: I’m going to stay a teacher for at least another year and focus on making being a teacher work for me instead of me working for teaching (and thus feeling burnt out, emotionally drained, resentful, and taken advantage of) while trying to learn about the current system we live in, and how we can update it!

Five years ago, while working in book and academic publishing, I felt depressed listening to the data about decreasing literacy rates and the us vs them language between the educated and uneducated that is really about race and religion, that is really about socio-economics, that is really about power and privilege – and decided I wanted to get involved.

I thought the person most responsible for creating a culture that hates reading, learning, and education was the teacher!

Now I’m a teacher – and I know that teachers are the scapegoat. We are doing the best we can with the resources we have. It’s the system and society – this adult community that does not invest in public schools, only private! It’s administrators. It’s policies. It’s cultural norms and grading structures. These things that you can’t quite put into words, that are hard to pin responsibility on.

Much easier to blame the only adult in the room all day with children, then the phone companies, the tech companies, the administrators, the politicians, the parents, the healthcare system, the media companies, the educational policies, the federal, state, and local budgets, etc, etc, etc.

Even easier to blame the burnt out person who is often venting about all these larger companies and organizations, to label them as weak, negative people who are acting like victims, to tell them to go back in your classroom and focus on what’s in your control.

While you go back to your remote/hybrid situation and all those kids who are screaming at me, those parents who are screaming at me are data sets contained in numbers on an excel spreadsheet.

While LAUSD spends 7 million dollars on Yondr pouches to stop students using their phones, that the kids don’t even use, that the admin struggle to enforce, and that you get yelled at because you aren’t yelling at your kids to put their phones away because you’ve been yelling at them for years, and couldn’t the tech companies or phone companies or parents do something instead of you, instead of a policy that still makes you the one responsible.

Dude- that’s what they do, every so often an administrator will pop in, yell at the kids and take their phones, and then yell at you for not yelling at the kids to put their phones in their pouches. While Graham Andrew Dugoni, a retired professional soccer player who worked in finance, gets 7 fucking million dollars just from LAUSD! Imagine all the other school districts who have followed suit.

While I made $67,000 last year after four years in undergrad, 1.5 eyars in a post-graduate teaching credential, and a two years masters program, and three years of teaching experience (not to mention the three years I did working in publishing and marketing). Thus 8 years of additional education!!

So ya, I’m angry and feel taken advantage of.

Passion Project Updates

As you can tell from the above, my passion projects have been put on pause. Well, one project is focused on all others. The project “how do we improve our education system and make America love learning again? for the first time? who the fuck knows?”

So yea, I’ve decided to shelve my other projects until the summer. Which makes me sad because there are so many things that are meaningful and want to spend my time doing, especially like my own fucking dreams of being a writer (finishing my novel, publishing my poems and essays) and starting my own press and turning Literary Pixie into a media nonprofit, library, and cafe space! Starting the Los Feliz Literature Festival, and the Los Feliz Poet Laureate position! The Feminist Toilet Magazine, and the Blow Gift Zine, and making wee chapbooks of poetry by some of my friends, and organizing weird dinner parties and salons.

Or like, finding out about the literary infrastructure already in Los Angeles and contributing to it!

Alas. The summer? Never enough time. Never enough energy. Never enough.

Here are some updates though:

I had a table at LA Zine Fest 2025! Yes – Literary Pixie Press was real, and I sold the books I made and spent hours and hours writing, and it was magical. I felt like my dream of starting a press was within reach.
I’ve put my Zumba license on pause. I tried to cancel but they made it really hard/impossible. I realized that while I have dancing, I have no interest in being a teacher- I just really want to take a class.
Still have the first two sections of Burnt Out Bitch. They are mostly me intellectualizing my pain. I haven’t published my personal experiences yet because I am still too sensitive to share them publicly, as well as not healed enough yet for my first three years to be the past.
Organizing the Los Feliz Literature Festival! It’s gonna be August 23-24th, 2025! Let me know if you want to perform or get involved.
I took a writing class with Jonathan Blum and an improv class at UCB because I wanted to my own creative spirit to be invested in. It was nice, but turned out to be exhausting and overwhelming. I miss it, and it was fun. Especially the people. I miss them the most. Being around like-minded adults who want to learn what I want to learn, ah blissful.
I ran for Education Representative for the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council! My first election since I ran for Roteract Club President. I got 120 votes out of 381, and lost by 61 votes. It was an experience. Looking forward to still being on the committee and learning and supporting the elected rep! She’s been in the seat for a few terms and is awesome!
I was obsessed with co-housing, co-living and alternative housing, however, I’ve decided that these ideas are just Band-Aids needed because our cities and neighborhoods are dysfunctional and unsustainable and disconnected. Thus I want to focus on that instead of buying a big plot of land and building tiny homes in LA as I once dreamed.

After trying to teach and live out these passion projects, I became so overwhelmed that it took all the fun out of living. Life felt like a to-do list. I hate that feeling.

Especially when all these dreams of mine are mostly self-imposed and nobody really gives a fuck if I do them or not. These are the things I do for joy, because they give my life meaning, and community, and a sense of belonging. They help me feel seen – like I wasn’t invisible, like I wasn’t just born and then lived this invisible life that never mattered to anyone. Even one person is enough. Even just you.

Summer Priorities

This summer, my priorities are:

Spending quality time with friends and family in LA and abroad
Time for my passions and creative projects as listed above!
- Pride in my curriculums that I teach
- Finishing and publishing my writing on Literary Pixie
- Los Feliz Literature Festival!
- We Need Each Other: Building and Maintaining Relations in the 21st Century
Nurturing my yoga, exercise, and eating routines
Making my home in Los Feliz/East Hollywood!

Summer Plans

This summer, I’ll be hanging out in California, Michigan, Colorado, and the UK!

I’ll be at the Jack Kerouac of Disembodied Poetics Summer Writing Program from June 15-22, taking a class with Jennifer Firestone! COME!
I’ll be in the UK from around end of June to July 22ndish! Still finalizing details! Would love to see you!
Trying to just hang out in Los Feliz and see what happens!

Things I’m Thinking About

My thoughts are all over the place and I feel super overwhelmed, so I am going to start blogging again to streamline my thoughts and focus.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the book 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, and trying to finish The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. As well as about shame, reading some Brene Brown with Daring Greatly.

But also reading Just Read It by Jared Amato. I’m finding it really hard to focus, and am overwhelmed by all the things I want to do and learn, and all the amazing people I want to spend my time with. Sometimes forgetting to eat, drink water, exercise, or get enough sleep because I’m so excited!

Thus, I am really trying to simplify my life so that I can actually make progress in my vision and enjoy my life.

And right now, it’s teaching, self-care/survival, and relationships that can help me survive. After June 10th when the school year is over, I will think about my passion projects and spend time with people I love and care about who aren’t able to help me survive and be part of my routine (aka help me eat, sleep, exercise, rest, teach, fun).

Teaching is survival mode. This living is survival mode. 21st century is survival mode.

Oh! Also there is a protest on May 17th at SpaceEx! let me know if you wanna come!!

Mutual Support

Would love to hear from you! What are your summer priorities? How can I help you survive? What are some of your passion projects? Job challenges? Would love to listen and connect and support each other!

By reading this, you are supporting me and I want to support you! To me, that’s what this being human and living in a society is all about. It gives me great meaning, and is such an honor to experience this life together or in tandem (living lives across the country, across the ocean – connected by phone calls, zooms – listening to each other’s stories!)

Feel free to email me at seeliterarypixie@gmail.com or send a Whatsapp!