It is Monday morning at 10:08am, and I feel overwhelmed and I am having trouble picking what to focus on, and what I need to do this week to feel a sense of progress.
I can’t stop ruminating. In my yoga classes, all I can think about is how to solve my problems. I am struggling to be present. It’s always in the background making me feel tired and irritable. I have had this feeling before. It’s decision fatigue.
I have a huge decision I have to make very soon and it threatens my financial security and healthcare massively. Do I resign as a teacher?
The moment I do that, I have 0 income coming in each month as well as no retirement plan or healthcare. I also have no job. But really the only reason I need a job is for money and healthcare. If I didn’t need money (or had a financial plan that allowed me to not make money for a certain period of time while I get stable and figure things out) and healthcare was not attached to my job, I would be way less stressed out.
But that’s not the situation I am in currently.
It’s one devil or another. As a teacher, I had healthcare and financial security but I was chronically overwhelmed and burnt out. I felt miserable. There is another teacher in my program, seventeen years! I asked them how they did it. They said, “alcohol and anti-depressants. We’re all miserable if that makes you feel better.”
“Alcohol and anti-depressants. We’re all miserable if that makes you feel better.”
The thing was, it didn’t. It make me feel more hopeless. So if I overcome this year, and keep working as a teacher for 13 more years – I’ll still be just as miserable as I am right now, if not worse?
Immediate response, no thanks.
This actually makes me feel angry. The other teacher is awesome! And this is what they get for 17 years of service as a teacher. They do not deserve this. How dare they!
There are two other stories I’ve heard from veteran teachers that are making me wanting to walk the plank now instead of waiting.
Story 1:
A teacher who has worked for seven years had to resign midyear because her child needed more parental support. They had to resign because of parenting responsibilities as a TEACHER. WHAT? So a job all about raising children and supporting parents while they work doesn’t allow teachers to do what they need to be parents themselves?! In a job that is majority female?!
That’s not okay.
Story 2:
A teacher who has worked for over 15 years, who is known as a fantastic teacher, and who is open about their experience as a human is being investigated because a colleague found out about students keeping track of things they said were inappropriate from last year.
Instead of sharing with their colleagues as professional feedback, they went to the heads of department who went to the principal and now they are being investigated.
These two stories make me spiral!!! On top of my own experience being told when asking for help and to not have to teach four curriculums next year when I am already having such a hard time with three that I just don’t have what it takes to be a teacher. From the person whose job it is to support me and my professional development.
As much as I want to resign and start at the bottom of a new career. I know the bottom sucks everywhere. Also that all careers have their problems, especially the care industry jobs that I value and am interested in.
Thus, I keep thinking – how can I build on my experience and solve some of these problems that teachers are suffering from? In Burnt Out Bitch, I detail solutions that I believe could have easily prevented my suffering or solved the problems that I had as they came up.
How can I make money while I do that? Could I build a business or nonprofit doing this work? Could my research be sponsored? Could I find a grant and work with a nonprofit already?
These are the questions I keep thinking about? As well as how things are falling apart here, the ICE raids and protests and environmental stuff – should I be working to solve those problems?
I picked my problem – how to improve our education system, specifically literacy and quality of life for the 21st century. What does one need to know, what skills and supports does one need to survive and thrive (to be stable and eventually pursuit happiness) in the 21st century? And how do we update our educational system and societies and cities to meet and support those needs equitably, sustainably, and efficiently?
I am using my life as the research project because if I am barely stable at 31 with three degrees and family support, then who is?
But really who is? And can I interview you? How did you do it?
After rambling about all these things though, I know that these problems are going to take a lot of time to unravel. To resolve.
I need a financial plan now so that I can pay for my lifestyle and housing so I can maintain my health and relationships.
I googled about best books about money (the Pennyhoarder; Forbes) and have decided to read Get Good at Money by Tiffany Aliche – a pre-school teacher turned financial educator! I’ve ordered it from the Library.
Thus, this week I have decided to:
- Read Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos (And Why Resilience Alone Isn’t Enough) by Tasha Eurich and focusing on my relationship with myself.
- Focus on creating a weekly, monthly, and quarterly system and schedule for my lifestyle and health needs and doing it this week!
- Creating a financial plan for the next three months.
- Making a plan to research my improving education system and teaching problem – define the problem, what are potential solutions, who are the people I can learn from? Essentially a research proposal/ a business plan/ a nonprofit vision
- Contact events I want to go to and see if I can get press passes for Literary Pixie to write about them (specifically the Hollywood Fringe Festival)!
Okay – that’s my plan for the week! Thanks for letting me ramble until I got there.
Also, I didn’t say, but my grandpa Papa Joe passed away on Thursday. It’s a time. It’s complicated. Life’s complicated.
The biggest thing is that I feel guilty for not spending as much time with him as I wanted to because I was focusing on teaching and too emotionally drained to emotionally support the people who I love and who I need because I love them.
This reconfirms my commitment to changing teaching or changing careers because I refuse to let my job be the obstacle stopping me from loving the people I love and loving my life and myself and my community and my city.
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