Literary Pixie

By Sammy Ginsberg

For the last couple weeks (maybe years?!) I have been so overwhelmed by the empty part of my glass that I’ve been struggling to enjoy the full part of my glass.

A few years ago I had the realization that there are always positive and negative things in life, that is a constant. The real art is learning to focus and appreciate the positive things while addressing and improving the negative things. I’ve been working to maintain this dance, however, over the last couple years and recent events – the negative things have been taking up more than half the glass. At times it felt like maybe 80 to 90% of the glass was negative, and it was getting hard to focus on the positive or even create positive things to balance out the negative things.

I see the positive and negative things in our cups as both within and outside our control. Our brain takes in information and categorizes it as positive, negative, or neutral. It gives more weight to negative information because it is by focusing on this information and learning from it that we can adapt and prevent it from happening again.

It takes conscious time and effort to process this information and integrate it into our unconscious. If we are not taking time to reflect and learn from our experiences, we can start to get stuck repeating the same situation over again as well as having significant health issues.

One cognitive distortion (I’ve compiled a list of over 50! This one is #51) is exactly that, it’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

Thus, for the last four years – I have been trying to teach three to four curriculums and burning out every year. I have been told that I will be teaching four curriculums again next year. They keep telling me that it will be better this year, but after four years of the same workload and the same burn out (but now worse since after coping with this same problem for four years, I am now physically and mentally exhausted and having health issues to the point that the thought of doing this workload or even talking about doing this workload paralyzes me and causes me to have a panic attack or tantrum – this is called hitting your resiliency ceiling) I know both rationally and irrationally that the same thing is going to happen. At this point, I have enough rational evidence to conclude that faith and believe are really just magical thinking that are going to do nothing to protect me from the amount of work, stress, and social isolation I will experience if I do as I am told and return to my school site where:

• I will be responsible for teaching 9th, 12th, AP Literature, and Museum studies, which are basically two brand new preps and still adapting from 55 minute classes to 2hr block scheduling
• I am one of two ELA teachers at a program of 8 teachers where we are offsite and both of us ELA teachers have less than 5 years of experience teaching
• The parents and kids are very privileged and have very high, private school level high expectations for their teachers wanting us to take their kids on loads of field trips both overnight and weekend
• I currently have no friends
• I do not trust the administrator as they caused me to have a panic attack when I was trying to get support on bullying and gaslighting behaviors in my class
• I do not trust the previous magnet coordinator and do not know the new magnet coordinator
• I do not trust the Union rep who did not adequately advise me when I told them I was not able to do my assigned line, saying there was nothing they could do, when I could have applied for a leave or filed a grievance that this was not a reasonable workload, or helped me try to transfer, or invited me to attend UTLA protests together, or organized a happy hour for the teachers to get to know each other off-campus, or invited me to attend UTLA meetings and learn more about my contractual rights, or when I said I needed help never followed up when I didn’t get back to them
• I went on medical leave for a month, only two teachers texted me to me to see why I wasn’t at school, and one teacher even made fun of me being absent for so long it was like I was playing dead in the group chat

I am being told to just accept that situation and spend my whole summer preparing the four curriculums, while also processing personal events in the last two years:

• the passing of my Grandpa Papa Joe
• the passing of my Grandpa Derek
• the passing of my first boyfriend and friend Daihachi
• the passing of my property manager Bill
• breaking up with my PE teacher boyfriend
• breaking up with my VA administrator boyfriend
• breaking up with a writer I was dating
• moving out of Treehouse because
• moving out of a studio apartment because my property manager passed away and I didn’t feel safe there anymore
• moving out of a house in Los Feliz because was overwhelmed by challenges in my job that I couldn’t work through incompatibilities with one of my roommates
• one car accident while crying trying to see my family members to get support
• one car accident because I was so tired from work and going on a fun date with my boyfriend at the time
• trying to work through conflicts with my ex-boyfriend from five years ago who was a good friend of mine
• trying to work through conflicts with one of my family-friends who I have known since high school and consider like a cousin
• trying to work through conflicts with friends I made and lived with as roommates while starting an environmental nonprofit
• my grandma Myra breaking her hip and flying to take care of her
• still trying to nurture and rebuild strong friendships and community in Los Angeles after living in the United Kingdom for seven years where most of my friends from high school have moved away because we all did not enjoy growing up in Los Angeles and finding the balance between current friends and past friends

I have been trying to work through all of these problems all at the same time, and it’s just not working; another cognitive distortion! It’s not possible to multi-task on so many of these issues.

And to be honest, I have been deprioritizing my relationships to focus on my teaching issues, however, as you can tell – my work stress is seeping into all areas of my life, and also I need my personal life to be strong in order to go back into the school site which will always be a hard job.

The negative information I am getting is overwhelming the positive information and that is because this is not working. Trying to do this the last four years is not working, and I need to make a big change. I need to stop trying to work on all of these things all at once.

More than that, I need to stop justifying my choices to people in my life and the actions I need to take to listen to the information and become happy, healthy, and stable again.

I have realized that I am seeking approval from my parents, I want them to give me permission to quit, to take big risks – but they won’t. They want me to play it safe, the way that they did. To prioritize money and financial security over health and happiness just like they did, just like they were raised by their parents because they grew up as children during the great depression who were raised by their parents who were poor and uneducated forced to work in dehumanizing factories and coal-mines.

I am not a child anymore. I don’t have to do what my parents tell me. I don’t have to obey. I can listen to their wisdom and advice, and then make my own choice being 100% responsible for the consequences of my actions. I can disobey.

As the oldest of three children with a brother who was constantly disobeying our parents and being labeled “the bad child,” I felt trapped in the role of “the perfect one”. I was afraid to disobey, but doing what I was told and constantly seeking validation and approval from my parents as the good one made me feel very anxious as well as caused me to constantly prioritize other people’s needs causing me to become depressed twice. I had one depression in 10th grade, and another one in 12th grade after switching schools.

It was only in Scotland, 5,000 miles away where my parents and friends would never know what I got up to, and would only know what I told them, that I finally felt safe enough to start prioritizing my own needs and doing what I wanted.

I remember the exact moment. I had enrolled at St Andrews planning to study, English, Economics, and Management. After a few days at University talking to people about my courses, I decided that I didn’t want to study those classes. I wanted to study English, Modern History, and Film. I thought that this would be a better education for becoming a writer and working in book publishing, and also that these topics I found super interesting and fun!

During our weekly Sunday call I dropped the bomb. “Well Samantha,” my Dad said, “It’s your life, so if that’s what you want to do.” In that moment, I realized that my parents were really far away and could do nothing from stop me from doing what I wanted to do, and so I did it.

I stopped asking for permission or even telling them what I was up to. I started living.

I remember instead of asking for permission, I told them, “I’m going hitchhiking with my friend to Prague over winter break! We have 72 hours to get to Prague as part of Race2, a bunch of students are doing it. Isn’t that fun!”

And I did it! And it was super fun. I even got to drive a truck on the wrong side of the road sitting on a 45 year old male truck driver’s lap!

I remember I became passionate about activism for people seeking refuge in Europe and decided to volunteer in Calais and Greece. I didn’t ask for permission. I just went and fucking did it. And it was life-changing and I learned a lot, and it was eventually what caused me to move back to Los Angeles and want to teach international newcomers for LAUSD.

The trigger has been these moments when I stopped trusting myself and my ability to take care of myself. When my confidence has been shook. I have started to realize that the trigger has been forced long-term interaction with people who don’t understand me, don’t accept me, and use passive-aggressive and bullying tactics (aka mean girl/ Queen bees/nice guys) to get me to become more like them and do what they want me to do.

I have compassion. I believe these people act this way because they don’t understand themselves, don’t accept themselves, and don’t believe they are worthy of being loved just as they are even when they aren’t perfect.

I know that I am still working on these areas, especially the last two – hence why I keep working in environments that are not able to meet my needs, as well as feeling immense guilt and shame when sharing negative emotions with other people, often causing me to try to escape the situation.

I think that we will always be working on these areas, and it is only through emotionally committed relationships that we will be able to heal.

Emotionally committed relationships can be with friends, with colleagues and students, with partners, with family-members, with animals, with therapists and medical professionals, with teachers and coaches, with local politicians and businesses, and, most especially, with ourselves.

For the last week, I have been prioritizing finishing Burnt Out Bitch! I am nearly done, just this year to process! Going back to these memories and focusing on the negative, and trying to remember the positive has been super healing. I have learned just how strong I was in navigating some really complex and traumatic situations, and how I persevered.

As well as the invaluable role that people in my life played in supporting me through these really upsetting and difficult situations, who stayed with me even though I was super negative and shared the most desperate and ugly parts of myself. I am so grateful!

Today though, I decided that I am focusing wayy too much on the past and the negative, and I want to enjoy the present and start taking action towards a brighter future.

I wrote a list of all the ideas I have that I want to do this year instead of going back to school, and then sent emails to all the people who might be able to help me do them to see what happens.

I learned this from my tech-founder ex-boyfriend. He said that to test if there is a market for a business or idea, he just shoots off a couple emails as if he is working on the idea or already a business and sees how people respond. If people respond enthusiastically, he knows that the market exists and there is a demand for the product, and if they don’t, then he knows that there isn’t, and to focus on another idea.

I used this strategy when I was wanting to go on a literary march and get press passes to write about literature festivals all over the UK, and it worked. I was able to get 5 press passes and traveled all over the UK, and then started to be invited to other festivals.

However, then I moved to LA to be a teacher and wasn’t able to keep building that dream!

But now that I’m taking a break from full-time teaching for a year, I want to go back to that, to return to my dreams.

Thus here’s a list of my dreams and who I sent emails to just to see what they would happen, and what they would say. I’ll update you next week on their responses!

1. Become a yoga teacher: emailed Yoga Vibe (the studio I’m a member at in Los Feliz), and they said it’s happening and to book before August 1st for discount
2. Organize the Los Feliz Writers Festival and create a database of local writers: Already doing this with great success! Got one person who emailed to be on the database, as well as will be partnering with the Barnsdall Art Gallery for our Voices of Los Feliz event, how thrilling!! And the Los Angeles Press, too!
3. Set up a Literary Publicity Agency: I emailed Kim Dower who is a role model of mine who runs a Literary Publicity agency in LA as well as is a published poet and previous poet laureate of West Hollywood!
4. Contacted Cow Tipping Press about teaching creative writing courses for adults with disabilities with them and then setting up a program in Los Angeles.
5. Being a reading coach: I had an interview last night with a nonprofit that went well where I would teach twice a week in Compton! Adventure!
6. Substitute teach for LAUSD and use it to interview ELA teachers and find a good school to work at for next year and build friendships before the stress: Contacted three people in HR as well as a union rep in order to set this up, and two administrators, and one mentor getting advise on how best to do this and how this will affect me financially and my job security.
7. Volunteer at the California Teachers of English Conference this year: emailed the organizer and asked to volunteer
8. Setting up a PR agency for academics – especially English and the humanities: Contacted Mark Carrigan, author of Social Media for Academics, to see if I could interview him and get some advice
9. Teaching the Moth curriculum and organizing a student Moth event: Emailed the Moth and asked if that’s possible.
10. Teaching and setting up an 826 LA in the Valley or working with them to support more teachers: emailed them to see if that’s possible.
11. Teaching and setting up infrastructure for Ted Talks student program in LA: Emailed them to see if that’s possible
12. Setting up a burnt out teacher support group and therapists that specialize that would eventually be funded by LAUSD: emailed a therapist in Canada who does this work to interview her and see how to set this up in LA.

Okay: That’s all I did this morning! Let’s see how the universe responds!!

I’m off to London to hang out with my friend Jo and go to a candlelight yoga class together and pop into see my Grandma. So magical and grateful to have friends and family in the UK, and to be a dual citizen!

(Although I often forget about this magic, and wish I had never left the US and just gone to UC Berkeley – I did get in there!- or Davis, and then moved back to LA with loads of friends in Los Angeles from school, but alas! I have had so many great experiences because I took the road less traveled, but damn is it lonely sometimes!)

Sending so much love, and happy fourth of July, and Juneteenth just passed- very important days for the continual journey towards freedom and liberation for all living beings.