By Sammy Ginsberg
WAH! I did it. I resigned. My plan wasn’t 100% ready, but enough was there to take the leap. In that, since I know that I will be hired as a substitute teacher for next year (giving me a job and baseline income that can pay my rent and living expenses – if you want to eat cheap and plant-based, and cook at home for the next year – HIT ME UP!), I can take this risk.
I am also happy to give up my seniority (4 YEARS!!) because I’ve been fucked so many times that I’d take any class as long as it isn’t three to four preps for the first two or three years if I choose to return to LAUSD. However, I might not return to LAUSD.
After learning that at a charter school in LA all teachers are given 2 curriculums to teach, and if they have to teach 3, they are given a stipend – SO FUCKING LOGICAL, then I will definitely shop around the school districts, private schools, and charter schools before choosing to go back to teaching.
Also – if the administrators and ELA department are so fucking selfish as to give a teacher at a new school where they have to build brand new relationships with administrators, colleagues, students, and parents, three or four curriculums to teach AND co-teachers, then I sure as fuck ain’t working there.
Also, from listening to my joy – I feel called to go back to my childhood dream of working in pr and marketing/communications, organizing literature festivals, and being a writer.
And so that’s what I’m going to do!! Am Doing!!
When I changed to being a teacher, it was because my dream was to be a writer AND a teacher of writing! As I worked as a teacher, I realized that Los Angeles lacks the infrastructure needed to make that dream reality.
Thus, I am going to build it! I have been working to build it, very, very slowly.
But as I learned, trying to be a teacher for four curriculums for three different grade-levels in three departments with two different co-teachers AND be a writer AND build the infrastructure to support writers who are also teachers AND be a granddaughter AND a daughter AND a sister AND a cousin AND a roommate AND an old friend to people both in LA AND in the UK AND a new friend AND a neighbor AND a girlfriend AND be involved in the St Andrews alumni community AND exercise AND grocery shop AND meal plan AND rest AND have fun AND drive/fly to people because my family, old friends, school, home, and masters are all in different places! Ugh. I feel exhausted just writing that, and yet – that’s what I lived and had been trying to do for the last four fucking years.
I’ve been trying to do it all, and it’s not working. As I learned in 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, I have to accept that I am not going to be able to do anything and focus on trying to a few things and enjoying them. His premise is that there are too many important things to do and there will never be enough time. Most time management books focus on trying to create more time so you can do more, while his book focuses on accepting that it is impossible to create more time and how it is important to choose to do less things, and prioritize what is most important to you.
I also learned that doing lots of different things and having lots of different friends and relationships is actually a dysfunctional attachment strategy for avoiding intimacy, as well as a way to avoid failure and feeling like YOU are not good enough because you have created a situation that is impossible to do well in, and thus when you don’t succeed – it was the situation that caused you to fail, and not you.
I think this is why so many people in my life who heard me complaining for years about my work situation. They thought I was just avoiding taking responsibility for failing and choosing not doing the work or making the sacrifices needed to do my job as a teacher well, and that I just wasn’t cut out to be a teacher or was fixating on the problem to avoid doing the work.
This completely ignores the fact that the workload I was forced to do was completely impossible to do AND function as a human, and literally says in the UTLA contract not to do to prevent burn out. That clause was most definitely written in tears, and probably some blood.
And that I was doing the work, putting in the hours, and sacrificing my personal relationships (literally four boyfriends; ten friendships; two weddings; and my relationship with my Grandpa) that I only decided I was no longer willing to sacrifice when my first boyfriend and friend died by suicide who I had stopped speaking to for a year because we got in a disagreement while working full-time and in my Masters program, and I didn’t have the capacity to work through it with him.
The main reason (again!) that I am making this huge fucking change and taking a huge fucking risk is DEATH. Change or you are not going to be able to love the people you love the way you want to before they DIE!!! Because they did DIE and you didn’t love them the way you wanted to, the way that aligns with your values, and now you never will while they are alive!! But you can do it now that they are gone, as their legacy. You can love the people who are alive! You can love yourself while you are alive! You can love living while you are alive!
Okay — I keep justifying and contextualizing my decision to resign. That’s okay. That’s what I need to do right now. My brain is processing what I have done. It is deleting the memories that aren’t useful in this situation so I have brain space and capacity for the new experiences and information. This is the process.
I’m sorry if this is redundant or boring, and internally you’re thinking, gosh, this is boring and repetitive, please move on with your life!! Well, this isn’t a tv show or a movie. This is real fucking life. Life can be boring and repetitive. Progress isn’t linear! And it can take years if not decades if EVER to process trauma, to grow up, to change and transform and develop.
That’s why I am writing this in a blog post instead of talking to you in person about this. If this is annoying you, stop reading. Take a break. Come back later. Come back never. Skip this post and move on to the other ones. Read a different book. Focus on your life and your own problems and the traumas that you are currently processing. Go get one of your needs met.
To be honest- if you are having those kinds of negative and judgmental thoughts about my life, it’s because you have some needs that aren’t being met and that you may be unhappy and miserable in your own life, that you haven’t fully accepted yourself and thus, you are projecting that lack onto me.
And that’s okay. I still love you! I still want to support you and hear from you and listen to you. I will always forgive you. I may set boundaries to protect my health and happiness, so that I can love you while I love myself. But I still love you, am still rooting for you, and believe in you!
Although TBH, I am forgiving you because it’s good for me, not because it’s good for you. Great book about that called Forgive for Good by Dr. Fred Luskin.
Wow – okay, I got on a tangent there. The feeling behind the feeling behind the feeling. Some of my unconscious thoughts were released.
Before I end this update, I want to share three things:
One. I want to acknowledge my privilege in being able to take this risk. My family members are all fully employed with good jobs in tech, business, and real estate so I know that if I REALLY needed to move back in with my parents or some financial support for a bit, they could help me out. They have done this before, and I know they would do this again. I do feel shame around having access to this kind of support that I know other people don’t, as well as shame around having to access this support; thus burdening or taking advantage of my family members who are more financially successful than me and who have probably had to choose money and financial security over their health and happiness.
However, whether I acknowledge my privilege or not, I still have it and it’s not going away. I know. When I lived in London, I pretended it didn’t exist. It was a fun game for a bit, until it wasn’t. Life’s hard out there for people without a multi-generational support system. I am trying to use my privilege to help others and make the world/ our society a better place.
Two. At the same time, I do think that education and care industry jobs have this “martyr” mentality aka someone who suffers for the greater good, and that people who do not choose to suffer like them are not good people and are selfish, which doesn’t exist in other industries as much. This “martyr” mentality is what causes perpetual burn out. Some people leave and learn to say no and put their health and wellbeing first, and some people don’t. Those people often become bitter, resentful, defensive, angry, irritable and unconsciously choose to shame, blame, belittle, rage, cancel, complain. dump. They have become combustible people.
I have empathy for these people because when I was at my most burnt out I too acted in these ways. I wished that other people instead of giving me space and trying to avoid me had recognized these antagonistic behaviors as calls for help and figured out what help I needed, and supported me to get that help.
However, care industry roles are essentially the professionalization of the female role in families and society that went unpaid and undocumented for centuries before the 21st century and the rise of feminism and capitalism and equality and freedom.
Thus, most women struggle with this “martyr” mentality because they were forced to suffer for the greater good of the family for centuries and many still do. Men also suffered, however, they often released their suffering on their wives and children in the privacy of their homes.
We keep pretending that this history is over and does not have an impact on the present or our future, but it does. It really fucking does.
Three. I am going to focus on prioritizing becoming stable – this means putting my health, happiness, and wellbeing first for a bit. I am also going to use my suffering and frustration to create the solutions to the problems I had as a teacher.
I am going to focus on building the infrastructure of support that people need in Los Angeles to be writers and teachers of writing.
In February of 2024 when I attended the American Writers Conference, I realized that my passion and joy was in learning about how to create, develop, and nurture the infrastructure of a writers community, of a teachers community, of a cultural community in a neighborhood, in a city, in a state, in a country, globally.
I started to imagine doing a PhD and titling my dissertation, “The Infrastructure of Literacy”. I looked at PhD programs in Los Angeles, but I would have to pay $40,000 a year at UCLA; $40,000 to $70,000 a year at Claremont; or get a funded PhD at USC with a stipend of $38,000 a year while having to teach classes, attend classes, and do my research with PhD programs lasting 5 to 7 years – so we are talking spending $200,000 for a degree that only allows me to teach at university level – when I can already have a teaching credential and a Masters and can already teach at a university with just a Masters.
Instead of applying to those universities (more money!!) and then spending $200,000 – I am going to create my own PhD program and invest $200,000 in myself. Well, I’m not. I don’t have that kind of money. But, I could take out a loan?
Anyhow, that’s not the point. I’m going to write my statement of purpose essay and design my own PhD program, and I’m going to apply to you, to the world, to myself! I am going to prove the value that my research and work is doing, and figure out a way to make enough money to keep doing the research and work I want to do outside of our education system or with it?
I probably haven’t talked that much about this, or like hidden it in an overwhelming amount of words like this blog post – but
In December of last year while on medical leave, I was hired by the CSUN Writing Project as the Coordinator of Communications and Community Engagement AND I pitched to the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council the idea of starting the Los Feliz Writers Festival (with support and encouragement from Helene and Dawn!!), and they approved the idea!!
Thus, while working as a sub- I am going to focus on these two projects!! And see what happens.
The Los Feliz Writers Festival is August 23 and 24th!! That’s my first priority!! So far things are going well. We booked the Barnsdall Art Gallery as our venue!! WOWOOWO!!
Okay, I’ve been writing for almost three hours. Didn’t realize. Def not sending this one in an email, but if you chose to click on this link and read the post, I appreciate your time!!
Fuck, I didn’t make a plan. But I will! Well, kinda- I made a mission statement, identified my July and August priorities, and created a task – to write my statement of purpose essay and post on the blog.
Peace.
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