By Sammy Ginsberg
Just finished meditating. My brain is so scattered. My energy is so scattered and it is exhausting. I am exhausted. I need to do some prioritizing and organizing.
Thankfully it’s the end of the month! Thus, I will be doing my holistic monthly reflection, as well as writing my Fall Newsletter & setting up my Fall Organizer where I will intentionally choose my priorities and organize my time for September, October, and November (aka Fall!).
I had a lovely walk and breakfast with a friend this morning where I shared these six different projects that I am actively working on and hoping one will turn into full-time income or that I can just do all six and make enough money to live, and how this approach is really stressful and not working.
Some I have learned will never make me a full-time income to survive on, as well that relying on them for my survival takes the joy away because they are inherently risky and this triggering my anxiety.
And yet, I am a human living in a capitalist society. I am a single woman living in a capitalist society. While I have family support, in our independent culture, the shame of relying on my family for money or being a financial burden feels grossly privileged and selfish.
I can hear this voice saying, “Sammy! You have to face reality. Sometimes you have to do work that you aren’t passionate about. Sometimes you have to do things for the money. That doesn’t make you a bad person. That doesn’t mean you aren’t living by your values. It means you are human. It means you can’t have everything that you want because that’s not reality. There are constraints. And while I see you are trying to use your privileges to help people and make the world a better place, because you did not choose these privileges, you were born into them. And while you could use these privileges to get further ahead and make yourself and your family more safe and protected, you are trying to use these to change the game. To improve the system to be more equitable, to be more human. To make living in the 21st century better for all humans, not just rich humans, not just white humans, not just male humans, not just straight humans, not just smart humans, not just average humans, not just young humans, not just hot humans, not just American humans. All humans.”
As you have been writing, the core problem I feel wanting to fix is to systemically improve the quality of teaching and the quality of lives of teachers in Los Angeles County, specifically teachers of writing and ELA teachers.
The bigger system is the ecosystem of writers, creativity, communication, literacy, and information organization and training in surviving and thriving in the 21st century.
However this is a really big system with many different parts. I have been trying to work on a few different parts at the same time, and it’s making me so tired and confused. Also – like I don’t have any secure financial income coming in, and while at first it was fine. It’s been two months, and now it’s not fine.
The original plan was to take a year off, substitute teach, and then go back in as a full-time ELA teacher in August – teach summer school, and just resume being a teacher – spending this time to find a good school to work at and develop my curriculum so I would be ready to teach in any high school or middle school ELA program middle or secondary.
But now that I’ve had time out. Now that I’ve been enjoying working on my passion projects (aka the Los Feliz Writers Festival) and have been hired by CSUN and Cambridge to use my 21st century communication skills to support writers and teachers of writing – thus impacting hundreds if not thousands of teachers in two different countries – instead of just the 120 students I teach each year and my colleagues (who we’re all often too tired from serving 120 students to support and develop relationships with each other), and the positive responses to my work, I want to keep doing that kind of work.
I know that I cannot do this work and return to the classroom full-time. I know that I will be too tired and overwhelmed. And yet currently, these two positions are not offering me enough money to survive each month. I have a stipend until December, but it covers less than what I need to survive for one month in LA. Not even thrive. Survive! Just my bills, and enough to feed myself and go to yoga.
I have enough of an emergency fund to get to October 1st, and then – I have to go into my long-term savings (which isn’t that much, but still – having that safety cushion allows me to prioritize my health when I need to).
This new information changes the entire plan that I made when I resigned from my job as a teacher in July.
I have realized that I am now looking for a part-time job that allows me to do my meaningful work that has low financial compensation or none. I need time to do the work. And I need enough money to pay my bills.
This year, I decided – my goal is to simply survive. To survive I need about $3300 a month. How can I make $3500 a month working part-time? Or how can I get my passion projects/freelance work to pay enough money so that I don’t have to do as much part-time work?
Actually, I am going to calculate my numbers. That is my goal. My goal is to by October – have committed clients/job that allows me to make $3300 for the month.
Okay. I am going to list out my projects, and how the money works – create proposals and timelines. And then figure out what part-time job would fit into my schedule and hours for my projects.
I wrote down all the projects I am working on and there were 25!! No wonder I am so fucking scattered.
Time to make a time-line and a plan! Here we go.
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