Literary Pixie

By Sammy Ginsberg

I have been in a chaotic transition phase for too long. I want it to end. I can hear my nervous system loud and clear. She says, “Sammy! If you don’t end this soon – I’m gonna freak out again, and you’ll have to stop working, write every day for 3 hours, go to yoga twice a day, and hide in your house for a month.”

What does stability look like? I made the whole plan!

I’ve realized that in order to stabilize my relationships and lifestyle and fun, first I need to stabilize my purpose and finances.

Thankfully I have stable housing. I am grateful for my roommate/cousin! I feel safe at home, and I am able to rest there, to get my needs met. I love my neighborhood, I feel safe and a sense of belonging there. I would like to continue living there, and think that living in this apartment and this neighborhood is critical for my stability.

What if I commit to living there in the apartment until my finances and my purpose are stable? I am committed to the neighborhood longer and am dreaming of buying a small apartment building with a group of people and setting up a co-op!

That’s good. I feel good knowing that is stable.

But back to the critical causes for instability. My purposes and finances.

How much money I have determines what I can do for fun and how much I can spend.

My purpose – I feel like my purpose is pretty stable, it’s just been hard to figure out the money situation.

I believe my purpose is to improve the infrastructure of support for writers and teachers of writing.

This I feel secure about. And I believe that this is my role for a long-time.

I am making huge steps in this direction:

• I am one of the co-directors of the CSUN Writing Project supporting teachers of writing. This provides a small stipend.
• I am going to start as Communications Coordinator for the California Teachers of English Southland chapter. This provides a small stipend.
• I am going to apply to be the Editor of the California English journal. This also provides a small stipend.
• I am a researcher on the impact of social writing on health, wellbeing, and professional/academic achievement as part of Cambridge ThinkLab!

Together however, it is not enough money to pay even my rent doing this three jobs.

This is why I took on other marketing work that I hoped I could apply for grant funding and turn into paying jobs – Social Media Coordinator for PorchFest and Co-Director of the Los Feliz Writers Festival.

However, right now those roles do not pay, hence why I ran out of my emergency money. Also doing the work for the festivals, on top of the CSUN job – and trying to work on my health routines, finances, and friendship – I was capping out!

I did not have time to think about finding and applying for grants because that is a full-time job, too!

Doing marketing is typically a full time job (for one org let alone multiple projects!), and so is grant writing and development.

Also I’ve been working as a teacher for the last four years and need to refresh on my skills, also these orgs I am working for are very new or small teams and are developing the system and culture. They are basically start-ups! Which requires a lot of effort just to build the system and develop working relationships with people.

The result of all this effort is that I feel my energy pulled in so many directions as well as super anxious about money, and I’m not able to focus on improving the quality of my relationships and health routines aka the reason I left teaching because I could not teach full-time and maintain my relationships and health to the quality that I need to not burnout.

Hence essentially back at square one.

I am telling myself that this chaotic transition phase will be over by January.

I will have confirmed these three positions, and I will find a stable part-time job that all together gives me enough money to pay my bills and living expenses.

I’m not even trying to make money to save. I’m trying to make enough money to live.

It is the part-time job that I am ruminating on.

If I could substitute teach consistently every Monday and Friday, that would be enough money with my stipends to live on.

I will try to get a job teaching summer school, and if I could get hired at CSUN or a community college – that would solve my problems. Then I could do these three stipend roles and teach, and pay all my bills and expenses and have stability.

For me to do these three jobs and maintain my health and relationships – it has to be part-time. It’s ideally in the afternoon or evening and weekends, or two to three times a week.

The idea of working at a community college or CSUN teaching sounds stressful right now because I would want to do a good job at that too! But I need to focus on these three other positions, and doing well at those.

Therefore, I think substitute teaching, working as a teaching assistant, bookselling, tutoring, college essay coaching, working at an afterschool program are things I think are meaningful, low pressure, and know how to do. These can be done part-time as well.

I would do my freelance marketing, but I need to be able to walk away from clients if we are not compatible and if I need the money, that will be almost impossible.

Therefore these are the choices.

I have decided, I will not apply for community colleges or to teach at CSUN until Summer or Fall.

These purpose jobs are stable. I have been doing them since I was in high school/ for years.

Because of this Substitute Teaching Job – I will be financially stable until January.

Therefore I need to focus on setting up the work for Spring Semester.

We know where we live. That will not change. Therefore, we should contact these places. Make a list.

I will not take any marketing clients unless they pay me $60 an hour and we set up a 3 month contract with weekly hours that work with my stable-part time jobs and stipend work!

Okay. This has been clarifying.

I can see the stable life.

Mondays and Fridays I substitute teach.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – I work on my stipend work and contract work.

I need two evenings a week where I rest/chill and do life stuff: Sundays and Mondays! Friday is also more a chill evening.

Okay- time for a spreadsheet!

Then I can fill in with friendships, commit to long-term things.