Needing something better

I've been feeling shitty all day, today. Feeling taken advantage of, used, and otherwise shit upon.

I've realized since visiting other schools that the school I work at is really shitty. I'd never let my own kids go here, is the truth. Not with how it is run, currently. This is a school of last resort. That's why I wanted to work here, because I have a genuine commitment to kids who are more often left behind that no law could ever mandate that teachers or anyone else have.

But I'd never let my kids go here, is the truth, as long as it was run the way that it is. Meaning, as long as kids and the job is treated like a neverending burden rather than a responsibility freely taken up.

Today, it feels like a burden. In a serious way. If I felt like this every day, I would hope that I would leave this job or any job, especially one where you are working with people or children, and go find something better.

But many people don't. And many, many teachers and administrators teach and work in my school feeling the way I do today most of their time in schools. That is a sad fact of life.

I have an assistant principal who epitomizes this fact more anyone else I know. She clearly doesn't like her job, most days. She clearly doesn't seem to like life much, most days, is the truth. And she doesn't say or do much that inspires much respect for her, except that she keeps slogging it away in a job that most people wouldn't want. Someone needs to want her job because someone probably needs to replace her. She just isn't that good an administrator, and I don't suspect that she was that good of a teacher. She just climbed the ladder with ambition that outweighs her abilities. It's the saddest thing to see happen anywhere, especially in positions of authority. But I imagine it happens all of the time. She was largely responsible for my dismissal, I suspect. And she has been a miserable administrator to work with most of the time.

And I cannot wait for my 6 additional days in this job to be up more than anything else because I do not want to feel like this in any job for any period of time and hopefully never (a guy can always wish). And one of the more important things I've learned in my life is that I would never want to grow up to live the miserable life that this assistant principal leads, who doesn't seem to like people, at all, much of the time, including herself.

I am making plans for how I can have a much happier life, largely. A job where I get hassled least and constructively challenged most and independent wealth are both routes that I will be working on developing. I just can't ever see myself, again, living a life that is subject to the whims and groupthink and popular impulses of a persistently feverish, inconsistent, and often intellectually dishonest mob of whatever folks I happen to settle down my career and life with.

I want a life of independence. I want to spend my life with people who have something constructive and decent and thoughtful to contribute to it. I want to never again or a little as I can possibly encounter be under the thumb of anyone, especially someone who doesn't think as much as I do. But I really don't want to be under the thumb of anyone, is the truth.

I don't want to ever deal with a situation like this, again, and wonder, "How did my life get turned upside down? And who are these people condescending me?"

But, most of all, I just don't want to feel like this all the time. How I'm feeling today. I don't want to feel like this, at all, is the truth. And I will do anything I can to make that a reality in my life as much as possible for the rest of my natural born life.

I used to love school and respect authority, generally. I respect people of all stripes. And I follow authority, generally. But I don't respect authority figures because of their authority, anymore. If you have something deep and significant to contribute to my life, then I respect you. If you don't, and especially if you think that authority is some kind of substitute for that, I pity you, is the truth. Because your life is so bankrupt that you don't even know the unique thrill of studying or learning or teaching or sharing insight into those deeper truths of life.

I got an email from my advisor/professor from grad school the other day. And I remembered why I loved professors so much. Not because they were perfect. They're not. But because they are, often, the least arbitrary and the most thoughtful of the people I have dealt with in life, generally.

But maybe it's just mostly because they live in community where ideas and deep thought is taken seriously, even if they don't always have their heads completely wrapped around those thoughts or ideas or even if some of them are boorish and rude and overbearing just like so many people outside of a university.

At least they care about something that matters.

And I need to get back to that life, as much as possible. And perhaps I need some level of independence even from that life.

But anything would be better than how shitty I feel right now, frankly.

Here's to hoping there is something out there that might fit the bill. I really need it.

Love,
Ben