Tag tired

Combat Fatigue

Dusty 1 Comment
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(With apologies to those who have seen actual combat, because what I got ain’t that.)

I was going to write about Biden today.

I started the post and everything — jotted some thoughts down this morning, came up with a title (which I will probably change because unless the title is reeeeaaallll simple, I almost never like the ones I come up with. “The Adventures of Damnation Kane,” about a man named Damnation Kane having adventures. Good. “Brute,” about a brute. Nice. “Lesson,” about a teacher. Cool. “The Dreamer Wakes?” Mmmm, feels off somehow.), thought off and on today about what I wanted to write about. I feel bad, because I’ve been putting this one off, but I know that it’s important; and then also because I had the last week off, and I never got around to writing it. Of course, that’s partly because the week of Spring Break is when teachers get all of their life stuff done — I went to the dentist, the hair salon, and the tax accountant, in addition to donating blood, seeing friends I haven’t seen in a while, and doing hours of yard/housework — and partly because I spent part of the last three days grading student work. I could have spent those hours writing about politics instead, but — well, it’s my job, right?

It’s fine, I thought: I’ll write it Monday evening.

And now it is Monday evening. And I am too tired to write.

I’m so freaking tired.

Why, though? It was only ONE DAY. One day of classes — and Monday is my easiest day in some ways, because I have one extra prep period, because one of my classes only meets four days a week. One day, with one less class, after a whole week off?!? Why the heck am I so tired???

And then my wife, in recounting a conversation she had with one of her students today, put it into words.

“Miss,” one of her students asked her after she had snapped at some loud talking, “why are you so mad?”

“I’m not mad,” she replied, “I’m just annoyed.” (I wasn’t there, so I won’t argue with her characterization of her mood, but in my experience, every single time someone says “I’m not mad,” they’re actually mad. And “Annoyed,” for me, is “I’m mad but trying to control it.” So, respect to my wife for fighting back the rage.) And then she explained to the student why she was annoyed. “This? Teaching? It’s just a job. I didn’t get into it because it was some calling, it’s just a job. I should be able to show up and do my job and that’s it, no big deal.

“But you guys — you make everything so hard. Everything about this job is more difficult because of the students, and how you all act. Imagine,” she said, “if you had to go to work at a fast food restaurant, or whatever — and every customer was a problem. Every. One.”

The student nodded in understanding. My wife went about the rest of her day, and then when I came home she told me this brief story,

It spoke to me. Because that’s it: that’s why I’m so tired. That’s why this job, this teaching, is so damned exhausting all the time. Because every customer I have (Or nearly every customer, and I will also say that every one of them has good days when they are easy and even fun and rewarding to work with [when they order the food]) makes every damn thing so bloody difficult.

So picture this. Most people have worked in fast food; I actually never have, but I have sold concessions at a concert hall, and I have worked a register in a retail store, so I get the idea of this.

Imagine you’re behind the counter at a Popeye’s Chicken or a Five Guys or whatever. Someone comes in, bell on the door dings, you say, “Welcome to Five Eyes!” in your bright customer service voice.

They don’t say anything.

They walk slowly up to the counter — they do not look at the menu — and they stand directly in front of the register. They have a hoodie on, and the hood up, and Airpods in their ears. Phone in hand, they stand there, at the counter, in front of the register, and look at their phone.

“Hi, can I take your order?” you say.

They don’t say anything. They don’t look at you or acknowledge your existence. They keep scrolling through Instagram or Snapchat or whatever on their phone.

“Would you like some of our delicious Chickburgers? Or some fried ham?” you ask, naming two of your favorite items from the menu, two of the most popular orders, which you know all about how to make just right, and people have told you in the past you prepare perfectly.

No answer. Still scrolling. And now there is a line forming behind them.

“If you’d like some more time to look at the menu, maybe you could step to one side and consider, and I can help the people behind you. Whenever you’re ready I can take your order.”

They glance behind them, see the line of people waiting, and then go back to looking at their phone. They still have not looked at the menu, nor responded to you in any direct way. They have not yet acknowledged your existence.

Now you’re getting annoyed. “Sirma’am, I need to help the other customers. If you know what you want, I’d be happy to take your order right now.”

Now they laugh at something on the phone. They do not respond to you.

“Ma’amsir, if you could just look up at the menu and let me know what you want — or even just give me some idea of what you feel like eating, and I can help you pick something. Do you want biscuit fries? Maybe some gravy nuggets?”

Their phone rings. They answer it, and begin a conversation. They do not step away from the counter. They do not look at you, or at the menu. They are talking loudly and laughing, though what they are saying is mostly inane: “No, yeah, I know, yeah, right? I mean, for real, like for real for real. Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

Now you lean over the counter and stare into their eyes from six inches away. They look back at you when you do it, but their eyes are blank. “Ma’sir’am,” you say firmly, “You need to either order, or move aside.”

They stare at you, blankly. They do not respond. You see, out of the corner of your eye, your manager coming up behind you. So you try to remain calm. “Sma’amir,” you say calmly, though there is a growl in your voice that doesn’t seem right, and your heart is beating pretty fast and you seem to be kind of panting and maybe sweating a little — all of which would be normal if you were on the fryers, but not on register. Is something wrong with you? “Do you want to order anything?” You say it loudly, though also, you think, calmly, and slowly.

“Is there a problem here?” the manager asks.

“They won’t — ” you start, but then the customer cuts you off.

“No problem,” they say. They flash the manager a smile. They look at the menu.

You and your manager lock eyes. “Take it easy,” the manager says to you, “just take their order, okay?”

Flabbergasted, you can only nod. The manager walks away again.

The customer looks back at their phone.

You decide to just wait. They looked at the menu, they came in here and stood in front of the register: they surely want food, food that you have, food which you spend all day providing to hungry people. You can’t tell if this person looks hungry, exactly — but come on, everyone needs food. That’s what you sell here. Why would anyone come into this place if they didn’t want food? In the past people have come in already knowing exactly what they want, delighted and even grateful for what they get, for what you provide them with a smile. You brighten days. You provide vital nutrients, and you brighten days!

Minutes go by. They still don’t order.

You slap the counter. “COME ON!” you shout. “ORDER SOMETHING!”

The kitchen behind you goes silent. The people in line look around the person in front, and stare at you. The manager pokes their head out of the office and glares.

You take a deep breath. “Sorry about that. I would really like to take your order and get you some delicious food. Don’t you want delicious food?”

The person in the front is now staring at you, after your outburst. The phone is now in their pocket. But they still don’t order anything. They just stare at you, blankly. They don’t order anything.

Finally you shake your head. You lean close. “Okay, look. If you decide you want to eat something, then you go ahead and tell me what you want, and I will get it for you. But for now, I need to help the people behind you.” They don’t respond. You lean to one side, and look at the person right behind them. “Next, please! Can I help you?”

The second person in line is wearing Airpods. They are staring at a phone. They do not answer you, or look up.

They do not order food.

That’s what it’s like. All teachers want is to help: we know how to help, we have the help ready to give. Students need the help, and mostly even want the help. And yet they are difficult. All the time. One after the other, all day long. For no reason. Annoying their teachers constantly, just because they don’t think about what they’re saying or doing. Avoiding, at the same time, the one thing that would actually do them some good, the whole point behind school, behind teaching, behind all of it. They frequently apologize, especially when the teacher snaps angrily, or chews the students out for not doing enough work or caring enough about their own education. They say they’re sorry — and then they go right back to doing exactly what they were doing before. Nothing. Annoyingly.

My students want to learn. They should learn. But they don’t. Because they won’t try. I have to work five times harder, ten times, a hundred times, to get them to do the thing they should be doing, and they know they should be doing it; but they don’t.

All day long. Every day. For no reason. And that might even be the worst part: because I can’t explain why they won’t do it. I can’t understand why they won’t do it. Neither can they. I can empathize, because I didn’t want to do work in high school either; but I actually liked learning — and I recognized that I needed to do enough work, to do enough learning, at least to pass and move on.

In other words, when I went into the fast food restaurant, I ordered the goddamn food.

My students don’t. They just stand there. It’s not their fault, and they don’t do it intentionally — but my God, I am so very tired of fighting them just so they can eat a delicious meal.

Okay, Now What?

Dusty Leave a comment

So we won.

The knowledge hasn’t trickled down yet to the sewer underneath the swamp, where Trump lurks, where he festers and spreads like an antibiotic-resistant infection (I wonder if, in classic supervillain style, he unintentionally revealed his secret weakness: what if the only way to defeat him permanently is to inject him with bleach? [NOTE TO THOSE WHO ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH MY WRITING AND PHILOSOPHY: That was ironic; I am a pacifist. Please don’t actually try, or plan, to inject the President with bleach. Not even when he is the ex-President. (NOTE TO THE SECRET SERVICE: I know, I shouldn’t suggest harming the President of the United States. I still think it’s a funny joke, so I’m leaving it. I wouldn’t worry too much about the people who read this trying to actually pull it off. And if they somehow managed it, hey, now you can relax and stop feeling all that conflicted guilt and irritation from trying to preserve the life of a pustulent boil on the ass of America. [NOTE TO THE SUPER-SECRET CABAL WITHIN THE SECRET SERVICE THAT HAS BEEN SECRETLY PLOTTING TO REMOVE TRUMP SO YOU ALL CAN PROTECT SOMEONE YOU ACTUALLY RESPECT AGAIN: Try bleach. (Note to my students and fellow grammar/syntax nerds: this is my favorite part of nesting parentheticals like this:)])]), but it’s true. We won. We got past this hurdle.

So now what?

I’ve been seeing and hearing all kinds of advice about not giving up. Continuing the fight. Now is the time, activists say, to turn that anti-Trump fervor into fervor for new causes, to keep the same energy moving forward into the next fight for change and progress. I heard it on Pod Save the People this week (If you don’t know it, this is a weekly news commentary podcast with a focus on people of color and social justice, very well done and interesting and human — sometimes a leeetle too woke for me, but I still recommend it), I saw it on this Twitter thread shared by a friend on Facebook; I feel like I’ve seen this everywhere. Now, whenever I see something like this, the bottom falls out of my stomach; so I may be noticing this sort of thing more, rather than seeing it a whole lot, but it feels like I’ve seen it a whole lot, and I don’t like it.

Because I don’t think I can do that. I am spent. I am drained. If somebody wants me to turn my anti-Trump energy towards a new focus, the bad news is that I don’t have any of it left. The good news is that I am quite willing to move to the next focus, the next fight. I don’t believe this is the end of the issue; the victory we’ve won is incredibly important, like saving the country important — but it’s not the last victory we need to win. I get that. I am with that. I am onboard.

I just don’t have it in me to fight. Not right now. I feel bad about it, but that is the truth. I’m close to my edge. I have of late had bouts of depression and despondency that I have never experienced in my life before now. I struggle with things that should be easy, my patience is gone, I can’t sleep, I’m not writing or reading much right now. Pretty much everything is wrong.

Not everything: my wife is still my perfect partner, and I love her deliriously. My pets are delightful. My friends are fun and supportive. All these things bring me at least some joy, every day and every week and every month. And though it doesn’t necessarily bring me joy, I do have a job and a reliable income, which gives me a sense of security that millions of people — billions of people — are lacking. I am grateful for all of those things. But still, pretty much everything else is wrong, and so:

I need to stop fighting.

I recognize that it is a privilege that I can talk about not fighting; because my life and my freedom is not at risk. It is somewhat at risk because we are living through a pandemic and the situation is deteriorating; I am at a bit higher risk than some because I work for a school that insists on staying open and having students and teachers in person in the classroom every day. But also, I am healthy and I have insurance — and I am not wedded either to glorified ignorance nor superstition, so I listen to the warnings and take reasonable precautions — so the risk is as minimal as I can make it. It’s easier for me to step back from fighting for police reform or environmental action or to protect reproductive rights than it is for people who are at risk from those dangers.

That makes me feel bad, that I can allow myself to step back from the fight while others can’t: but that guilt doesn’t give me the energy or the wherewithal or the resources to fight. It just makes me feel bad, which adds to my current emotional burden.

(And if anyone reading this is thinking, “Pssh, get out of your feelings, Snowflake” — I mean, considering my writing and position and my probable audience, it seems very unlikely that anyone is; but I think there may be some people who still subscribe to the image of men hitching up their gunbelts and soldiering on, because I still think that, a lot of the time — let’s recognize that all the strong silent men of the past drank and smoked themselves to death by age 65. So let’s be clear about what actually works and what we think sounds like it should work, maybe, but really doesn’t. “Sucking it up” is fine when you’ve stubbed your toe. Sucking up your looming despair just makes everything worse.)

I don’t mean to whine (And again, my probable audience probably doesn’t see this as whining, but I watched Westerns when I was a kid, so I feel the need to address this) because I also realize that there are people who are having a much harder time with the same issues I’m having right now, the stress and anxiety and depression, which for others is compounded by other and greater dangers and problems, problems that I don’t have. I want to do two things: I want to be honest about how I feel, as that is the healthiest thing for me to do for myself; and I want to let other people who may feel the same way know that they are not alone.

If you are exhausted, you are not alone.

If you want to join the fight, to keep fighting, to do the right as you see the right, you are not alone.

But if you just can’t do it right now, you are not alone.

So that’s where I am. I want to do a lot of things. I want to write to politicians and urge them to do the right thing. I want to join organizations and show up and participate — and I suspect that my writing skills could actually prove an asset to those fighting for the causes I believe in. I don’t want to join phone banks or knock on doors or fundraise, but I want to want to do those things, and if things were different I’d do them whether I really wanted to or not. I want to donate lots and lots of money to lots and lots of causes.

But instead, I’m going to stop fighting. I’m going to take care of myself.

It sounds stupid to me (Again, trying to be honest, and I grew up watching Westerns, and also wonderfully chauvinistic and hypermasculine shows like Buck Rodgers or The A-Team — and, yes, The Dukes of Hazzard, too) because I don’t fit into a category of people who have problems and need care. I’m a healthy straight white American male with an upper-middle class upbringing: I should be fine. I’m afraid to take care of myself, too, because there are others who rely on me, and it feels to me like I can’t take time for myself without leaving them hanging, and I don’t want to do that: it feels like I’m compounding my — what, my negligence? My dereliction of duty? What is it when a teacher doesn’t take care of his students, when a husband doesn’t take care of his wife, when a pet-papa doesn’t take care of his sweet little 60-pound Boxer-mix princess? When a liberal/progressive doesn’t take part in the fight for social justice and a functioning democracy? It’s my sin, right? My wrongdoing? After all, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. If you’re not part of the problem then you’re part of the solution. All those memes about the German people allowing the rise of the Nazi Reich, the passage in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” when he talks about how the listless superficial support of white liberals is a greater danger than the vigorous opposition of white racists; how can I stop fighting in the face of all that? How can I do nothing right now? However tired I am, surely there is something else I can do? However upset I am, however anxious and depressed, surely there is something I can do? And people are full of advice: if you can’t march in protest, then join a phone bank, write letters, donate donate donate. Take action. Don’t lose the momentum. Don’t stop.

Enough. I must stop listening to these idiotic voices in my head telling me to ignore how I feel and press on forever. They are not telling me the truth. They are not the voices that matter to me, not the people who I care about and who care about me; all of those people tell me to take care of myself, to take it easy, to not put myself under too much stress. Another moment of honest truth: my wife tells me this all the time, and my friend and fellow teacher Lisa; but they are the only ones because I never talk about how I feel to anyone else. Anyone asks me how my day is, and I say it’s — fine. Doing good, I say. Sometimes, with my students, with my parents, I will share that I am not in truth doing that great, but I also immediately get angry and defensive about it, or I breeze right through and change the subject, and don’t allow anyone else to sympathize with me or tell me that it’s okay to not be okay. It is also true that my parents make me feel bad for feeling bad, and my students respond to my sorrow with their own sorrows rather than sympathy for mine; when they do that I feel the need to sympathize with their sorrows, which is hard and draining, and just makes me feel more hopeless and helpless, and also bad for feeling that way; so there’s not a whole lot of impetus to be honest about my current state, most of the time. So I’m usually not. But I want to be, and that’s why I’m doing this, and ignoring the discomfort I feel in writing an entire blog this long about how I don’t feel very good right now.

I don’t feel very good right now, and that’s why I’m writing this, and why I’m not writing much of anything else. That’s the truth.

Here are some other truths:

I spend too much time on social media, particularly arguing on social media. I shouldn’t do it, because the people I’m arguing with are never going to change their minds because of anything I say. I do think there is value in pushing back against ignorant or dangerous or harmful ideas; and I recognize there is some audience reading those arguments on social media who may be more thoughtful and may get something out of my arguments more than my actual opponent will; but it is draining. I spend time on social media because it feels easy and it feels like relaxation — I see memes and laugh, I see videos of cute animals and smile, I see that my friends share my likes and dislikes, my passions and skepticisms, and I feel connected — but I spend a fair amount of that time trawling for arguments, and then continuously going back and arguing again and again and again. I suspect I do this because I am not doing other and more important things, but it’s not a replacement for good and useful action: it’s a waste of time and my limited resources, and a source of unnecessary and unproductive frustration. So I need to stop. That’s the truth.

Being a high school teacher is both very stressful and draining, and also very important; it feels like a copout to say I don’t spend more time fighting for the causes I want to fight for because I spend all my time fighting to make my students less ignorant, but it’s also true: it is a fight, and I fight it hard, every day. They don’t like to read, they don’t like to write, they don’t want to do work, they don’t know how to relate to and understand other people; every day I try to help them do all of those things better, and also understand why they should do all those things, and I try to find reasons that are specific and personal to them. All of that takes energy and passion, and hope and determination, and confidence and faith that what I am doing is the right thing. Meanwhile my school and my society seem bound and determined to tell me that it is not the right thing, determined to get in the way of my and my students’ success: and so I have to fight them, too, have to keep them from shifting my priorities and effort away from what matters, have to avoid the pitfalls and traps they set for me, have to discern when they are genuinely trying to help and when they are just trying to look good at the expense of the real work. All of that takes effort, too. I spend that effort every day.

I think it is vitally important that we recognize that none of us have it easy: that all of us are fighting in our own lives for our own success, every day; taking on other causes is already dipping into our reserves, taking from our reservoir of strength and hope and resolve what may not be there to take for much longer.

We all fight in our own ways, and with our own capacities. I will not be joining phone banks or door-knocking because I am an introvert, and what’s worse, I’m an introvert in an extrovert’s job, so I have to use up all of my socializing energy just to get through my day. If I was still a janitor (And I frequently ask myself why I am not still a janitor — but the reason is because what I do now is important) then maybe I could participate more; but I’m not. If I was an extrovert then I would be happy to go out and talk to people about causes I believe in; but I’m not. If I was rich I would give all kinds of money away; but good grief, I am most assuredly not. And many if not most of the people out there who tell me, who tell us, to fight and keep fighting are not in situations like mine. They may, as I said, be closer to the issues, in more danger because of the problems than I am in; but that doesn’t mean they have jobs as hard as mine is, or proclivities as unsuited to organizing and rallying as mine are. Wishing it was different, or even just pondering what it would be like if it were different, is a waste of time and energy: this is the situation. This is the truth. I’m not lying to myself, and it’s not a dodge or a copout: I am an introvert, and I work very hard at being a teacher, and I am tired. And I need to take care of myself, no matter how stupid or guilty it might make me feel to say that, because if I use up everything I have, if I fail, if I fall: then — and only then — will I be letting down those I love, and those who love me.

And my sweet little 60-pound Boxer mix princess needs her daddy.

So what’s next?

You need to think about what’s next. Think seriously, think truthfully. Think what needs to be done, yes — but also think about what you need, and what you are capable of. If you are ready to start the next round, then get in there and start fighting, keep fighting. If you have to pause to take a deep breath, then do it: breathe as deeply as you can. Keep breathing. If you have to take a few hours for a meal and a glass of wine and a bath and a nap, then do all of that. And do it again next week. If you need a few days for a vacation, or for a retreat and a rest, then do that. If you don’t know what you need or how long you need — and in my case, I do not; part of my struggle with this is that this struggle is new to me, has never been like this, has never been this hard before, and so I do not know what to do, I do not have a ready answer for what is really wrong with me or how to deal with it — then don’t try to decide in advance what you need or how long it will take to take care of yourself. Just take care of yourself until you feel better. Just do that.

Take care of yourself. For me. And I will take care of myself. For you.

Be well.

I don’t know what this means.

Dusty 2 Comments

When I was six, I was walking through the woods on my grandparents’ property in Washington, and I stepped on a yellowjacket nest. I remember the sensation as my foot came down: pushing through the humus of dried leaves, a moment of resistance, and then I crunched through what I thought was solid ground, and fell lower than I thought I should have, on that foot. That’s when I heard the buzzing: z z z ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz It hit a fast crescendo and then lowered to a purposeful, ominous hum, as if I had prodded a sleeper who did not want to wake and who growled resistance at me.

Then the stings started. One, two, three, each more painful than the last, the infuriated insects stitched their revenge up my leg as I stood, frozen, suddenly unsure of the ground beneath me — was it more hollow still? Would I fall through again? — obeying my training that told me to stand still when bees landed on me because they didn’t want to sting me, after all.

But these weren’t bees: they were yellowjackets. And they wanted to sting me. Understandable, really, since I had just destroyed their house and maybe crushed some of their family members; but that didn’t make me feel good about the fiery needles jabbing into me.

Fortunately my mother was there, and having grown up on that place named for her family, she was familiar with the sound of angry bees and yellowjackets: and she realized this was not a good time to just stand still. She scooped me up and ran. Of course I realize now that she was running to get us both away from the yelllowjackets, but at the time, I was suddenly sure that she was running me back to the house because I was going to die: my father is allergic to bee stings, and even at that age, I knew the potential danger of those tiny packets of venom which I could feel throbbing in my shin — and maybe moving up through my bloodstream? Was this the end?

It was not. It was about to be my first encounter with witch hazel (a name that still feels mysterious and alchemical to me), the rapid soothing of the burning stings, a cookie or two to soothe my burning tears, and the disappointing reckoning of a mere six stings, none higher than my knee. Not enough damage for a good I-stepped-on-a-beehive story, though it’s a damn good indication of my mother’s reflexes and quick thinking.

 

That moment of stepping down onto, and then falling through the ground and into a sudden attack: that’s what 2020 feels like to me. The hollowness of the hive beneath me, incapable of holding me up, echoed in the middle of me as I realized what was going to happen, a hollowness that seemed to swell and expand even as it grew more empty and dark and cold, as if my fear were a black hole inside, swallowing more and more and growing larger with each terrified thought that fell into it: that’s what I feel like inside, right now, and for the last six months. It’s a much slower process, this time, lasting months instead of seconds; but I feel very much as though my reaction is identical: I am frozen, panicked, trying to figure out what to do and coming up with no good ideas, just standing and watching as the danger swirls up around me.

At the same time: I am not just the kid walking through the woods, this time. I’m the yelllowjackets. The hollowness inside me is the hive, and the shell around that emptiness is too weak, and can’t hold up the weight of the world that is stepping on me. And as everything going on around me crushes through me and into me, I lash out, angrily — maybe understandable, but really, useless  — and I sting, and I bite, and I attack. I have never been so short-tempered, so cranky, so bitter, so apt to strike, so apt to sting with my words and my tongue, as this year. I hate it. I can’t stop it. I can’t: I don’t have the strength. That’s what was hollowed out of me. And I can’t just set myself and bear up under the weight: because the hollowness is under my feet, too, and I am being stung even as I am stinging.

I don’t know what to do. I’m just standing here. I have been for what feels like forever.

And I’m so tired.

And this time, my mother can’t scoop me up and run me back to the house for the twin magics of herbal remedies and baked goods.

This time, I might just get stung to death.

 

Probably not. I’m aware that as high as the number of Covid-19 cases is, it’s still only a fraction of the population, and that while my state is not handling the pandemic well, I am taking reasonable precautions that should keep me safe; I will most likely come out of this with an unremarkable tally of suffering. I do not mind, this time. I would very much prefer a half-dozen stings, no permanent scars, no need for a doctor. Just some soothing liquid and a cookie or two.

But I’m not just standing still with my foot in the danger zone; I’m still walking forward through the woods. In fact, since school starts tomorrow and goes to in-person classes in four weeks, I may be stepping onto the hive, and then continuing on into it, like walking down into a hive the size of a subway tunnel, with yellowjackets the size of Shelob. (At the same time: those goddamn hobbits are coming into my home, fumbling and ripping through my webs, and they are goddamn well going to pay for it. Nasssty little hobbitses.)

What precautions do I take then, as I move deeper and deeper into this hive pit? My school is trying to stay on top of things, having offered fully online learning as an option, instituting new protocols — social distancing, mandatory* masks, sanitizing spray to be applied every two hours**, fever checks on arrival — intended to prevent the spread of the disease. I don’t know how well it’s all going to work, though; and I have no idea what to do about that. I can’t quit. If I raise too great a stink, they’ll fire me. I guess I just have to stand there. Maybe the small things hovering around me don’t want to sting me, this time.

*Mandatory here means just what it does everywhere: masks are required until someone raises a loud enough political objection, and/or presents a doctor’s note. Then, not. Hope the virus takes doctor’s notes, too. 

**Said sanitation to be applied by me, every two hours, in between classes. On a side note, the spray requires four minutes to take full effect. Time between classes is four minutes. Hope the virus will wait out in the hall.

The danger, though, is not what is haunting me. Perhaps it should be, but the thing that is building a growing ball of hollow darkness inside me, the thing that makes me feel as if my next step will land on an equally hollow surface that will drop me through and out of the world, while at the same time the weight on top of me punches through my thin outer layer and into the hollow within, is this:

I am tired.

The hollowness inside me is not just fear. It is exhaustion. I am so very, very tired. Tired from fighting, tired from standing watch, tired from holding up others as well as myself. I’m tired of watching the pandemic grow, and watching my country wallowing in ignorance and selfishness like a pig in shit — just as filthy and twice as proud of ourselves — as we deny science, and raise alarms for problems that aren’t real, pointing to imaginary dangers that somehow block out of our sight the very real danger of this virus. I am so tired of being angry about it. I am so tired of fighting with people who smugly ignore every fact and every reasonable thought because it doesn’t make them feel safe, or worse, it doesn’t make them feel strong and fearless. Saying they’re not afraid of Covid, that makes them feel strong and fearless.

It’s as if when my mother rushed to scoop me up out of the yellowjacket hive, I had pushed her down, spit on her (Because the people who think this way are some of the rudest, most inconsiderate, most contemptuous hooligans I’ve ever interacted with. And I teach high school.), and then stood with fists on hips, chin jutted, nostrils flaring, and said, “Don’t you tell me where I can stand, I’m an American. You run if you want to, you and all the other sheep!”

While the yellowjackets swarmed around me.

And of course it’s not only the virus. I am so very tired of racism. I am tired of being ashamed of what people who look like me have done to people who feel like me for centuries. I am tired of confronting the same angry, willful ignorance about the protests or about opposition to police violence. At the same time, I am tired of being treated like the people I look like by the people I feel like — and I am tired of knowing that I have no right to complain about any treatment I may suffer, because my world has been built to prop me up, and whatever I may have to go through pales in comparison to the ordeals of those who are less pale than I. I hate that people tell me I have no right to speak my opinion, to take a stand; that all I can do is get out of the way and let better people take what they have been denied for centuries, because people who look like me oppressed them, which has enabled me to become everything that I am — all of it tainted by centuries of crimes against humanity. Not my own gifts and efforts, but my privilege, I am told, is why I am who I am and can do what I can do: and that means I don’t deserve what I have, and using that privilege to try to help solve the problem earns me a sort of sly sneer from those who know that my actions on behalf of the cause are just white guilt, and really, I am still the enemy,still perpetuating the problem if I do anything other than get out of the way.

That’s how it feels. It’s maybe not true that people working for social justice think that way of me, but — that’s how it feels. Of course, maybe that’s just my white guilt talking. And my white privilege thinking that I should be the one to speak up and fight for the cause: because that means I am centering whiteness in a movement that is not intended for the benefit or the recognition of white people or white suffering. It’s so easy to fall into the same patterns that have existed unrecognized throughout my life; how can I tell what is genuine and what is instilled in me by institutions of oppression and privilege? Is everything about me broken and wrong because of the world I grew up in? Is there nothing that is me? No, I want to say; I am good, I am worthwhile, I want to help and I am capable of helping. It is not right that I get pushed aside and marginalized, stereotyped, included in sweeping generalizations, based only on my skin color, my nationality, my gender —

And how pathetic do I sound saying those words.

I’m so bloody tired of irony.

I want to help, is the problem. I don’t want to be like those ignorant yahoos I fight with. I don’t want to be selfish.

But so many people need so much help.

I can do a lot of it. I am happy to do a lot of it: happy to support my family, my friends, those who rely on me. They are struggling, too, because this year has not only been hard for the pandemic and the riots: it’s hard financially, and crippling politically, and my family has had a series of tribulations fall on us like Biblical plagues, one after another and each worse than the last, mostly medical and due to my parents’ generation reaching the stage of life where things go badly. And of course, I can’t do anything. I can’t go help them because I might infect them, and that would kill them — and that would kill me. I worry about them double, because I realize that, on top of everything else, the pizza delivery man might give them Covid-19, and then I wouldn’t be able to visit them in the hospital while they coughed their life away.

And I can’t talk about this, can’t complain about this: because everyone else has it harder than me. Everyone. It’s not just white privilege, not just male privilege; I am healthy, and have remained fully employed, at a job where I am respected and well-liked, and I am generally well-balanced emotionally. I’m not well-balanced this year, of course, but since I started off having an easier time than most, and we’ve all gone down together, I still have more of my head above water than others do who were half-drowning before 2020. So I have no right at all to complain, and if I open my mouth to do it, the response I get back (the response I should get back) is something along the lines of, “Yes, I know, I’m going through that too — and a dozen things that are worse.”

Part of me can’t stand myself, right now, for complaining that I have it too easy in life to complain. And normally, the fact that I do have it easier than most would keep me from complaining because it would keep me from suffering. And even when I do suffer, I don’t have such troubles that I need to vent, need to talk them out. Normally I don’t need much support.

But this year is not normal.

I need to vent. It helps, you see, even if you don’t see how it could possibly help, even if you don’t know why it helps, talking about your feelings helps. I need that help. I need to say how I feel, even if how I feel is gauche or insufficiently woke. (“See that? That’s white sensitivity right there. He needs to grow a thicker skin, learn to deal with being told what he’s doing wrong. It’s just that he’s never been criticized much before, not in this society built for people like him.” Yes. I know it. But this is still how I feel.) Because people need my support, and so long as I am this tired, and feel these hollows under my ribs and under my feet, I can’t give them what they need.

This is what I need: I need to talk. I need to write. I haven’t wanted to do it, not for months now, for all the reasons I’ve been talking about here. There is too much, and I need to figure out what the hell I’m really feeling; I hate to ramble and blunder and sound like I don’t know what the hell I’m getting at. But one of the difficult Catch-22s of being a writer is that writing is exactly how I figure out what I’m feeling; I usually don’t know what I’m getting at when I start writing, I just get there when I get there, and I have a pretty good idea of when to stop. I have no doubt that this blog is irritating and confusing for people who read it. I expect you, too, are short-tempered, unable and unwilling to put out a whole lot of effort helping someone else deal with their shit when you’re sitting there with both hands full of your own.

I’m sure you’re tired too.

It feels strange to write this, because it makes me feel better, and so maybe I want to share that; but I don’t want to be a bother, don’t want to be a burden.

Which is also how everyone else feels, too.

So I’m just going to say it. If what I’m saying is wrong, please feel free to correct me; but first, I need to say it. Actually, I take that back: if you have something you want to say about something I’m doing wrong, put a pin in it. We’ll circle back around to it later. For now, I just need to talk about how I feel. And I won’t ask people to listen to me, because I know you’re all struggling, too — but it would mean a lot if you did.

We all need help. We all need support. We need to ask for it for ourselves. Just asking makes us feel better: because it validates how we feel. Being willing to ask for help, from those whom you are willing to give help to, shows that you consider yourself as important as they are, as worth helping as they are. It shows them that they are not a burden on you, that they can help even as they ask for help for themselves. And everyone feels better when they can help.

I need help. I’m standing on unsteady ground, in a country that is tearing itself apart, and I’m about to go back to work where I will be surrounded (Virtually, for the most part, but still) by students — who all desperately need all the help they can get.

That’s what made me actually open this post and start writing. That’s really what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of the virus, afraid of what’s going to happen in thousands of schools across the country to hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students; but what scares me right now is the knowledge that those students will come to me, and they will need me. They will need me to listen to them, to understand them, to take them seriously, to help them. They are bottomless abysses of need, just like I was at their age, as we all are in that terrible time of adolescence. They will need me even more now, because their world is on fire, too.

I don’t know how much I will have to give them.

I’m so very tired.

I’m just standing here: hoping I don’t get stung.

Can someone please pick me up and run me away from the swarm?

Or if not that — can I have some witch hazel and maybe a cookie or two?

Thanks.

tHIS mORNING

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I am so tired I can’t even think straight.

I feel like I am swimming through pudding: I can move, but everything is slower and takes more effort. And I have absolutely no strength, as if all of my bones and muscles have been replaced by down pillows, and the only thing that lets me move is momentum and weight: I need to pause and set myself before I do anything, like I’m rolling myself to the top of a hill, pausing at the edge, and then — down I go. And then when I do it, since I’m still moving through pudding, I do it so slowly that my mind actually wanders in the middle of it — mostly just to say, “Man, I’m tired.” I’m drinking coffee, and I think the exhaustion beast that is prowling and growling and slouching around inside of me is laughing at the caffeine. Laughing at it. It’s like throwing water balloons at a five-alarm fire. Poor useless coffee.

It doesn’t feel terrible, actually. It feels like I’m just a little bit drunk, or just a little bit high. I think I probably should not drive at the moment. But I don’t plan to. Nor operate heavy machinery.

Nor lift up a heavy topic like the Second Amendment. Sorry about that. I did start to write about it last night, and hit a snag that I need to think about: my utter lack of respect for Antonin Scalia. See, Scalia wrote the 5-4 majority opinion in the D.C. v. Heller case, which is the one that establishes the individual right to own firearms under the Second Amendment, and the second I see that (though I do agree in some ways, as I’ll get into it when it doesn’t take me a couple of seconds to remember where the “c” key is) I just think, “Well, of course that’s bullshit, it’s Scalia.” But that’s not fair, because even partisan bastards like the former “Justice” are sometimes right in their thinking. So there are things I need to think about regarding the Second Amendment before I write about it, and this is not a good morning to start.

So instead, I’ll just see how much coffee I can mainline, see if I can wake up at least enough to do my job (Which first means I need to wake up enough to get to my job. And remember where my job is.), and then I’ll try to take another crack at the big issue tonight and write about it tomorrow morning. It may have to wait for a weekend, though. I hope the people reading this don’t mind a few posts about nonsense; I don’t have a lot else in me right now. Goosefeathers and pudding.

And this song. Which is a perfect song.

 

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I’m tired.

I’m tired of incompetence, malfeasance, and foolishness. I’m tired of administrators who are so afraid of lawsuits that they make bad decisions and do harm to the very school they are supposedly trying to protect. I’m tired of those same administrators being so slavishly devoted to conformity and universality of results that they take away everything that is good about teaching and learning, and about school. I’m tired of students who are more willing to fail than try to learn, who take every opportunity to ask for a free day, who say, “Why don’t we just do nothing today?” Who say “I don’t know how to do that” when they do, just because if they don’t know how then they won’t be asked to try, and they can sit and stew in their own torpor, staring at anything even vaguely stimulating. I watched four students watch one student spin a quarter on the desk for half a period. Just watching him. None of them doing the work they were supposed to be doing. I mean, I was a lazy student, sure, but — seriously?

I’m tired of parents who expect teachers to parent their children, and of teachers who are willing to do it. I’m tired of parents, and teachers, who focus on the signs and symbols of learning rather than on the actual thing itself. I’m tired of telling students that they’ll need this in the future, and that their boss won’t put up with the same crap that I put up with, as if everything I do is designed only to train students to be good employees.

I’m tired of doing things designed only to train students to be good employees.

I’m tired of being a good employee. I’m tired of teachers who obey inane rules rather than rock the boat, and I’m very tired of being one of those teachers. I’m tired of being cautious, and tired of being afraid, when I should be respected  and proud. I’m tired of wasting my time on things that don’t really need to happen, and of falling behind on the things that really do need to happen. I’m tired of trying to find time for myself in between the time I spend on others.

I’m tired of making the same old complaints and accusations.

I’m tired of being tired.

Boy, thank God it’s Friday, right?

Teaching Hard

Dusty 2 Comments

I’m tired.

I hate the end of the school year.

But let me tell you why.

Teaching requires an inordinate amount of energy. It’s why there is such a prejudice towards younger, newer teachers, and against older, wiser teachers: we all know that both age and inevitable cynicism detract from available verve (By the way, if I ever need a stage name, I’m going to use Available Verve.), and we know (Some of us know) just how much pep is required in this profession.

It’s a lot. Because we have to fight children all day.

I’m just going to leave that image to simmer for a minute.

Aaaaaand now I’ll explain.

Elementary school teachers have to fight to first contain, and then direct, a classroom full of sugar-hyped attention-deficient kidnadoes. Think about what it takes to force a child to eat when it doesn’t want to, to sleep when it doesn’t want to, to take a bath when it doesn’t want to; now think about making them do math. Elementary teachers have to be an unbreachable wall standing against a stampede, an immovable object against 25 — or 30 — or 35 — irresistible forces.

High school teachers have the opposite problem: our classrooms are carpeted with anthropomorphic phlegm-globs, like the spittoon of a frost giant with a head cold, that would rather sleep than breathe (And who would be ecstatic if they could sleep without breathing. Or circulating blood. Except you wouldn’t recognize the ecstasy, as expressing it would, like breathing, be too tiring.), and somehow we need to motivate them to read poetry and study history and solve mathematical equations. We must be an irresistible force for a room full of immovable objects.

In either case, it’s bloody exhausting.

Add in the requirements of pleasing supervisors (who want pre- and post-observation conferences, and PLC meeting minutes, and professional development buy-in) and calming frazzled parents (The most-common phrase a teacher hears from adults is probably “I just don’t know what to do with him/her.” It has always amazed me that I, who am and will ever remain childless, can somehow give out parenting advice without getting a face full of “Excuse me? Who the hell do you think you are?” It’s not because my advice is good, though — it’s because I care enough to give it, because I take the time to try. But this, too, is exhausting, because I am handing over just a little bit more of my time and my energy.) and the endless paperwork and the endless guilt, and you might be able to imagine how tiring this profession is.

But that’s not the hard part.

The hard part is that teachers, more than any profession other than the medical fields, emergency services, and ground-level social work, get emotionally invested in the work. My clientele, if we can call them that, are people. They are children (Though in my case they have beards, breasts, and body odor [Not all three at the same time (Well, not often [See, I can’t even make this joke without feeling bad for mocking them in such a personal way. But as an English nerd, I am very pleased by this:].).].), children that are unhappy most of the time. They are confused: confused by difficult school subjects, confused by awkward romance and even more awkward bodies, confused by changing social alliances and the tidal forces of unstable families. They are bereft of childhood, and lament that lost innocence; they are terrified by a future both uncertain and looming, and avoid everything that reminds them of it. And they are angry, and sad, about all of those things.

In “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold described our modern world this way:

…For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

 

Arnold was describing a world without faith. That’s adolescence. That’s my students.

I sympathize with them. I remember it. I remember how my world got so very much harder when I became drenched in hormones around 8th grade (though not, sadly, drenched in sex appeal and confidence to match), and then exponentially harder again when I got to high school and, for the first time, had to work hard to succeed academically. I remember my hopes and dreams feeling shattered by reality. How everything seemed so dark, and so hopeless, and so insane. All of my writing at the time was about madness, loss, betrayal, destruction, murder. About fear and anger. That’s all I was for several years, a ball of fear and anger. With pimples. And an erection.

So when I talk to my students, I feel for them, and I want to help. Helping generally means listening to their problems, really listening and then trying to give some sort of useful response. A lot of the time — too much, really — I can’t help, and I know it; but that’s not any easier, especially when it’s because I know they wouldn’t listen to what I have to say, or that I shouldn’t say it because they should figure it out for themselves. Holding the words in is as hard as speaking them. Sometimes it’s harder. When one of my nerdy students — and as a lifelong nerd and a former awkward loner (Perhaps I flatter myself with that “former,” but my wife tells me I’m handsome and cool and funny, so shut up.), I feel the nerds’ pain more intensely — when one of them tells an awkward joke, or says the wrong thing at the wrong time, or laughs like a dork or fails to control their body odor, I want to say, “This is why girls don’t talk to you. This — and your hair.” But I can’t say it. It wouldn’t help. And it wouldn’t be right for me to do.

It’s hard to remember that. It takes effort to remind myself that I don’t have all the answers, that what worked for me won’t work for all of my students, that often they cannot hear me or believe me because of who I am. The key is to remember that they are in the same situation: no one can hear or believe them, either, because of who they are. But even when I remember that nothing I say will help, I still want to help. So I do what I can: I help them with schoolwork.

I try not to give my students busywork, because I want to show that I value their time. So my assignments tend to be lengthier, and more thoughtful. To help them both be successful and feel confident, I try to read everything they write, and give the best feedback I can; I am known for writing more on some essays than the students themselves. I respond to their thoughts more than the form of them, the grammar and syntax and vocabulary, because the ideas are the important part and also, much of the time, their strength.

But all of that takes time and energy. If I just gave them worksheets all day, I could grade everything in five minutes — or even give them to a T.A. to grade. Or my wife, who loves grading. She likes the power of the red pen. But because I give them extended questions and thought-provoking assignments, and because I want to respond to their thoughts, it means I have to grade everything myself, and I have to read everything, and I have to pay attention while I’m doing it.

And then I have to try to fix their problems. But it’s just like fixing their life problems: sometimes I can’t, and sometimes I shouldn’t; and even when I can and should, it takes time and effort. At least when they come to me with their life problems, they want an answer; but when the issue is that they don’t know when to use a semi-colon or what the point of The Odyssey is, they don’t generally want to deal with fixing that problem; they just want it to go away so they can sleep.

This is probably the worst thing: that when I try to help them, by making their assignments more meaningful and effective, they want me to give them work that is easier. They want worksheets. Because they are tired and stressed, and they don’t want to think, and if I’m trying to be helpful, why can’t I just give them easy stuff to do, or even better, no work at all? Why do I have to make them think all the time?

That’s why they turn into a sticky layer of marshmallow fluff melting over a desk. And then it’s up to me to motivate them, to scrape them up, mold them back into a vaguely humanoid shape, and crack open their brains so I can pour in the knowledge.

Except that’s not actually the way it works. I have to get them to think. Which means I have to get them to want to think.

Which is hard. And it makes me tired.

So then the end of the school year comes slouching towards us. They’re tired and sick of school, and thus that much harder to motivate. I am exhausted myself, and so now I need to do two motivatings: I have to perk myself up to perk them up. God forbid I have seniors, because then the inertia of the Senior Slump becomes quite simply insurmountable. And, though I don’t want to set myself up as being different from other teachers, I do have a couple of added difficulties that I don’t know if they share: first, I didn’t and don’t like school (though I love education), and so the glamor of the end of the school year, the proms and the yearbook signings and the graduation ceremonies, all fail to cheer me; and second, I don’t want to use grades as a means of motivating my students.

I don’t believe in it. Too much emphasis is placed on grades already for this very reason, so that they might be a more effective stick and carrot for tempting and prodding the phlegmatics. (That’s the name of my new band, by the way. The Phlegmatics. Available Verve and the Phlegmatics.) But grades are deceptive: they are an inaccurate measure. If a kid gets an A in my class, was it because of hard work? Natural ability which made effort unnecessary? Is the kid a successful cheat? Was it because my class was too easy? Because this kid had the advantage of a stable home life, with enough money for food and clothing so that this kid didn’t have to work 20-30 hours a week after school? Was it because this kid has learning disabilities and consequent accommodations?

Grades do not help students learn. Grades teach students to game the system. My students focus on large assignments rather than small ones, because small ones don’t change grades as much. But without the practice that comes from doing small assignments, and the steady incremental improvement gained thereby, they don’t do very well on the large assignments. So they ask for extra help. They ask if they can do work over again for a higher grade (Meaning I have to grade it a second time, after reading it a second time), or ask if I can look over work before they turn it in (so I can look it over again) and tell them what grade it would get (Before I grade it again, officially). They hunt, like pigs after truffles, for extra credit. And, of course, they cheat. Not because they’re lazy or stupid, most of the time, but because they don’t think they can do the assignment well enough to get the grade they want. And much of the time, they’re right — again because of the lack of steady incremental progress. That’s what grades do: they focus only on the ends, and thus destroy the means. They harm education. They replace education.

And then because we use grades as carrot and as stick, they cause stress, for students, for parents, for teachers, for schools. And that makes everything worse: my students are more miserable, and more exhausted, and so am I, both from their stress and from my own. Which is always worst at the end of the year, when the grade becomes THE GRADE.

I don’t want to add to their stress and misery. I don’t want to scare them. So I don’t hold their grades over their heads. They’re up there anyway, that sword of Damocles called THE TRANSCRIPT and THE PERMANENT RECORD, but I don’t point to it and put on my angry face. (Full disclosure: my own transcript, which was pretty ugly, hurt me exactly — none. Affected me not at all. Which is part of the reason I don’t try to use grades as a stick, because they meant zip to me personally back when I was a rage-horn-ball. But again: does that apply to all other people? Probably not.)

Unfortunately, that means I have to find some other way to motivate them. And the best one — the only one — requires of me a higher output of energy. I have to make the class, and the work, interesting. To teenagers. I have to make it useful, and also fun. I have to treat my students like the unique feeling individuals they are, and I need to show them that what matters is the thinking and the learning — not the grades.

I have to do that five times a day, every day, for ten months. And the farther we get into the year, and the closer we get to summer, the harder it gets.

I hate the end of the school year.

I’m tired.