Posts Tagged → Burnout

Hop aboard the struggle bus our rates are reasonable and our seats are clean hey what do you mean you don’t have exact change f*ck

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that I’d be better at handling loss than I am. Maybe to believe the mid-west adage that there’s nothing more curative than WORK WORK WORK to take your mind off things.

Whatever the case, I have been struggling. I feel like I’m doing a terrible job at school and that just messes with my head. I can’t stand being somebody who isn’t doing their best, and there is no doubt that my classes are being affected by what I’m going through.

I’ve missed more days of work these last few months than I have at any job ever, which means I’ve had substitute teachers, which means that all of my classes are behind in their coursework. It’s nothing insurmountable, and I don’t mean to say a single bad word against substitute teachers — they are vital and God bless every one of them — but the fact is that not as much work gets done when the class has a sub.

Lots of students, even the most studious students, tend to slack off. I don’t get upset at students for it — what am I going to do? Get mad at someone for not wanting to read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?”

Plus, I often feel like a significant portion of my brain has melted. I am just … dumber than I used to be. My memory is bad. I have trouble focusing. Little things that I’d normally remember slip through the cracks. (Cue a panicked student yelling, “Did you grade my paper yet!?”)

Between this paragraph and the last paragraph I typed, I just spent about 10 minutes trying to get the cat to sit on the heated pad we got her. Unsuccessfully.

Sigh.

The solution here is obvious: Time.

Of course that’s the answer. I have to be gracious with myself and give myself time. All I do by beating myself up like this is giving myself a proverbial black eye. All I have to do is wait. Breathe. Exist. “This, too, shall pass.”

I hate it, though. Until it does pass, I hate every last minute of it.

Thanks I hope so too

My dad is sick and I am a mess.

He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a few weeks ago after a hurried trip to the ER when he started having difficulty swallowing. Scans revealed a tumor in his esophagus that prevented food from going down; more scans revealed that the cancer had spread. The prognosis is bad. Stage 4, likely inoperable.

I hate hate hate talking about it. Thinking about it is hard enough — I try to dumb myself down with substances in my off time specifically so I don’t have to dwell on it. Is this healthy? Not one bit. But I’m doing what I can to get through the day. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself.

I’m at a point where I’ve started letting people at work know about what’s going on. Students are asking me about it; I missed school yesterday so I could go sit with dad while he waits to get a feeding tube put in, and today, first thing, I was met by a bunch of, “Where were you yesterday, teach?” (Students don’t really call me “teach,” but I’m hesitant to put my real name on here. I’d hate for my solitary reader to know who I am.)

This is what I assume you look like.

I don’t lie to students about stuff like this. It might be easier if I did, but this sort of thing is a part of life and there’s no use hiding from it. Plus, it isn’t as if people won’t notice something bad is happening. I probably look awful. Still, I won’t go advertising it because, again, I hate hate hate discussing it. When I have to talk about it, I try to sound as positive as I can to keep classes from turning into some kind of morose pity party.

So I smile and say, “Oh, my dad’s in the hospital and I wanted to drive down to be with him.” The conversation continues for a bit and, invariably, students say to me something like, “I hope your dad gets better soon!”

As much as I want to be truthful, I can’t exactly tell them that this isn’t the sort of cancer that gets cured. I pretend to be positive and, while it’s not technically the truth, I just tell students, “Thanks. I hope so, too!” in the most upbeat tone I can muster. It’s better than saying, “I don’t feel hope anymore,” which (unfortunately) is where my head is currently at.

Putting on this act is exhausting and It. Never. Stops. It’s so tiring that there are days when I don’t know if I can actually handle it. My body, like a house consumed by flames, will crumble in on itself in a pile of ash and smoke. “That was a nice old building,” couples will say as the amble by.

How do people do this? I have come remarkably close to losing it this week, and it’s only exacerbated by knowing that worse things are yet to come. Every time my phone rings or I get a text notification I immediately think, “This is it.” A memory will randomly make me feel like crying. I have to excuse myself from class every now and then just to get a moment alone to breathe.

Like a nandle in the nind

I downloaded a little book called The Trauma of Burnout by Dr. Claire Plumbly the other day, hoping (as I always do) to find more information about why I’m having trouble sleeping. And, hopefully, to find ways to improve the situation.

Am I actually burnt out? I don’t know. Being burnt out is more of a spectrum than it is a binary condition (“syndrome,” technically), so I suppose most people who’ve been teaching for a while are. Both mentally and physically, teaching is a tough gig. If you want to see how tough it is, take a little trip over to r/teaching on Reddit and see the horror stories that get posted there on a daily basis.

Plumbly’s book reads like she’s been following me around taking notes about how my day is going, which should make me upset but actually makes me a little relieved. It’s just nice to have a clearer idea of why I feel so crummy and to have some practical steps I can take to fix the issues.

For example, this morning, one of the first things I did after waking up was splash a bunch of cold water on my face, which apparently has some physiological benefits. Did it feel great? No. But my morning did go a little smoother than usual, so that’s a win.

I’ve never been huge on self-help books, but at this point I’ll take advice from anywhere I can get it.