Financial Escape Plan

As I've said before, I really do love my job. Despite that, though, I have days when it's hard, when it feels like it's just too much, when it's emotionally draining and exhausting and just takes so much out of me. There are things I would like to do, creative things and fun things and domestic things, that at the end of the day I just don't feel capable of doing.

These are the days when I start plotting my escape.

I know that at this point in my life it makes no sense to quit my job. I'm in a lot of debt, my husband is still in school, and honestly if I quit my job I would have very little to make me feel fulfilled. But sometimes it's nice to fantasize about all the things that I could do if I didn't work full time.

So on those evenings I devise a financial escape plan. I sit down with a notepad, a calculator, or sometimes a spreadsheet, and I figure out exactly how much money I would need to survive for one month. I figure out ways I could generate extra income, through part time work and ventures, and I try to make those things as close as possible. Then I figure out how much more money I would need to spend a few blissful jobless months and how long it would take me to save up that much money.

What do I take away from these exercises? Well, besides a strange nerdy kind of satisfaction and sense of calm, I do develop a greater understanding of some truths about my financial situation. For one, I will never come close to financial freedom until I can knock out all the debt, so that is a serious priority. Also, when I can see a goal, like 2 months with nothing to do but bake banana bread, do yoga, and sleep late, my idea of how much money I can cut on entertainment changes significantly. And finally, that the better job I can do at generating alternate income, the easier it will be for me to eventually switch to part time work.

Of course this is a long way off, but for now, a girl can dream.

I want to do everything

This is going to be kind of a strange post today, in that I'm not really going to talk about money, frugality, or simplicity. I'm not going to talk about values and ideals, about how to help people, about what it means to be successful or fulfilled.

Well, maybe that's not entirely true. Maybe I'm going to talk about all of that a little bit, but mostly I'm going to talk about life. Bear with me if you can, but if you're looking for some straightforward answers, move along. I won't be offended.

I'm starting school again at the end of this week. I haven't really started preparing, mentally or physically, because I have such complicated feelings about going back to work full time. As much as I really love teaching, I had a very frustrating end of the year last year and am having trouble building up the enthusiasm to get started again.

So every day, instead of facing head on the possibility of what it means to go back to work and be a full time teacher again, I'm finding more things to do. I'm blogging, writing articles, doing free online classes. I'm taking on more part time work, I'm looking into volunteering, I'm writing in my journal more, I'm reading three books at once. I've started knitting again, I'm being very conscientious about going to the gym, and my laundry is more caught up than it's ever been.

I'm hiding.

The truth is, if I do everything just a little bit, if I don't focus on any one thing, then I will never have to face up to my feelings about what it means to really be this person who I am. If I dont' ever make any choices, then I won't ever make the wrong one. I want to be a domestic goddess, I want to work in a museum, I want to be a full time writer, I want to travel the world. Do I want to be a teacher?

The strangest thing has happened. As I've gotten closer and closer to returning to work, and tried harder and harder to avoid thinking about it, I've been running into my students. This hardly happened all summer and now, this week, it's happened three times. And when I see them I feel warm and comfortable, I feel successful, I feel like I'm somebody, like I'm good at something. And boy is that terrifying.

I've said from the get go that one of my financial goals was to eventually make enough money that I could afford to leave my job if I wanted to, afford to work part time. Everything I do to reduce my expenses and increase my side income is predicated around this idea of escape. If my side income exceeds my outgo, then I have a safe route of escape from my full time job, from my life. And that makes me feel safer about the whole thing, makes me feel like it's okay to have this job, to be this person, because it isn't forever. It isn't real. It isn't me.

So why don't I want it to be me? Why am I so interested in trying everything at the expense of being anything? Yeah, my job is hard, and it's frustrating. It's a lot of work, the pay isn't very good, things go wrong. Kids are rough, parents fuss, administrators can be downright heartless. But I don't think that, really, that's what bothers me.

The thing that I realize more and more is that this is the first time in my life I've EVER had the same full time job for more than one year. We moved around so much, and I was in school so long, that I have a host of experience on my resume, but the one experience I don't have is going back.

I think it's time to be brave and accept that that is my next adventure.

I want to be a writer (Repost)

(This is a respost of the last post from my writingup blog, which is now most assuredly gone forever.)

I want to be a writer. I don’t really care what I write, just so long as I get to write every day. I think that writing would be just about the best job in the whole wide world. Here’s why:

1. You get to write. In fact, you’re required to. It’s kind of the whole point.

2. You get to make your own hours. Sure maybe there would still be a lot of them, but you could start and stop them whenever you wanted.

3. You don’t work for anyone. You aren’t at the whim of some employer who is going to get on your case for something stupid. Well probably clients do that, but it’s not the same.

4. You don’t have to do the same thing all the time. You can change it up and vary what you do through the day.

5. You can work from home. You don’t have to go out in public at all if you don’t want to.

Is this really what it’s like? Is this just my fantasy? Does this have any bearing on the world of working writers? Is there anyone in the known universe who would pay me for something so wonderful and so absurd as writing? Do I have what it takes? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m ready to find out. I’m afraid. I’m not ready to give up the candystore, so to speak (If I had her money, I’d be richer than she is). But I’m not sure I have the energy to write if it’s my third job. It’s just too much.

10 tough things about being a teacher

This is a riff off of and a gentle parody of the post 10 Reasons it doesn’t pay to be the computer guy from my very old friend Shaun at Life Reboot.

10. “Your” accomplishments are always really someone else’s.
You’re only doing your job when you’re helping other people do better. If they don’t do well, you’re letting them down and not doing your job. If they doll, well gee, aren’t those kids just brilliant?

9. You always have to work more hours than they say you do.

You may be told that you need to stay at school until at least 3:30, but you will definitely be staying until 5 some days. You will then be coming back at 7 to chaperone a dance, and coming home from the dance at 11 to grade thirty papers and plan your lessons for the next week.

8. If you need technology, it will undoubtedly be broken.

I have never managed to work in a school that could keep a copy machine working, let alone computers, a network, or a projector. You will however be constantly reminded of the necessity of using a variety of technology to support student learning.
7. Guilt reigns.

The moment you decide that you will not work one more uncontracted and unpaid minute, it will immediately be proposed to you by a child, parent, or supervisor that if you were to do this one little thing it will change a child’s life forever. If you don’t, well (sniff, sniff), I guess he or she will find a way to get by.

6. You are always a teacher

You’re a teacher when you’re at the grocery store, when you’re at the movies. Children will find this an appropriate time to converse, play, or torture. Parents will think it completely acceptable to begin a dialogue about your grading system.

5. You are not a person.

You’re expected to know everything. You’re not allowed to have a bad day. You’re not allowed to be stressed or take it easy. You’re hardly allowed to call in sick, and if you do you better spend at least two days of extra work planning for and recovering from it.

4. Everyone thinks they can do your job.

Everyone you meet has had teachers and since it never looked that hard, everyone thinks they could do your job. They will never actually say that but will make it abundantly clear several times per conversation.

3. You are completely responsible for the lives of twenty human beings for about 7 hours a day.

They are not, however, your children. When they leave your sight, you have very little control over what happens to them, what they do, or who they become.

2. The money. . . well. . enough said.

1. Well, umm. . . .

… There isn’t one. The truth is, I love teaching and I wouldn’t stop. The other day I had a kid tell me that the reason he stopped plagiarizing is that I taught him how to write. The last time I got guilted into volunteering something, I cheered louder than any of my kids when we found out that they won. I can call an audible and talk my way out of a technology meltdown in about 5 seconds and you know what else?

I am always a teacher.

Is it easy? No. Do I sometimes feel overworked and underappreciated? Oh yeah. Sometimes in the morning I curl up on the couch and cry into my coffee because I just don’t want to go to school. But then sometimes at the end of the school year, I get a note from a kid that says “Words cannot describe how much you’ve done for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

And then I can’t wait to start again.


More on teaching:
/
Graduation Day
You can't save them all
Why I teach