Somewhere between today's three hundredth playthrough of Weird Al's "Skipper Dan," a much-needed dinner break reading my latest David Weber novel in which a young priest learns the truth about his fabricated church and wrestles with his faith, and explaining to Kara that I should never have become a securitization attorney in the first place, I think I figured it out. What's bothering me right now, I mean.
Let me back up.
The past few days I've been depressed again. I should be enjoying my spring break, reveling in the fact that I have a book coming out, lots of time to paint, a new roleplaying game I'm running (even if it is D&D, which itself is a sign of depression), lots of time to read, new shows to watch. Instead, I'm feeling like life doesn't mean very much.
Oh, part of me is just mourning the loss of my trip to Disney. I was supposed to be spending a whole week on Batuu as Kalen Lowery, an expatriate from Arkanis fleeing the First Order and the loss of his copilot, flying jobs for Hondo Ohnaka all day and being recruited into the Resistance, trying to get passersby to play a game of dejarik or sabacc or just journaling under the Batuuan sun. I had a plan: for lodging and meals on a budget, for how to carry everything I needed on my person without a backpack in a way that still looked Star Warsy. And now that won't happen. Probably not until next year at the earliest. Maybe never.
It's not about getting to Galaxy's Edge. That I'll be back to, maybe this year. It's about the trip. About having a whole five days in Galaxy's Edge (okay, maybe a day for other Disney stuff), without anybody wanting to do anything else, without anybody else there. About Kalen being stuck on Black Spire Outpost due to circumstances beyond his control and not being sure he wanted to leave. It was about me working out feelings of life being empty and pointless and deciding that it's not, about bringing joy to people's days with my interactions and remembering that magic still exists in the world if only we have the wit to see it. About really immersing myself in a place I wouldn't want to leave, and choosing to leave anyway. Kalen can't really get stuck on Batuu forever, you know. That can't be what the story is.
But good luck finding another week I can afford to take to go to Orlando before my annual pass expires.
Anyway ... as much as I hate having rituals taken away from me, my canceled spiritual retreat to Black Spire Outpost is not actually what's been bothering me.
What's really bothering me is that I feel like my job's being taken away from me, and I don't know what to do about it.
So let me back up and explain that.
I was telling Kara the other day that I never should have become a transactional lawyer. What I should have been was a tax attorney. Transactional attorneys - the kinds of lawyers who actually make deals happen - are too much like diplomats for me to ever be a good one. As my last mentor told me before I quit the profession, in that job, you have to be okay with people being mad at you all the time. And I'm not. Not people I need to work with, anyway. I can dismiss people I can forget about just fine, but i don't have the trick of tuning out the emotional displeasure of people I have to interact with. But tax attorneys ... tax attorneys just wrestle with the law and make pronouncements to the transactional attorneys that Thus Saith the Tax Code. The kind of tax attorneys I always worked with, anyway. By the time I figured that out, it was too late. I'm not equipped to be a good transactional attorney, but I think I could've made a good tax attorney.
Should've been a tax attorney.
Or maybe not. Because then I probably never would've been a teacher. But that's kind of the point.
Because here's what's really bothering me: maybe I'm trying to be the wrong kind of teacher.
My current principal is threatening to put me in an "English language arts" class of newcomers, which is to say brand new immigrants to the US, most of whom will literally not speak English. I use the word threatening and the quotation marks advisedly. I feel wildly ill equipped to teach a class like that. I am, frankly, certain I will fail - or at least fail by the metrics that matter to my principal.
Some of her motivations in making this move are benign; I recognize that. But only some of them. And regardless, it feels like she's taking away my kids and putting me in a situation in which I cannot possibly succeed. And the reason she's doing that is because I have, in her eyes, failed to establish control of my classroom in the way she wants to see it.
Now, I know that is bullshit, in lots of ways. I do connect with my kids. I give a damn, and they know it. I know that matters in ways that isn't going to show up in my principal's precious metrics. But I also know that I have failed to convince my kids - most of them, anyway - that what we do in my class matters, and they should give a damn. Not about me. About reading.
And I have to admit, it's got me thinking. Look, I know I'm a phenomenal teacher. Give me a student who wants to learn and I can find a way to make the light bulb go on about most things, for pretty much anybody. I'm good at that. Better than most people who hold instructional positions. I know that. I am a teacher, and I always will be.
But am I trying to be the wrong kind of teacher?
This is where "Skipper Dan" comes in, by the way. I've been bingeing it not because of the Disney connection (okay, there's a little bit of that), but because it's about a man who is a phenomenal actor and spent his life failing to become a breakout star, and landed as a tour guide on the Jungle Cruise ride ("Skipper Dan is the name ..."). The actual song is pretty bleak about this, but it's such an upbeat earworm that the unspoken message is that working on the Jungle Cruise ride is actually not such a terrible thing after all. There's a kind of wonderful beauty to it. It's just not how Dan saw his life going.
You get it, I assume.
I could have been a good lawyer ... but I spent ten years trying to be the wrong kind of lawyer.
I know I'm a good teacher ... but am I trying to be the wrong kind of teacher?
I truly hate the thought that there are students out there I might not be able to teach, but ... what if there are? What if there are types of teacher that I'm not suited to being, just like there were kinds of lawyer? I mean, if you put it that way, there are almost certainly types of teacher I'm not suited to being. What if I look back in another ten years and I'm paying the rent and I'm swallowing my pride and I'm working on the Jungle Cruise ride?
Would that be okay? I mean ... maybe? I just don't know that I'd be any good at it.
I don't know what to look for, and I don't even know how to look. If I stay at my Title I school, I get my classroom taken away from me (I might need to stop thinking about it that way, but ... that's where I am right now). It's more than halfway through April, and it doesn't exactly seem like I'm likely to get another classroom right now. Should I even be looking for another classroom? Could I, I don't know, be a full-time tutor? My coach said she'd like to see what I can do with a real honors class, and hell, so would I ... but how am I supposed to get one?
By the time I figured out I should have been a tax attorney, it was too late to make myself one. It's only been two years of teaching, and I would hate to think I've already become unemployable because I did this career wrong, too. I already lost the last two years of my marriage to this career transition, and for all I know, my chance to raise Meshparjai, too.
I'm pushing forty and, honestly, my working life feels like a failure. A lot of my life feels like a failure, really - that's why I was supposed to be going to Batuu, damn it - and I don't want my second career to be a failure, too.
That's what's bothering me. At least I figured it out.
Now my hopes have all vanished and my dreams have all died
And I'll prob'ly work forever as a
Tour guide on the Jungle Cruise ride
Skipper Dan is the name
And I'm doing thirty-four shows every day
And every time it's the same
Look at those hippos! They're wigglin' their ears
Somebody shoot me, 'cause I'm bored to tears
Always said I'd be famous; I guess that I lied'
Cause I'm working on the Jungle Cruise ride.
