Non-Sleeper cell -- for those who want to ramble at night, not bright and early

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I woke up today, after maybe 5 hours of sleep, to no texts or missed calls from students which is such a rarity that my first thought was that my phone was not working. But I did have a message from car wreck victim’s boyfriend stating she was heading to surgery but there’s no evidence of head or neck injuries. So I’m back to crying and feeling frustrated and helpless.

(Why do I even care so much???)

Agreed. however:

This is what is driving me, I think. Emotional turmoil and mental breakdowns are … mine. It’s still early and I didn’t sleep well, so adjectives are failing my sleep-deprived brain. But I feel – rightly or wrongly – that part of my duty is to be here for these kids, to be a rock that they can lean on and hopefully find solace in. I have to be strong for them. Here, at the privacy of my desk or with random internet strangers, I can break down and suffer. But someone has to be there for these kids when they need it.

I’m not saying I disagree with you, @Spice_Weasel – far from it. However, finding that fine line that allows me to shut down and take a mental breather throughout the week is going to be difficult. When one hears a cry in the dark, its in our nature to offer help.

To further add credence to your summary, we found out a few days ago that our winter holiday has been effectively cancelled. We have always taken the standard 2 or 2 ½ week break. I was looking forward to this more than I can articulate and while I knew I would still be getting calls and texts from students, all the rest of it I would be able to eschew: the Zoom lectures, the attendance tracking (lots of fun when students aren’t engaging!), the meetings on top of meetings, the absolutely endless emails… all of it. Which would’ve made student contacts much easier from simply a logistical point of view. Now we have Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off. Wonderful. Thanks, admin. Fuck you and your “thanks for all your incredible hard work” insincerity. So while I don’t know if this is sort of a existential “I need a new career” burnout or just “sick of this fucking pandemic and all the bullshit it’s caused” burnout, I’m definitely there.

This is my second career. I spent 13 years as a hospice worker before going back to school. I even started an “AMA” thread her on the Dope… Christ, must’ve been a decade ago now. But I just finished my MA this year and I’m not ready to throw in the towel, not by a long shot. But I do need to find a way to disconnect and establish boundaries.

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Teaching school should not, should not, should not be an equal or greater source of emotional stress than doing hospice care.

But that’s the world we’re in. I can’t think of a single useful thing to say. But I’m listening.

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Hospice? You’ve been doing the hardest work forever! You have my admiration coming and going.

My humble (honest, I do mean humble) advice? Do some reading on compassion fatigue and see if you can find enough bucket-refillers to preserve your and your family’s peace and sanity. There are some great TED talks on compassion and compassion fatigue for instead. One of my kids is a psychiatrist in residency in a huge medical center hit hard by Covid and s/he talks to me all the time about how a big chunk of the work /she/he does is supporting informally the doctors and nurses who are holding back the forces of death at their doorsteps every night and day, without cease. His/her specialty is treating adolescents, s/he is at the receiving end of a lot of the same kind of texts and Zoom calls you are. S/he is a big believer in acknowledging and taking care of his/her compassion fatigue so that he/she can continue to be there and care for those same kids you care about, as well as offering a healing ear to colleagues battling their compassion fatigue. S/he says a stiff upper lip is not your friend so I’m glad you are engaging here.

I did a fair bit of hospice nursing. Here’s my second piece of humbly-offered advice. If you don’t have a pet cat or dog, get one if you can. Dogs, with their unconditional acceptance can be life-savers in fighting compassion exhaustion. If getting a dog isn’t feasible in your circumstances, ask friends with dogs to let you take theirs on walks or to a dog park or just to throw tennis balls around with them in their back yard. Cats can work too, just differently. Music also-whether listening to it or making it. For me it’s quixotically bagpipes, drums or rebel country acapella. Go figure. You Tube is my free friend. I’ll warn you though-cats will bolt off your lap if you turn on YouTube bagpipes or Willie Nelson. Must be the thumping screechy thing.

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Boo, your KC Chiefs looked pretty bad in the first half tonight. They redeemed themselves in the second half, though.

Mahomes is amazing. I don’t know if I agree, but a friend said, “Mahomes is what Tom Brady was in the early 2000s.” Mahomes is certainly somebody to watch, in any event.

Monday night, my Niners take on the Bills. Going to be a good game. Go Niners!

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[quote=“Spoons, post:664, topic:919990”]
Mahomes is amazing. I don’t know if I agree, but a friend said, “Mahomes is what Tom Brady was in the early 2000s.” Mahomes is certainly somebody to watch, in any event.
[/quote

Smart. Cool, calm, collected beyond his years. Rarely gets rattled.

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Exactly. You summed up Mahomes nicely. During all of today’s game, he exhibited all of those traits. Which makes him scary.

Kind of like Joe Montana, right? :wink:

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Those were the days…

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Good luck to your Chiefs, Boo. The Niners don’t look to be doing anything special this year. Though I’ll support them for the rest of the season, I’ll continue to watch KC, with interest.

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Lancia, You wondered how other teachers do it. I did not teach in the same circumstances you do, but I had my fair share of student crises, including deaths (There is nothing worse than going to a kid’s funeral. I went to 9 or 10 in my 25 years teaching.), homelessness, abuse, mental illness, addiction, and dysfunctional families. At one time, I worked in a domestic violence program, and just after that, I spent several years running a program for kids, half of whom had been sexually assaulted and most of whom were from impoverished and dysfunctional families. Your situation is intense, and COVID has made your students’ lives harder, but I hope something I can offer will help.

You’re a good, caring person, so there’s no way you’re not going to be worried, frustrated, and sometimes heartbroken. You can’t continue the way you are, though, or you’ll have a breakdown or will burn out and won’t be there for the kids whose trust you’ve earned.

Realize that you’re doing something important by being there, by being the person they call. You have entered their world, and a tough, chaotic, painful world it is. I know you know this, but as a reminder, you can’t heal their families, give them a permanent roof over their heads, fix their issues, make their lives stable, or bring them back to the classroom. You can do what you’re doing: guiding; advising; being the caring, reliable voice on the phone–and that’s a lot. (I assume you’re also networking with DFS and other agencies, as well as whatever resources your school has.) It’s all they expect of you. It’s all you should expect of yourself. And it really is a great deal.

I really, really urge you to establish boundaries. I had an ironclad rule: no taking work to bed with me. I thought about happy memories or things I looked forward to. I did not think about the kids I was worried about. I had to learn to let go. That girl on the park bench: did she want you worrying about her all night? No. She wanted you to care, to be solid (not just to appear solid), to give her practical advice. What you did was HUGE.

Refill your reservoir. Your job is draining. How do you replenish yourself?

What about your job gives you happiness or at least satisfaction? I don’t mean only your successes, important as they are. What do your students give you?

One last thing, then I’ll shut up and go away: Have you ever read A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne? I highly recommend it. Though you’ve already worked with a lot of impoverished kids, I guarantee you’ll gain insights from this book. It’s about a whole lot more than food, shelter, and financial resources. I found it invaluable.

Take care of yourself.

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I haven’t got a great deal to add; I’m an insomniac (hello!) and I’m currently sitting with my laptop under the covers so the glare from the monitor doesn’t wake my wife. It’s like hiding under the covers with a book and a flashlight except I’m a grown-ass adult.

I feel like I kind of blundered in during a heavy moment. I am also teaching (does teaching and insomnia go hand-in-hand?) but it’s college kids, so it’s not even in the same emotional league. I’ve also only been doing it for a few years so I haven’t had any crises more significant than unexpectedly-grenaded laptops and doctor’s notes for minor ailments.

I get being invested in their successes, though.

I’ve been sitting with the cursor at this point for at least ten minutes, trying to find something pithy to wrap up this post and move on. Doing good is expensive and draining, and I’m glad I had a teacher or two who gave a shit when I needed one to give a shit.

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Welcome to the thread. I wouldn’t worry too much about blundering into somthing heavy. Us insomniacs sometimes have heavy stuff that keep us awake, and, well, since this is our thread…

I’ll give ya a “done ok”.

Anywho, did I wake early, or in the middle of the night? Eh, I’ll go with early since I’ve actually been up for about three hours now and it’s just about time to get ready for work.

Last night I spent a few minutes looking at Jupiter and Saturn together in the sky. They were about one finger width apart with my hand out at arm’s length.

It got me thinking about all those pics you can find of Earth from this vantage point or that in the solar system. The “Pale Blue Dot” still sits supreme for me in terms of emotional impact, but the implications, the possible ramifications of it all. Sometimes takes my breath away with the awesome magnitude and beauty of our insignificance

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Don’t worry. It’s a thread that ranges from the light to the heavy. All we have in common is that we like posting at night, rather than in the mornings.

Boo, my Niners lost tonight, which wasn’t entirely unexpected, given they were playing Buffalo, and they have a number of players who can’t play because of the virus. But they did their best, and were competitive. It was an entertaining game, at least.

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Boo sneaks over to YouTube to check highlights of Niners-Buffalo game so she can commiserate with @Spoons. Back soon.

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Better football minds than me (and all of them are) will have to figure that game out. Of course, I’m used to Nebraska level of self-destruction.

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San Francisco didn’t self-destruct–rather, they did the best they could with what they had. Though their defense didn’t really wake up until the second half. Mullins made at least one great long-bomb pass, which resulted in a touchdown on the drive.

Buffalo played extremely well. Their rushing plays resulted in gains, and Allen was bang on target when he passed. Their first punt took place about halfway into the fourth quarter, which should tell you something.

There’s no real analysis needed. SF played well. But Buffalo played better.

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That’s what I was trying to say, but didn’t succeed. But those short highlight videos make it hard to differentiate when the teams are closely matched and there isn’t a cluster of mistakes or bad officiating to point to.

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Or are on a completely different time zone, and this thread is more active at the time that I’m having breakfast.

Plus it’s a longer running thread, as it’s not re-newed every week.

Keep forgetting to try looking for Jupiter and Saturn. Of course the persistent cloudiness doesn’t help much. Haven’t seen much of the sun or moon later, much less objects which are a bit further away.

My husband’s commencement speaker was Carl Sagan, just a few months after that picture was taken. I wrote “pale blue dot” on the commencement program. From an article, written at that time:

“On that blue dot lived everyone we knew and loved,” Sagan said. “That blue dot needs to be cherished. I urge you to cherish that blue dot.”

Still resonates with me.

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Well, for me they are not particularly high in the sky in the early evening, around 530 or 6ish to about 8 or 9ish maybe? Pretty much directly (more or less) southwest

I try to encourage everyone to take a look if they can. For anyone over the age of 10 this is likely to be an actual once in a lifetime event since they aren’t supposed to be this close in the sky again for another 80 some years

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I did hear the aurora borealis will be visible tomorrow night. With things the way they are sleep-wise, I’m kind of stoked. I haven’t seen them in awhile.

Thanks for the welcome, folks. I have been participating elsewhere but in a more… matter-of-fact sort of way, I suppose.

An interesting development today–some of my students felt comfortable enough to narc on one of their own. Somebody’s been paying strangers money to do my assignments. In some cases, a surprisingly large amount of money for relatively easy work. ($120 Canadian for 15 minutes worth, in one case.) I’m more bemused than anything else.

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@BippityBoppityBoo

Nebraska kept firing coaches until they found one who absolutely can not bring about a winning season. The fans screamed for Scott Frost until the University gave in. We are three losing seasons into his multi million dollar contract with no light at the end of the tunnel.