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| plop |
The phone came sans ersatz pollack, and I ate something. I didn't get back to the mall to get it programmed for what I want to do, but I have the guy's number, I'll find him again, and as days go by I am more certain of the Work so less rushed more lush about it. The fuck-it-all-upness of it. Just the pure disruptive power of it. In these ways, what I can surprise-invent in pedagogical space(s), I love my mind.
I am so sure of it that I threw the switch, lit up the board, reported our program closures and faculty retrenchments, put thousands of eyes on it/me on listserves and ongoing med admin research that my employers are totally unaware exist. We are the talk of a town that they've never heard of. Last time I was "talk" of that town, it was as the woman who just very loudly disappeared in a moral outrage whirlwind - now, "wait, what?"
I have ZERO doubt in my blood around this kinda stuff. I totally understand how a person can be very troubled in one way, and calmly confident with a scalpel too - same person, overdeveloped one way, impoverished in another.
In a better world, humans get to understand one another at close range enough to offset, redress, trade strengths - they have friendships and communities, partners and compatriots. Hands to hold TO THINK. This is not that world. I am very much living in not-that-world. And as everyone points out ad nauseum, I'm perrfectly fine.
If this is fine (for argument's sake) then I can simply teach being this-kinda-fine. How to not need anyone. Starting with not needing your professors, and by extension any one university (this one, for instance), logically speaking.
Union wants me to teach less, but in this one way, I have to refuse him. I want the whole incoming class. And I can't tell him why. All I can do is reassure him that he will have to defend my getting fired (he loves that deep down, his careWork, and it'll be a slamdunk) for taking that entire incoming class's minds away.
I have always taught independence of thought Thinkers, telling stories that'll rip your heart out, and I will keep doing exactly that. But. I also tried for years to fix the systems that we were trapped inside, to make them kinder to us all. That part really did not work, by any objective measure other than money.
So to be this-fine, essentially Gone Already. There is a lot of thinking about money while you're thinking about freedom - are you freer with less debt?Are you freer with more things that you want? Are you freer or less free to do Work (capital W) that is beyond monetary value, while being dependent on the money from the work? How much is your time REALLY WORTH? (to whom?)
While much of my mind, and all of my body have been dwelling on feelings questions, I had to wrestle with the subjects of freedom and money a lot, too. Freedom math.
I remember when Aaron had a searing A-HA moment of freedom math. They took his health insurance away just after he'd almost killed himself for the rest of us in the pandemic - I mean, not just him, they did that to the nurses. And it was quickly resolved so forgotten, but I didn't forget it because I considered it trauma (from a professional point of view - we were barely talking at that time, I was very much Working). Outa the blue, he texted THAT FACT, inside of which he could make a virgolike list of horrors on the job (= why the benefits action was unfair), because he wasn't really telling me about those horrors even though he was, because he was talking about money. Men can talk about money. For a minute, and then they buy an r c car from temu, but it's an emotionally 'neutral' subject.
The repeated firings at my job that resulted in multiple funerals, starting with Martha, our office manager for the department who had been doing that job for thirty five years - she was furloughed then died of a "Covid-related heart injury" the next day right out the gate spring 2020 - have kept freedom money math front of mind for me for 5+ years now. Patti got in trouble for putting Martha's picture all over the central reception area where she used to sit and for keeping the lights off so no students could study there; she kept that up until she herself died.
I digress, I am just illustrating why this *system* cannot be made kinder. To be employed within it (healthcare-education) is to suffer moral injury and to get paid to do so. Reverse blink: you are paid for masochism work. People who own your time are really into that, get off on it, make you thank them for the opportunities. You are venus in furs, man - see it or don't ð