Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Where are you and where are you going?
candide
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Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

New? / Context
============

This is a journal of a public school teacher during the school year.
  • 38 year old male
  • Wheaton Level 5
  • My spouse is WL 2.75 (3, if I had to to peg it to an integer)
  • I was FI for what my burn rate was prior to having a child this year.
  • DW is staying home with DD this year, so I don’t anticipate much of a saving rate, perhaps net withdrawals.
  • I’m a paranoid doomer who tries to prep(are) for bad scenarios. Not because I get off on them, but because I want to avoid making decisions out of desperation as long as I can, in as many futures as I can.
  • I also like making things, particularly cute toys.

Previous two journals:

Candide: Zombieland
viewtopic.php?t=12453

Mini-ERE
viewtopic.php?t=12399
Last edited by candide on Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

candide
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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

Time Wealth/Poverty
===============

During my mini-ERE I was time rich. Time wealth is something that the financially wealthy don’t often allow themselves, mostly out of habit, but also competitiveness.

Due to the extreme competence of my wife and the sweet nature of my daughter, Zombieland wasn’t too bad for me at all. Somehow, I think I was in the time middle class during that . . . er, time. The financial middle class doesn’t allow themselves to be time middle class, let alone time rich, mostly out media consumption.

Well, I don’t think poor ‘ol Candide is going to able to avoid time poverty for a stretch here. Creative projects are going to have to prioritized, so I might be investing less time writing in the ERE sphere and more on other pieces, depending on what gives me the most Zen.


Liberty vs. Fools Panicking
=====================

Time poverty means that I am only going to treat this next matter in broad strokes at this point (I do plan on writing about it in more detail, but at this point it feels terrible, so I’d rather do other things, like sit by a pond or writing about the authors who resided in 19th century Concord).

Short version, due to politics and social media pressure about books that were in the school libraries, my district went into panic mode and decided it was high time to go through all the books in every teacher’s classroom, and that it was all to be done in a week. Administrators would be part of this great book culling, yes, but the main people who should make the decisions are the greatest experts on books . . . the school librarians. (Can’t be English teachers be part of the process; they’re just teachers!)

To be blunt: the decisions of librarians have angered the community, so they -- I mean the librarians -- get more power. The removal process was part bureaucratic and stupid – biased against older books and nonfiction, as they weren’t in the review data bases, but this then allowed for whim and bias on the “second look” cases. My librarian, who apparently is now one of my bosses, and will now get that treatment (ie will be avoided and ignored by me as much as possible), culled out the bulk of my non-fiction as well as children’s adaptations of classics which included David Copperfield, The Red Badge of Courage, The Time Machine, Robinson Caruso, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Blunt again: because some high school librarians had comic books (I’m fucking done calling them graphic novels) which had depictions of masturbation and oral sex, my librarian got to nix a child’s retelling of David Copperfield which had NOT been purchased with public funds.

Librarians of [my district]: save the books, save the books! Celebrate Banned Books Week! All censorship is evil. . . unless we get to do it.


Depression
========

I may have written enough about what happened. What I don’t have time or energy for is to explain why it saddened me so.

We’re talking I had a hard-time-moving kind of depression Saturday morning.

I almost found myself in a YouTube spiral, but by the grace of God saw a “dopamine detox” video in my feed. The arguments and suggestions are kind of obvious, and science may very well be dubious, but it did remind me of what a good path might be.

One point that interested me is that all activities where we get something done have some dopamine involved; it’s just that you get so much more dopamine quicker from the activities that we know as junk food for the brain. The argument is that makes the motivation for those other activities less.

The video got my gears turning about how I could make my low dopamine activities higher, as it seemed like I had no motivation to do anything that day, so I did some chores – rebalance my portfolio, do a litter box -- but instead of my normal amount of points for them, I rolled a dice and gave myself that amount of points. Once I was a body in motion, I was able to then go to the school and throw out all the evil books that the Committee for Rightness said had to go. I gave myself 10 points for that, went home and had a fire with a few of them.

I am also on a YouTube fast. I know I have written in the past that when you search YouTube with a specific question or topic it can yield amazing results. And that’s still true, but I find that once I let that vampire into my house, I too easily get into the habit of just vegging with it. So, no YouTube, with plans of at least August and September.

Escape Plans
==========

I know many of you who have read this far think I should use my “fuck you” money right now. Having a new born and paying all the bills (and providing the insurance) for a family of three makes things complicated for the whole school year. The district can put a freeze on my teaching license for abandoning my contract, and I really don’t want that.

Instead, I will serve my year and try to get certified in math, which will greatly increase my options. As of right now, I have every intention of teaching next year as well, just for a different district.
Last edited by candide on Sat Aug 20, 2022 11:07 am, edited 2 times in total.

Dream of Freedom
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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by Dream of Freedom »

Another Brick in the Wall
I like the Pink Floyd reference, though, it is an interesting one for a teacher to make.

candide
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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

We don't need no education.
We don't need no thought control


I tend to play the song several times during the last week of school -- like right before passing period, not as some super weirdo activity which abuses my captive audience. No response from the students.

The song in question is actually Another Brick in the Wall, Part Two. According to La Wik:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_B ... ll#Concept
During "Part 1", the protagonist, Pink, begins building a metaphorical wall around himself following the death of his father.
The odds are good that I will teach on next year, just in another district. If that happens, it will be Another Brick in the Wall, Part Two.

candide
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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

In response to the events mentioned above, I made something.

Image

Another view

Image

And is below also art? If not, symbolic and, I hope we can agree, metal.

Image

Image

Image

candide
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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

One month of being a father. I don’t have insights to share, but I'll note that I actually smile for pictures when I am holding my baby. It was pointed out to me that I hadn’t really smiled in pictures for years.

A smart man I knew -- a professor of philosophy who judged at debate tournaments -- said that parenting didn’t bring happiness; it brings joy.


Longer-Term Plan
=============
Here we are: two years and I’m out, with an option for one year and I’m out.

Me working this year is locked in. My money burn has never been higher than it will be this year, with me adding on my wife and child to insurance and of them using the care, as well as taking on all of the bills and giving my wife a small spending allowance (WL 2.75 gonna WL 2.75).

I am going to bite the bullet and work during the summer, trying to get my resume diversified away from just teaching. I’m thinking of trying for a home improvement center. I imagine I could learn some things, including developing a feel for prices for some items that interest me both on the level of hobbies and alpha strategy purposes. Still, I won’t be that picky. I’ve worked at Walmart before, and I can do it again.

The odds are very good, I mean 90/10 good, that my wife goes back to work next school year. She is doing a great job with our daughter, but it is clear that she wants other puzzles to work on and tends to be pushed forward by, and finding meaning in, doing those within an organizational context. When that happens, we’ll be back to splitting bills. If I work another year, then we’ll also have the new expense of day care, but if I grind another year, even if it is under the devil I know, I still should be able to save 2 maybe 3 years of my burn rate.

If this current school year just destroys me, then I may also go on sabbatical again if I get my math certification (allows me to a punch a ticket into any school district in my area nearly any time of year) or I have another job lined up. I find that having this kind of optionality, when it is real and not mere attitude allows me to be much of a philosopher about the vicissitudes of life and work.

I’m not sure my abilities and interests will line up with hanging out with one-year-old child, so I am leaning toward working that extra year. But after that, I want to in-source child care until DD starts school. I want to be there as much as I can during the time of maximal questions and discoveries.

I had thoughts of going back to work when DD starts going to school, basically trying to run the 5-year ERE plan for her benefit because let’s be honest, the most extremely early retirement is a trust fund, but the problem with education is that you’re locked in for the whole school year. If I re-engage with the world of work, I hope for the relationship to be different.

Well, back to being a cog for a bit. Best not to think about it that way.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

This morning I heard about a teacher in the district who had a QR code to a collection of the titles of "banned" books and was immediately put on leave.

At lunch I caught up with a math teacher and asked for some math books that explain categories that I know are heavily on the math certification test. He was happy to get rid of some old books -- hmm, there is a lot of that going around -- and I'm continuing on my way with my exit strategy.

I don't want to get too in the weeds on these issues. I completely respect Jacob's desire to avoid the political, and I'm not going to try hard to convince anyone of anything on this. My real point is that I do not enjoy working under these conditions. Between both sides, I see a real threat of not being allowed to teach anything. You may scoff thinking I am being hyperbolic, but my district had an online textbook and they have allowed the contract to lapse. In other words, to have a curriculum, or, you know, anything, we have to find our materials or use. . . an old textbook. So far we are pretending that the old books are fine, but we'll see how long that holds up against any challenge. Because, again, the optional books that were not purchased with public money were picked through in the manner that they were -- what hope is there for things that are actually assigned to a captive audience?

This is all a shame since last year was so good. Over the two years, I had built a smooth-running, efficient machine. It kept me occupied, but not overwhelmed. It let me be connected with the broad sweep of human life, but did not entangle me overly much -- until now. I truly did not see this coming.

Getting the math certification and/or a side job would really help my wife to support me leaving my job at the end of the year. As a teacher, she knows how powerful a math certification can be for re-entering teaching. Thus, with a math cert, I am confident I could win her over even to RE.

It is all well and good to say "if you already living your worst-case scenario, what have to lose?" But you do need to mind the frictional costs. After I created a gap in my resume, I actually did have some problems getting back to a horizontal position, and it took the pandemic to allow me to improve my working environment. The math cert will allow me to reduce the frictional cost of returning if I want to make sure that teaching is my floor when it comes to quality of life I can achieve.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by theanimal »

That all sounds very frustrating. Good to see you have a vision and plan to separate yourself from it. I'm curious why you decided to burn the books, symbolism as you suggested? I guess books that are deemed unworthy probably aren't sought out in your area for donations.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

@theanimal

Well, I was pissed, so this was [not] exactly my moment of clearest thinking, but there are a few things.

Part of it was the time crunch this was all happening under. I really needed to clear out those books that weekend if I was going to be the one to do it. After a long day of that kind of pressure and working in the heat, I felt like destroying something.

But also, as I made the fire, I knew I'd be taking pictures and showing them. The first person in mind was my librarian, though I will probably save that for when I leave. . . Also, I showed other English teachers them (by showing the phone; just say no to social media!) and the images were good for, I dunno, solidarity, actual truth telling. . . Anyway, there was value in it.

Of the series of books I burned in the image, I kept the ones I am most excited to share with my daughter. Also, from another classroom's throw-away piles, I also took out a children's biography called "Who is Barack Obama?" Now THIS book being on the out pile is the symbol of evil of bureaucracy and the professional management class. This book is recent and from an appropriate series for young people. It of course would have two positive reviews, if anyone had bothered to look. Instead, someone got to make a "whim" call. So I don't know if this was just "I don't want the phone call" or if it was a case of speeding things along -- I heard that some admins went off script and just starting asking "have you read this book?" as the call whether or not something, particularly non-fiction, belongs in a class library.

Not exactly a banner moment for due process.
Last edited by candide on Wed Aug 24, 2022 4:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I passed the math certification exam shortly before the Covid lock-down. If I didn't have to run to the bathroom in cramping agony 12X per day, I could pretty much get a job wherever I want. Tutoring math pays pretty well on an hourly basis and is more lifestyle flexible.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

@7Wannabe5

Yeah, having math credentials are a ticket in and out of the (school) system. I'm sorry to hear about your illness. I had read other posts about you being sickly, but I didn't catch the exact nature of it until now.

. . . Tutoring might be a good gig as it could go nights and weekends and work around my wife possibly going back to work next year while still being able to watch the baby.

Time will tell. The real work has begun, working toward the test.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

Motivation
========

With the latest 100 point roll-over in my habit fund, I am going to try as an experiment in motivation to vary points with a dice roll each time. To compensate for all the extra points this will create, it will now be 350 points to earn the $100. (And if this works as well as I think it will to foster motivation, I will eventually move it to 400 points for $100).

When I did my first dice roll after doing a chore it came up a 1. I laughed. But really, I am to understand that much of what makes Tetris and (anti-)social media work is the bouts of disappointment with only randomized reward-- scene in the Matrix where Agent Smith explains the human brain rejects paradise and all that.


Habit fund
========
$33

The tightening system on my scroll saw broke -- I never thought that would be the failure point. While this will give me something to tinker with, take part, or even salvage a motor from when I am time rich (uh, you know with a child that might be a long, long time coming . . .) I was in the middle of a project, so I bought a new scroll saw from Harbor Freight, the previous one being a Porter Cable branded machine. They are at least different enough that you can tell they weren't made in the same factory.

To fund this buy, I did something I thought I would never do -- I allowed my balance to go negative. Okay, I'll just admit that I was in the middle of making my 1455-2022 sign, and I was still pissed and wanted my little bit of defiance to get made in my artistic burst of passion.

But at least I've now got my fund back in the positive.

Alright, time to fool myself with randomness.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by ffj »

That's a shame about the books. When I was a kid there was no such thing as the internet and books were my ways to escape my bland existence. Not gonna lie, that picture of you burning those books hurt a little, but I get it. I don't quite understand when and where censorship was ever a good thing. Where are the history teachers on this?

At 38, hang in there. If nothing else, all the bullshit is a strong motivator for doing what you need to do, so channel that energy.

Have you considered working in a less bureaucratic environment?

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

ffj wrote:
Thu Sep 01, 2022 9:04 am
Where are the history teachers on this?
No one in the "social studies" department is pro censorship or supportive of what happened, or anything like that, but there is a split between those already wishing to find a way out and those who value how comfy the gig is. Two in particular come to mind when it comes to wanting to leave -- one is hoping her husband gets into a grad program and then they'll leave, the other is pretty vague with what she is trying to do.

But for the most part "having something to lose" is winning out in peoples' decision making, including mine. I can imagine an alternate universe where my daughter wasn't born and I quit shortly after the shit went down. However, in that universe I wouldn't be on these forums, so I guess no one would have heard about it.
ffj wrote:
Thu Sep 01, 2022 9:04 am
At 38, hang in there. If nothing else, all the bullshit is a strong motivator for doing what you need to do, so channel that energy.

Have you considered working in a less bureaucratic environment?
I appreciate it. I am certainly exploring my ways out. I have no confidence is my marketability or salesmanship, so it's going to slog to get anywhere.

But hey, that's where the motivation hacking comes in.

Also, it's nice to know I can hit singles instead of having to swing for the fences, financially speaking.

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Sclass
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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by Sclass »

I’ve really enjoyed your perspective on public education.

You’re really passionate. And I get it you care and it’s painful being immersed in a bullshit world. Is it possible to separate the money getting and the passion and just exist in the public education cesspool just to get your pay and pension?

I’m not sure it is for a lot of people. I recall being frustrated in my big tech jobs because I knew management was wasting my creativity on bullshit agendas. I just couldn’t sustain the activity just for pay alone.

Good luck I hear your pain. It comes through beautifully in your words. Or are you channeling Roger Waters?

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by chenda »

candide wrote:
Fri Sep 02, 2022 7:58 am
No one in the "social studies" department is pro censorship or supportive of what happened,
As book burning has a rather ugly and notorious history in promoting censorship and oppression, its rather taboo. Although I understand you did so to protest against censorship rather than promote censorship. However I agree the others there is no harm in milking the job for as long as you need.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

Sclass wrote:
Fri Sep 02, 2022 8:27 am
And I get it you care and it’s painful being immersed in a bullshit world. Is it possible to separate the money getting and the passion and just exist in the public education cesspool just to get your pay and pension?
Open question in my mind. I feel honor-bound to finish this year, and then I am going to max out one more year before taking a three year break to watch my kiddo before handing her off to the evil maw of the System. (Our plan A is to move towns by then, with the synergism of being able to check in my wife's aging parents).

I must quibble on your mention of a pension, however. I fully expect that to be raided by the time I reach the age they would let me draw from it. If it does pay out by some miracle, then the Candide family might be living in Fat retirement in my 60s. (Though my dad died when he was 58, so that pot of gold is even more heavily discounted in my mind).

But yes, in Roger Waters do we trust.
chenda wrote:
Fri Sep 02, 2022 8:33 am
As book burning has a rather ugly and notorious history in promoting censorship and oppression, its rather taboo. Although I understand you did so to protest against censorship rather than promote censorship.
I didn't mean to offend anyone, but the further I get from posting the pictures, the more I see that it could. I should explain more, I feel.

For one, every teacher who works in our district that I have shown the picture[s] seems to groove with them. At some point, it just sucks being pushed around and then deal with all the lies. In press released over the incident of the teacher who was put on leave, the district keeps maintaining that no books have been pulled -- which is a blatant lie; the best they could spin it would be "we haven't pull any books that meet our criteria " but when spin doesn't sound good enough, you have to say something else . . . And thenyou just have to cut through the abstractions and pleasantries, because they are false.

Also, some books were saved. Here's a picture of some:

Image

Note the Barack Obama biography. This should have met the criteria [for inclusion in a classroom library] -- it is in our elementary libraries and has two positive reviews in the data bases, if anyone had bothered to check . . . so much for my attempted PR spin.

Lastly, I think of a poem by Bertolt Brecht
The Burning Of The Books

When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.

Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged: he'd been excluded!

He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fierce letters to the morons in power —
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen —
Haven't I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!
Last edited by candide on Tue Sep 20, 2022 9:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by ertyu »

idk about everything else, but i think it's wise to assume that any promised pensions won't materialize and plan without them

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

Phone
=====

I had achieved what seems the true and proper ERE end-state of a brick phone. But it was 3G, and that was ending, and my wife encouraged me to be able to take pictures of our DD, so here I am with a bottom shelf (at a normal retail establishment) smart phone.

I wouldn't have anything I would feel writing about here if it wasn't for my acts of technological disobedience. My current weekday routine with the device is to use it as my alarm, then turn it off and put in a small wooden box I made just for this purpose (ah, back when I had for such low-importance ]projects), put the box away in my backpack and leave it until the evening, where I turn it back on, check to see if anyone has texted (which they almost never do) and then repeat the cycle. In this manner, I only have to charge the thing once a week, which I had grown used to with my hipster brick.


Creativity
==========

Bringing up that lil' wooden box makes me think about how my favorite creative outlet during the summer was woodworking. At the time I had projected forward and thought of ways to keep the fun going. I had forgotten what my job does to my nervous system.

It is rest and peace that I need after a day of work, at least in my line of work. So my shop is now at the stand-by for projects that have immediate utility. For example, I patched a bit of fencing this weekend, and it was nice how all of my items were available at first-order retrievability and clumped together so assembly of my materials was like a blur... A quick snapshot of "relaxation" as high skill/low challenge (still not in love with the pairing of the term with the mental state I seek [1]).

Writing has taken over as the hobby. And by that, I mean relative time spent -- I of course wrote more in total during summer, with the time wealth it offered me. Writing has no clean up, and, related, the products take up no space.


[1] I think I prefer the term "ritualized," which I know cannot gain wide acceptance because of connotations with religion.

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Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Part One)

Post by candide »

Oh, I’m pretty boring right now – just grinding – but one thing that I think might be worth sharing with this community is my experiment with paying myself to do things I don’t want to do ( or have been negligent in doing). I have been calling this my “habit fund,” but I am open to suggestions for a different name as I am not sure I am forming habits with this as much as giving myself a way to get things done in spite of not being able to form them as habits.

The rule tweak I just finished for the last level was rolling a dice each time to randomize the points I earned, and then adjusted it so I had to earn 350 points to release $100.

I can report that the randomization is mildly more motivating throughout the earning, but my most interesting result was how much of a kick it gave me at as I neared the end-point of 350 points. With 60 points to go my mind started playing tricks on me, like saying “yeah, you might only have to do 10 more, if you roll all 6’s” and the thought process continued as I got closer and closer, making me look for things to do.

This seems to suggest making it so I am closer to the end more often, to see if this extra motivation can be called on each time a new ending is in sight.

So here’s the new rules:
  • roll a dice each time
  • release $25 every time I hit 100 points.

====

Habit Fund:
$87

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