I am feeling pretty detached at the moment. Figure I would use this space to think aloud.
I have been fighting with admin at my school for proper support for me as a teacher and for help fixing a broken program for my students. I got laid off effective the end of the school year. Think it might be because I was a pain in the ass, but I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t doing a great job because they overloaded me. More different classes than most teachers. Shit support.
Covid money ran out, they had to lay off some of the conditionally certified teachers and I was one of them. The timing was just… all my complaints, I they were making me cover a position that was vacant while doing my regular teaching, and the students were missing out. I don’t think I could prove it but it feels like they got rid of me because I was not satisfied with their answers.
I can’t bring myself to finish getting my teacher certification. I’d have to go out of county to teach.
I worked 10 years with the homeless, burnt out and fucked it up. Then 2 years working for a law firm supposedly helping people and figure out its just bullshit, helping people was incidental and barely helped. Worked for the cops supposedly helping addicts in person, they just wanted me to do data entry. No idea what I should do.
It took a lot of courage to get myself to try being a teacher. 3 years at the schools and now I fucking again have to figure out what to do all over again.
And I have to go into the school for over a month and pretend everything is okay. Fuck I hate this.
Burnout happens when emotionally taxing work goes unrewarded and/or doesnt feel impactful. And unfortunately you seem to have picked jobs that require a lot of emotional labor and altruism that dont feel impactful or rewarded. Which is par for the course and one of the main reasons why our education and health systems aren’t doing so great at retaining people.
What you are probably going to want to do is move away from those types of jobs. At least for a while so you can recover. And if you absolutely need to do something like what youve done before eg. teaching, you may want to look into freelance part time tutoring instead. Something you can do when you feel like being helpful but walk away from when you need to. Then pick a main job that isn’t in the same areas you have been working.