Taking a step back

Things were getting real intense. My students were getting frustrated and I was as well. I started to feel like I didn't have control. Ironically, of course I don't have control. Isn't that what I tell myself all the time? I cannot control what happens but only my reaction to it. I must do what I do, but beyond that things are totally out of my control. And of course I don't listen to my own advice. It was only when my boss told me to take a step back. She said that I was too much of a perfectionist. I take that coded as obsessive compulsive. She's right though.

The thing is that I want my students so badly to do well, that I get overly invested. Not healthy. It is very important for my sanity to draw a line. To be able to say enough is enough. Teaching has a high turnover rate and a high burnout rate. The intensity of the situation can be overwhelming. To always have to be on. To judge your success on your students' success. Not being able to plan for stuff that you have no idea is coming. To constantly feel judged. Then to have a punk ass kid spit at your efforts. That coupled with the low pay... Teachers all hanging out is one big bitch session. Teachers talk so much crap about kids. We gotta. We gotta let off a lot of steam.

Part of taking a step back means focusing more on myself and my life. I must not get into defining my life via my job. I have never wanted that. I gotta focus more on my family.

Married life rocks! I am far better at taking care of AL and me as a family than I am in just taking care of myself. I'm a better team player than just being an individual. Albert Einstein got me all jazzed about finance with his quote, "the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." I had to sit and think about that one for a while. Then I started going OCD on the finance shit. Read Suze Orman's "The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom" and "The Road to Wealth". I've been reading "The Motley Fool" alot. I'm trying to get all these things in place to take care of my now and future family. Compound interest is going to help take care of us in the future.

But of course I can't use the capitalist system and just kowtow to its amoral structure completely. I gotta go with socially responsible investing. Can my compound interest be as least exploitative as possible, please? Sadly, the Motley fool has an article called "The myth of Socially Responsible Investing." I found the article to be an argument for laissez-faire capitalism. He uses the idea of all or nothing "morality" and chooses nothing. He says

Suppose you want to invest in the chemical industry. What are you going to do, invest in the firm that pollutes the environment the least? If it pollutes at all, why invest at all?

My answer would be... yeah I'm going to be more down with the company that pollutes the least. The world is by no means perfect. But I believe in always trying to do a little bit better. We can have a goal in mind but never reach that goal. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a goal. I think that financially rewarding and investing in a company that is more environmentally conscious is a good thing.

If we can't be perfect then we shouldn't try to be better at all??? I wonder if the author has children or works with children? That's not the type of message we want to hand down to the generations.