I Care.

I am sitting on my couch, Arya and Ember asleep at my side. I don’t feel burned out in what feels like a lifetime. So many people are hung up on the pay of jobs. Thinking it’s the money that will dictate their happiness. But creating a lifestyle that makes room for joy to come and go effortlessly is what will bring happiness more consistently. As soon as I recognize I am happy the feeling starts to flow away like a tide. This is not the time to think money will save you. The systemic challenges that we face as a people misdirect us into thinking that us not making enough is the problem. It’s untrue.

It is true that money will stabilize you. It will allow you the space to have existential inquiry and the time to work through it. That is a blessing within itself. If you are in a field you love, but you are barely treading water, you still have more than most people in the country and the world. There are millions who slave for meager wages or less, who wake up only clinging to hope that they will get out eventually or maybe their children will. Fighting for what is good in the world requires your strengths, it requires you to recognize, and play your position. I didn’t choose to become an educator, being an educator chose me.

I lament often that I am unpaid for the creative expression I’ve become near a master of. In a more balanced society, all skills, all work, would be acknowledged as valid and paid as such. Our stories as humans are told through art. There is a matter of fact history, but where our beliefs come from, stems from the meaning-filled depths of creativity. I recognize myself, I see what I want and I am still working toward it. This blog post, my bid for connection with you, I am still here despite having to shift into a full-time job.

It has become more than a job, I realized I was educating through music and it has now translated well into a classroom. To uplift, to help students believe in themselves just enough to be bold. Finding what sparks their light and igniting the fire of passion so that it may never be extinguished. Our fires are all challenged by the way things currently are in our country. We do not have love, compassion, or the justice of the truth. We do not have fair wages, opportunity in abundance, or much of what our parents foolishly promised us. Our country was taken by the massively wealthy. They bought it. And now they divide us through their dealings with big tech. We have to break free. And quitting our position because it doesn’t make enough money, will make another soulless worker without passion for the life they live. To protest the way things are we must arm ourselves with education, skills, and empower our decisions by making ones we believe in.