I think that everyone gets discontent. It is one of the by-products of the human condition, along with the desire to eat foods that are bad for you and liking fire. There is some primordial, written-in-our-DNA kind of urge that makes us and Caveman Cog get dissatisfied with our current environment, our current interactions, our current self. I think that is what really spawned the wheel — some person with a serious case of discontent, manifested in wanderlust.

See, I need to feel like I am living my life, instead of my life controlling me. I need to feel like my choices actually do something, that they have the power to affect and improve my life experience. When I begin to feel like I am no longer running things, I do the only thing that emphatically proves that my choices have repercussions: I sabotage. Myself.

Example: My first year of teaching.

During my first year of teaching I worked a lot. I was lesson planning and giving tutorials and going to meetings and rewriting lessons and going to professional development and meeting with other teachers and observing and reflecting on my practice. I was working so much that it seemed that Jacob Blair, the Jacob Blair that likes to run or play or talk to friends or learn or grow was dead, and had been replaced with Jacob Blair the Work Robot. So I rebelled. I actively sabotaged my ability to work. I came home from work like normal, changed like normal, snacked like normal, but instead of working, I opened a book. I then read my book. Until 3 am. I did this for three days in a row. On the fourth day I was so brain dead that I actually was like a robot, and I had no choice but to come home and sleep, but I had accomplished my goal — I proved to myself that I was still in control.

These episodes also came in smaller doses: a day here and a day there of purposefully ruining my ability to meet my responsibilities. Whenever life starts to cease the reins from me, my response seems to be to quit. And while I found those days to be immensely satisfying in terms of my feelings of control, what I am beginning to discover is that they never left me in a better place. I would have renewed feelings of efficacy, but I would still have the same daunting responsibilities with even less time to meet them.

This week I have been having another extended sabotaging session. I slept instead of worked. I took naps after school. I went climbing at odd hours. I read blogs. I basically did what I wanted and pretended I had no responsibilities. Each morning I would wake up in a panic, because the reality of responsibility was back, and it had a smiling teenage face that was supposed to learn math. I had the same due dates and times, only now I was operating on less sleep and less preparation.

Normally, the cycle ends when I am so exhausted that I reach some sort of equilibrium, but this time something different happened. A conversation.

Me: “So, I need to tell you, just so you know, that I sabotage myself”

My Boss: “What?”

I explain.

My Boss: “Oh. Yea, I do that too, except instead of going and doing nothing, I work like crazy, but it is not effective because I am unhappy and ultimately we only work well when we are happy, so all my work sucks.”

I laughed. I felt better. Someone else acted irrationally when they were pushed to the brink and felt like they were no longer living their own life. Our thoughts were not identical, nor our reactions, but the discontent was the same, and that was significant.

The cycle ended today without a giant, exhausted collapse. Instead it ended with a “Me too.”

One Response to “Sabotage”

1. hilary Says:
   September 20th, 2009 at 8:02 am

   as a first year teacher, thank you! nice to know my reaction to this insane amount of work isn’t that bizarre after all.

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