Drums, Books, and Fighting Back the Burn Out

Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly how you feel. 

It wasn’t long ago I was convinced that after twenty-five years of teaching, I had entered a stage of almost full-fledged burn out. It wasn't a happy thing to admit, but it was hard to ignore. The school year has brought a variety of challenges, just like every other year, but the challenges right in front of you at the time always seem like the biggest ones. This year has the added effect of my feeling even a little lonely while at school, which is something that has never really happened before. The grades I work with are clustered in one end of one hallway, which means that almost my entire school day is contained to about one fifth of our building. I’m very lucky that I get along and work well with the few other people in that end of the hall, but from the way my schedule is set up and from the lack of proximity, several people I’ve come to think of as friends aren’t a part of my life this year. It’s isolating, and when you’re out of the loop with what’s going on in the school it’s easy to feel like the world is moving on in a lot of ways without you. 

Being one of the most experienced people in the school can compound this. You can feel a gradual transition happening, to a new generation of teachers or new philosophies finding prominence. You know as that continues that eventually your place in it will start to phase out, and you’ll be seen more as a leftover from an era people can’t relate to anymore. 

Teaching can be an incredibly frustrating job. There are a lot of little things that pick at you and wear you out, and as soon as you resolve them there’s always another crop of things to deal with waiting to take their place. That’s just frustration though, and regardless of what anyone ever does in their life, frustration will eventually be a part of it. Burn out is different. It’s bigger. I’ve seen it happen to others, and I know I don’t want it to happen to me. I think burn out is signaled by when you start going through the motions of doing the work and have removed all the emotion from it — not because you’re trying to maintain a professional perspective in a job that can be demanding, but because everything has become routine and requirement. 

Carrying that feeling with you every day, even small amounts of it, takes a toll on your psyche. At least it has on mine. If I have my phone in my pocket during the day, I’ll check it as soon as I can when I feel an email notification buzz through, just in case it’s my agent letting me know she’s heard back from one of her editor submissions, and we need to start talking about an offer. Then I’ll know my writing career is about to start, and that could mean a possible chance to make an exit from teaching a few years earlier than originally planned. It’s not something I wake up banking on every day, but there’s always that sliver of hope.

Something interesting happened recently though, and it has me pretty convinced that I’m not burning out just yet. I might be tired sometimes, or a little discouraged. I am very much looking forward to beginning my writing career. But I know I haven’t been driven to the point where I’ve stopped caring about what I do at school. 

I started reading some things about a middle grade book called I AM DRUMS by author Mike Grosso, which was released just last year. I was intrigued enough by what I read to order it online. The idea hooked me because I grew up as a drummer myself. I started playing in band in 5th grade and continued through high school. I was a tappy kid the whole way through, listening to my Walkman cassette player on the morning school bus and playing along with the drum parts on my thighs, looking for an escape from my hour-long ride. Drumming is still a small part of my life now, well into adulthood. Most summers there will be a time I get together with my cousins and all of their guitars and basses and keyboards and microphones, and we’ll play late into the night. I have a small electronic drumset in my home office, positioned so I can spin my desk chair around 180 degrees when I need a mental break from writing (or if a good song comes on), and I’ll have the drum set right there waiting for me to play it. I’m still interested in drumming enough that one of the other books that came in the same online order as I AM DRUMS was an autobiography by Kenny Aronoff, a well-known rock drummer I’d been a fan of for decades.

When my online order arrived, I AM DRUMS was the first book I cracked open. I read it in a weekend. It was great fun for me to find a book that connected so well with a lifelong interest, and described so many experiences I could relate to. But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was knowing that when I finished reading it, I was going to be able to put that book in the hands of a kid who would love it.

I have a boy in my 4th grade class who talks about drums all the time, and how badly he wants to play them someday. He’s always hammering out a beat with his hands or fingers, sometimes on his legs, sometimes (to a noisier effect) on top of his desk. When his reading teacher asked him to write a poem, he wrote about drums and the sound they make. When his class performed for a younger class during music, he made sure he had the chance to accompany the singing on a drum, which he proudly carried through the hallways before and after the performance. The music teacher even commented to me on how well he had played.

Like I said, I read I AM DRUMS over a weekend, even if that meant waking up early on the day back to school to quickly finish it, so I could bring it in as soon as possible. Even though there were issues ahead of me to deal with that day, the same kind of issues that I could so easily blow out of proportion and use to convince myself that I was finally burning out from teaching, I was practically bouncing around the house with excitement while I got ready, knowing that was the day I would get to introduce this kid to what could easily end up being one of his favorite books. 

Cut to a few hours later. The arrival bell rings, and, of course, it turns out he’s absent that day. 

But he was back the following day. After I told him I found a book I was pretty sure he was going to like, I set it on his desk. He picked it up, read the title out loud, saw the squiggly illustrations on the cover, and made this nonverbal, almost animal-like noise of excitement. He repeated the title to himself a few times, flipping to the back cover, examining the dust jacket. “It’s about a kid in middle school, and the thing she wants more than anything else in life is to play the drums,” I told him. His smile slowly grew wider and wider. Throughout the rest of the day, I saw the book open on his desk during any moment long enough for him to finish even one more paragraph. The day after that we had a conversation when I got to prove to him that paradiddles are a real thing.

I feel it’s safe to say, and I’m happy to unequivocally know this now, if I can still get this excited about introducing a student to a book, and then reveling in the satisfaction after watching how attached they become to it, I absolutely still care a lot about what I do.

Clearly the burn out isn’t encroaching as quickly as I thought it was.

The Dog Dilemma

I love dogs. I have five of them in my life right now: my parents’ two dogs (Shamus and Butch), and the three living with my sister and her family (Willow, Mac, and Toby). I love each one of them for different reasons. My parents’ dogs are basically timeshare pets for me; my parents travel quite a bit, so the time their dogs end up staying with me totals up to over a month each year. Shamus and Butch feel just as comfortable in my house as they do at their own home, and I always enjoy having them stay here.

I had my own dog once. Spencer. One of the friendliest and best-looking Westies ever; even his vet was struck by how unusually symmetrical his face was. He was my pal, my partner, my playmate, and my family. The first time his puppy self hopped up on the couch, awkwardly crawled the length of my body, and snuggled on my chest to fall asleep was a moment I still remember with perfect clarity. His death was prolonged and horrible, and it broke me in half. As I write this, I can feel tears building around the edges of my eyes as images from his last days pass through my head. That was six years ago, and I still miss him.

Every so often, somebody will encourage me to get a new dog. I appreciate the sentiment, even if I don’t always like hearing it; these are dog owners themselves, and I know they’d like to see me share in the same kind of happiness they have. The problem, however, is that me deciding to get a dog and then just spontaneously doing it isn’t ever going to happen. My head simply does not work that way.

I’ve always assumed that one of these days I’d get a new dog, or maybe even two. Dogs have been a part of my life from my earliest memories. As for getting a new one (or two), it all depends on sorting out a lot of things.

I know I likely wouldn’t get a puppy. Sure, puppies are adorable and playful, and raising a dog from a puppy, like I did with Spencer, likely means you’ll have that dog in your life for a good long time. It gives your relationship a true origin story, defined by all the puppy moments that come with the raising. The problem is that regardless of how cute puppies are on all the internet videos, they bring a lot of work and frustration with them. And it’s no small thing that the only sign of dog allergy I ever show seems to come from puppy saliva, which has been known to gift me with occasional bouts of inflamed eyes and hive eruptions on my arms and legs. So I know when the time comes, I’ll likely adopt someone older — probably a younger adult, two or three or four years old. I’d want a younger one so I’d have a better chance to spend more time with him. I’d hope to get the kind of time I was supposed to have with Spencer, since, according to averages, he should have been around much longer than he was.

And yeah. When I mentioned adopting, I said “him.” I’ve at least settled on that much.

If I was going to get a dog, I know I’d want to be as present as possible, and when it’s just me here, that’s not always so simple. First of all, I know how completely messed up it would be to think, “I really can’t get a dog because then I wouldn’t be able to go to school too early and stay too late, and spend even more unpaid time away from home doing my largely thankless job.” However, the simple truth is I have a job that eats up a lot of time to be done well, and I don’t like the idea of dogs home alone and waiting for me. I always feel a little stressed when Shamus and Butch stay here, because I want to make sure I’m out the door at the end of the school day as soon as possible, so I can let them out and they can spend time with me. I know someone who fosters dogs, and I’ve heard her mention that in several cases someone like me — a single adult without any kids — wouldn’t always be seen as a strong candidate by the people that make decisions about placing dogs in “forever homes.” I wouldn’t be enough family. To be honest, that idea feeds into one of my lingering insecurities about the life I gave Spencer: How much happier would he have been if he’d had more of a family than just the evenings, weekends, and summers he had with me? 

Which leads to the question: Why not get two dogs so they can keep each other company? I think I’d be just as likely to adopt two as one, for that reason; maybe not at the same time, but eventually. I see what buddies Shamus and Butch are. I see the unusual pack that Mac and Toby and Willow have formed. I remember how happy Spencer was when my sister Erin’s dog Milo was around. So to get a dog and not give it a pack, just so I have someone to keep me company at my convenience? It feels selfish. I know in most cases living in my house would be a much better life for a lot of the dogs waiting to be adopted, but I still have a hard time with the idea.

After having so many years of life with a dog, I’ve gotten used to not having the responsibilities that come with caring for one. I know that if/when another one comes along the routines will reassert themselves and evolve into a different normal, just like they did when I first brought Spencer home. I’d accommodate the shedding, if that was part of the package. I’d know as much about the breed as I could, and would be vigilant (if not obsessive) about taking care of its health. I’d go back to the same things I did with Spencer to fix the spotty grass in the backyard to keep the association off my back. And really, a shake-up in a routine life isn’t always necessarily a bad thing, especially when that routine can occasionally feel like a rut. Having a dog would give me someone to love and care for, someone I’d be responsible for that would add purpose to my life.

But then, what if I just waited until I retired? It’s not impossible that I could have something of a family by then, and I certainly wouldn’t have to worry about how many waking hours I had to put in at school anymore. That could be the best plan.

Back right around the beginning of 2017, I had all but decided this was probably going to be the year I’d finally get a dog. Two months later I feel myself hedging. That makes me think that as much as I like having dogs around, I can’t say for sure I’m ready yet. But maybe there are always going to be reasons to talk myself out of being ready until I finally make the decision. 

I still have time to think about it, though. One thing I know for sure is the only time I would ever consider bringing a dog into my house would be at the start of summer break, when we’d have time to adapt to each other’s needs and routines, and bond before I had to start back to school in the fall. Summer break is still three months away, so I have time to struggle with my decision. 

Although…there’d have to be some research and planning and organizing to find and line up the right adoption, so it’s not like I could wait until the last day of school to make up my mind.

I honestly don’t know what to do.