20140909.0734

It is not often that I am able to leave work at work; like most who teach, I too often end up bringing things home. Such has not always been the case for me; time was that I could get my work done at work, so that when I did come home, I could be at home. I also stayed at the office long to make it happen, which I cannot do in good conscience anymore, and my teaching schedule and assignment sequences were somewhat different. Now, even today, I am stuck with work from work, so that I cannot be home at home.

I suppose I deserve it, though. While I did not know about many of the problems of the kind of job I have now, I did know that grading would occupy much of my time, and I came into the line of work anyway. My supervising teacher, back when I did my student teaching, advised me against the very thing that I find I have to do--grade at home--coming up on ten years ago, now. It was good advice, and I am glad that I was able to take it for as long as I was. But that is no longer the case, and, like many others, I find that work invades my home life.

It is a seemingly sensible consequence, actually, of the work ethic promulgated in the dominant stream of US popular culture. The job is the thing that defines, and willingness to work hard (often interpreted as "work long") is seen as a major virtue. (Not cardinal, of course: having money is the primary virtue.) I am far from alone in wanting to be virtuous; I am far from alone in being entangled in the dominant culture amid which I was raised, despite seeing its problems. And so I am far from alone in finding that time I ought to spend improving myself in some existentialist way or being with those I love is spent in taking care of jobs of one sort or another.

I see no acceptable way out of the situation. I cannot exactly give up the work I do; I need the paycheck too badly, and not only for me. And since it buys my way into work on The Work, and I am called to The Work, I am stuck with it, as well. I could, perhaps, sacrifice some of the things for which I strive to earn the pay, thereby lessening the need for that pay, but not in enough measure to make a meaningful difference in the amount of money going out--particularly against the costs of transfer and relocation that would be involved (not all of which would be monetary at this point, but which still matter and could well become monetary). Too, I try to be a man of my word, and I put my name to some agreements that have contributed to the condition in which I find myself; to breach them would make a liar of me, and I have the misfortune of having scruples...