"Dizzy" by Jimmy Eat World, Thursday, June 3, 2021

If you namedrop Jimmy Eat World in a casual conversation, people might look at you funny. The name sounds like its origins: two little kids teasing each other. Though fronted by Jim Atkins, he is not the "Jimmy" who "eat[s the] world," but rather it was an insulting picture guitarist Tom Linton's little brother, Ed, who drew a picture of his slightly older brother  Jimmy looking so fat that he was "eat[ing]the world." Jimmy Eat World is a band's band. They are responsible for influencing everyone in punk, pop punk and even hardcore punk in the last 20 years. Best known for their song "The Middle," a top 40 pop hit, the band spun several singles throughout the years, even today. Their most commercially successful albums have been Bleed American (2001), Futures (2004), and Chase This Light (2007).

ARE YOU DIZZY YET? Yesterday, I talked about the burnout I've been experiencing lately. Burnout is very common with teachers, and I'm sure that most of us are experiencing it in a time with so much uncertainty. But there's a dizzy feeling that comes at the end of the school week, especially at the end of the semester. It's the papers piled on my desk. It's the documents I forgot to print before class. It's fifty questions before the lesson starts. It's the chaos the students can spin the class into as the technology doesn't work. It's the "teacher, can I go get my phone to do the Google Classroom assignment," five minutes before the end of class. It's the schedule changes because the special programs that just came up. It's the repeated cancelation, which trains the students "this class doesn't really matter." It's the clicking and grading of classes that all look the same. It's the Monday to Friday boxed into the routine that if you break it, you fall behind. It's the deciding if it's cutting my cleaning time, my study time, my exercise time, or my blog time so that I can get to sleep on time to manage the next day. It's the feeling that I used to have everything so together, but now I feel like it's unravelling. It's dizzying.

JESUS, IS THERE SOMEONE YET WHO GOT THEIR WISH; DID YOU GET YOURS, BABE? In 2014, I was experiencing a similar burnout. At that time, I also started to feel very exploited by the private academy I worked for. Some days it was hard to think of my next step. It seems really hard to get the energy to pick yourself out of a slump. Rather than coming home and revising my resume, my inner critic tells me how pathetic it looks. I'd tell myself, "If you don't rest up and prepare for tomorrow, you won't make it through that day. And if you can't have the energy to improve your condition, you'll be stuck here forever." It was a vicious cycle. But there came a point when bitterness gave me the energy to take the steps to move on in 2014, and the next year I began working at my current school. And while I've enjoyed teaching my students and working with my coworkers, bitterness with admin, boredom with the same-old-same-old routine, and burnout from the pandemic have given me a spark to look forward to the future. But unlike, "Dizzy," I don't wish to go back and undo my "relationship" I have with my career or my job. I do think that a break up is imminent.

Read the lyrics on Genius.