Major Achievement

It is Tuesday and I have not quit my job.  This is a major achievement.  Major.  There are many moments when I feel like I must be just plain crazy to have hung on to this job for as long as I have.  Yes it is a job.  Yes it is (for the most part) in my field.  Yes it is less than five miles from my house.  Yes it pays well.  None of these things are insignificant.  It's a job that looks pretty good on paper.  However, what something looks like on paper has only a tenuous relationship with the reality of that something.  Here there is absolutely no relationship whatsoever.

I am into my third year of:

• Teaching classes on topics that I ultimately don't care very deeply about
  
• Interactions with hostile and toxic colleagues (plural)
  
• Working within a system that feels (from where I'm standing) broken
  
• Trying to make small changes in the hopes that those changes will ripple outwards
  
• Being alone in my concern that the system is broken

I have managed to put my head down and keep moving forward for two years.  I was pretty successful much of the time.  This year has been different.  I'm done.  Simple as that.  I can't do it anymore.  I'm there, but I'm not there and I hate that.  I hate it for myself and I hate it for my students.  There's got to be something else for me, I just wish I knew what that something was.