I've decided to go public with this blog since I'm no longer employed by NYU. My real name is Bruce, and this what I look like before I have my first cup of coffee and liberally apply makeup.

OK, it's not REALLY me, but it is, and this is absolutely true, a picture of my emotional state right now. Utterly terrified and upset. Mere Lapin AKA the Pastel Puma keeps trying to make me feel better by pitching ideas that are ridiculous. "You could be a tutor." "Mere, I WAS a tutor before I became a teacher. Don't you remember? I couldn't make much because I didn't have any fucking connections. And I have fewer now than I did then." "Well, you could help write college essays. You could make a lot of money. You used to work at NYU." "Mere, the type of people who pay that much I don't have the right experience for. What admissions looks for is different from what I used to teach. Now could I do it? Yes, but the first question these people are going to ask is 'Do you have any recommendations?' and I don't have clients of that type. And even if I did I'd have to go back five years." "Well, I'm just trying to help." "I know, but on a practical level it doesn't work. It's not a question of what you CAN do, it's about what you can prove you can do."


When I think about the situation, and I try not to, but you know having a mind like this it's hard to turn it off, it makes me so upset. I'm trying not to be defeatist, but really, it's hard not to be.


Tomorrow, I return to the city. I don't want to go. I want to load everything in a van and drive somewhere and just live off of what I inhereited from my father. I mean when I think about how long I stayed in NYC because of that job because I believed that I was supposed to help people. Because that's why I started teaching. I was raised by intellectual altruists. My father tore himself apart over his patients. He could have quite practicing "real" medicine and worked for a health insurance company or taught at a school, but he kept forcing himself to help people. To take calls in the middle of the night, to treat patients who couldn't pay. Because if you CAN help people, that's what you do. Even at the expense of your life. That's why both my parents are in medicine. I thought I could help people, but not worry about people dying by going into education. And the truth? In the beginning I LOVED it. It wasn't a job then. I would have done it for free. I would have volunteered. After Eric left, it was what kept me alive. This idea that 60 or so kids were relying on me to show up and explain to them why ad hominem is not a legitimate way to destroy an arguement. Grammar. Literature. History. Media. Marketing. Life Decisions. I had to show up.

Only I don't.

Not anymore. I'm expendable. And I've got no safety net.

None. And not all the bathmitts in the world are gonna save me this time. So now that my old life is over, what am I going to do in this next one?