Owning It

I haven’t contributed to this blog site in a while.  I try to forget about things, and it’s easier that way.  If I blow off writing, that (subconsciously) means that I don’t have to worry about being more than just a shitty writer, because no one can judge me.   Even so, I often get criticism on the things I write, which I can handle online, but not in person (idiotic introvert).  My first instinct with criticism is to debate it.  Yes, I may teach debate, but I didn’t do that shit in high school.  I didn’t even know debate was “a thing” until I got hired to do it for a school.  Turns out, I fucking rock at it. 

But that wasn’t supposed to be the focus of my writing, which proves I have a terrible propensity towards ADD (or some self-diagnosed and medicated version of the psychiatric diagnosis).  The point is that I have not been writing.  This (somehow) proves to me that I don’t even have the one Harper Lee book, let alone the 7.000 Stephen King novels.  I will never be a writer.  I can’t harness the crazy like some people can.  (Or, more profitably, “the drama/stupidity”) 

So … what will I do about this?  In all likelihood, nothing.  My reason for continuing to teach is much like that of teachers who totally suck at their job:  I HAVE BEEN GOING TO SCHOOL FOR TOO LONG.  Remember when you were a senior in high school and how bad you just wanted to get out?  Well. I “graduate” with my seniors every year, only I have to come back the next year.   That must be one of the reasons that people subconsciously teach elementary school – high school students are too much like reality and the less thick-skinned can’t even take it.  I get told every day that I suck.  It’s not an in-your-face suckage – it’s more like a constant subliminal message.  They don’t want to be listening to me.  They would rather be anywhere but where they are.  While second grade carries a certain lovely innocence, the eleventh grade is a shit-fest.  All you have to do is step back and remember…

I happened to be “popular” in high school (if that means having a bunch of friends from different social cliques and sort of bleeding into all of them and none of them).  Being popular in high school DOES NOT prepare a person for reality, because the reason a person is liked by their peers is totally fucking arbitrary.  It’s all about “right place, right time” type of thing.  Reality is both amplified and suspended in high school.  It defies logic, even as I revisit high school as an adult – every single day.  I wonder if parents of high-school aged children even think about the shit their children tell perfect strangers every day.  If they knew, they’d never send their children to school again, out of sheer embarrassment. 

Somehow, I want to try to own the process of being:  1) a superficial hypocrite for doing all the things I tell my students NOT to do in high school, 2) doing the same thing to my own children by acting like I don’t see all their mistakes (and made the same ones), 3) and being a jackass throughout most of high school (and college).

I just want to write a novel and get it over with.  Cut the string and move on.  (Not so easy.)  After three novels, I still suck.  Maybe the book ought to be about the structure of American education and how bad it rots.  Or maybe it should be about why I can’t write a book.  Chapter after chapter of excuses blaming other people, when really my life is what it is because of choices that I have made.  It’s all on me.  I did it all.  I drew a box and then stood in the middle of it until it looked like the only place which was familiar.  I put the chloroform hankie over my own face, so I have no one to blame about anything.