Ah, Christmas

I don't know what to think about this shit-fest which is both a religious holiday and a druid celebration of seasons. 

Spending money.  Outsourcing time.  Forcible "bonding" time. 

I love my family.  I just can't make a plan to do something at a second location.

(...Said clinical depression.)

Fuck. Me.

"No."
This is the first word which enters my brain when my alarm goes off at 6:20am on a work day.

"FUCK. ME."
These are the first words out of my mouth at 6:35am, when my second alarm goes off.

On the off chance that I blow through the second alarm,  and my third alarm goes off, I'm already fucked, time-wise.

So, basically, every single day that I work, I wake up like a locked-in-sydrome patient who wants to stay locked in.

(Side-bar.  I started writing this blog yesterday, and then got bored with myself.  So anyway, I woke up this morning at 7:25, only because my child came in to see why I was still home.  I have to be at work at 7:30.  Somehow, some way, I turned off all three alarms in my sleep.  I got to work, at 7:59, which means I was almost tardy to my own study hall.  And yes, I texted the principal to tell him I was late.  But the first several words out of my mouth when I woke up were "fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!")


I love my job; I just really hate waking up in the morning and having to go to a second location. 


P.S. I can't help but swear like a sailor; it helps my brain understand "feeling words". 

It's My Fault

As it turns out, everything is my fault.

Examples:

The cat (which is NOT my cat) won't come inside, at 10 o'clock; it's 13 degrees outside.
Who's outside looking for the cat, so he won't freeze to death?  (Not the person who owns him.)

I'm also (and have always been) the "solution" to everything which is wrong with my house:

If the heater doesn't turn on, it's my fault.  I should fix it.  I should find a WAY to fix it.  I should, ultimately, PAY, to fix it.

If my new laptop cover doesn't fit, and I ask one of my roommates to help me, I bought the wrong one.  Not, "oh, let's maybe take 30 fucking seconds to look at it and see if you can help me",  just "you did it wrong".

You don't have lunch at school?  My fault.  Even though there's like $50 in credit in the cafeteria, if I didn't bring a good lunch for you to sit on your ass in a lawn chair in my classroom ... I'm the one who didn't forwardly think.

                P.S. If I bring my own lunch and not one for her, I'm (passive-aggressively) the bad guy.

Christmas is going to be sparse this year?  Maybe because I'm the only person who pays rent.
And no one turns any lights off, ever.

And the back door is STILL open, just in case the cat decides to return, so I'm paying to heat the outside.

Maybe, just maybe, people could think about other people sometimes, rather than wallow in their own shit and then puke out apathy.  That would be super-awesome.

Seasonal Affective Dickery

S.A.D.  Literally an acronym which some brilliantly capitalistic therapist came up with, sold to real doctors, and then threw drugs at.  People get depressed during cold months, because the sun is absent.  The wind is a soul-sucking phantom.  The bone-chilling cold is like being punched in the face.  Snow is beautiful, but shoveling it is like prison-camp labor. 

My point:  I have no actual idea.  (This is most certainly why I can't make a living off of writing.)

Fuck winter. 

Celibacy: The 10 Step Program

1.  Fuck people who suck.
2.  listen to their lies.
3.  Believe an altered version of reality.
4.  Hate yourself.
5.  Hate your "significant other".
6.  Deny reality.
7.  Take assorted anti-depressants. 
8.  Hate the drugs (and yourself even more) and then stop taking the drugs.
9.  Practice distance.
10.  Stop.  Enjoy solitude.  Try to like yourself, independently of other people.

FINIS

Stop Me

Here's the deal:  Parenting is a fucking rat's nest of bullshit.  Parenting is bad enough when two people do it together, but when only one person is in charge of all the things which keep people together, then the deal is fucked.

I am so fucking tired of being the one who figures out all the shit, in terms of day-to-day tedium.  Nothing fazes me, yeah?  "I want to go up there, and I don't want to ever come down.   I want to see what's up there, because it must be better than the hell on the ground."

The streets are fucking cold.  People are fucking cold.  Look to the sky and pray to ... anything holy?  What's up there?  It can't be worse than the bullshit non-speak that happens on the ground every single day.  See, the luck I've had could make a good person turn bad.  Please, please, please let me get what I want this time.  What do I want?  Civility?  Kindness?  Reciprocity?  Maybe, just love.

Sing me to sleep.  I'm tired, and I want to go bed.  Leave me alone.  Don't try to wake me in the morning; I will be gone.  Don't feel bad for me.  I want you to know that deep in the cell of my heart, I will feel so glad to go.  Sing me to sleep.  I don't want to wake up on my own anymore.  Deep in the cell of my heart, I really want to go.  There is another world. A better world.  There must be.

ineffective behavior

I think I'm too tired to be good at anything anymore. 

I believe the idiom is, "stretched too thin", although I am not thin, by any means.

I am losing efficacy as a teacher, because I'm becoming intolerant of the incessant whining of entitled students, parents, teachers and administrators. 

I am half-failing as a parent, because I'm so busy assisting other people's children at my job, that I have very little left at the end of any given day to assist my own children through the struggles of life and school and academia.

I don't really have a "life partner" right now, because I am too tired of the vapid bullshit which insidiously creeps into any relationship based on all the other people who have infiltrated both my personal life and the lives of those people with whom I try to engage on an intimate level. 

I have some time to myself, but in that time, I find myself doing senseless, redundant chores which eliminate any opportunity for creativity.  I simply don't have the time for the words or the music or the inspiration, because I'm constantly trying to stay stay one step ahead of the hundreds of teenagers who do not want to engage with their own learning, so I have to perform circus acts every day, just to keep them (marginally) interested in anything I'm trying to say.

To make a strange connection, I'd like to "unfriend" or "block" my current lifestyle in favor of one more conducive to personal happiness, and yet the hole which I've dug professionally (thus economically) inhibits my ability to choose happiness and creativity over a paycheck.  I have to pay the bills for everyone, so I have to have a job which I have outgrown.

Go America. 


(As a side note, I just told my youngest child what I'm writing about, and she said, "you're my own Serena Williams", which I take as the ultimate compliment from a 17-year-old.)

Murder, and Other American Ideals

On March 20th of this year, I was commenting about the fact that 3,060 people had been murdered by guns in America so far this year.  As of today, seven months later, 12,110 people have been killed by guns in America this year.  This does NOT include suicides.

What in the earthly fuck is going on?

If guns protected people, America would not be the gun-murder capital of the world.  I get the Second Amendment.  I am not totally opposed to owning a gun.  But we, as a country,  have to acknowledge that citizens owning guns will NOT stop government tyranny.

Let me channel Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale:  Everything is getting weird in society (just look at today's news) and then all of a sudden (in the novel) the entire government is murdered, in a coordinated effort.  The president, vice president, the chain of succession, and the congress.  Chaos ensues.

Sidenote:  Just last week, some crazy motherfucker sent dozens of bombs to the media and politicians.  What if they were active explosives?  What if they were active AND sent to current members of the government??  What if they also targeted media outlets, so no one knew anything about what was going on?

Margaret Atwood might have been writing a dystopian novel, but she isn't far off of 2018 reality.  It could happen.  What would you do if, all of a sudden, you couldn't protest, because if you did, a military force came out and gunned everyone down?  No warning.  No rights.  Just straight murder.  Would you go back out and protest?  Or would you shut the fuck up and stay inside?

What if they cut off access to your back account and you had no money?  What if they refused to let you exit the country to find sanctity in another country?  What if biblical rule became the law of the land?

Here's the thing, Americans:  you might think your weapons will save you, but the government will outman and outgun you, even if the "government" is not the one democratically elected.

Shit happens.   Everyone needs to vote.  Do it now, if you haven't already.  And do it like your life and your future depends on it, because it does.

The Second Sex (not Simone deBeauvoir Style)

I am a woman, a girl.  And with that comes many social responsibilities.  I have to tend to the house.  I have to tend to the children.  I have to make all the appointments.  I am (somehow, inexplicably) the one who decides who's getting laid.  And when.  I have to figure out all the financial, educational, personal, and maintenance issues of the household.  Even when my husband and I lived together, I was all of the roles in the household. 

This is bullshit. 

Fuck gender politics.  I just want to be an individual.  I should not be defined by the antiquated bullshit which accompanies being a girl.  And men shouldn't have to subscribe to roles which were defined far before they were born. 

Do I want to be taken care of?  Sometimes, yes.  It would be great to have someone, sometimes, who offers to help me or to fix things or to assist with the manual labor of the household (inside and out).  But I cannot find this person.  So I accept being alone.  I accept that in terms of having a partner, I will never have that element of life. 

To be honest, I don't even know why I'm writing this, except that sometimes it helps to shout the feeling-words into the internet void in order to purge them.  I am pissed at all the significant people in my life, because none of them care enough to help maintain our living space or to incorporate other people's needs into their own, selfish, narrow version of life.

I wish people didn't treat me this way because I'm female.  I wish I could say that people treat me like a maid or a doormat or a means-to-an-end in a non-gender-related way.  To be be fair, sometimes they do.  Sometimes people just suck, in general.  But being a target based on other people's impression of women (meaning I am intrinsically maternal all the time and should compromise everything for everyone), is bullshit.

Done.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Quick summary:  Parent-Teacher conferences (at my school, at least) are two days in a row, four hours apiece, after I work for 8 hours teaching. 

So ... 13 hours, two days in a row, rolling into school in the dark and then out of school, in the dark.

Then the students are off Friday (because they're obviously so tired from going to school), but teachers have to attend a staff day Friday to learn about how to be teachers. 

Hmmm....  (I think if we didn't know how before, it's a little late at this point.)

To add insult to injury, Senior Skip Day is Thursday.  So the kids whose parents won't call them out of school have to suffer through "lessons" which will need to be partially repeated, because most of their peers are sleeping in or hanging out with their friends. 

Cool.

I learn, every day, how much the education system in 2018 is completely broken. 

On each teacher's table is a sign which says, "Please limit your conference to 5 minutes".  That won't happen.  Parents will get pissed at having to wait.  Students will get berated in front of me for doing poorly in class.  I will get berated by parents for not coddling lazy students.  Administrators will roam around, surveying the room for discrepancies.  Nothing, ultimately, will be accomplished.  My ass will be totally asleep by 8:30.

Again, the year is 2018.  Social media is omnipresent in the lives of students, parents, and teachers.  We DO NOT need to block off 8 hours of time for parents to find out about their children's progress in school.  If a problem exists, I am at work 5 days a week, 8 hours at a time, and I read my email every single day, even out of school hours.  Students, parents, and teachers can communicate every day, almost all the time, without this antiquated nonsense.

Stop.

Thoughts About Thoughts

Sometimes, I sit somewhere (currently, outside on my back porch), and think ... what is happening?

I'm watching my cat (he's currently showing off by walking on a completely broken-ass porch rail and looking at me to see if I'll do something about it).  I think to myself, "Hey, Humphrey, you're a dumbass.  That fence you're on is not supporting you AT ALL, and you're going to fall".  And he looks back at me with his cat face and says, "what are you gonna do about it?"  My answer?  I'm going to do nothing.  I'm going to watch you fall, and hopefully you won't be so stupid in the future. #mexicanborderwall

Having a cat is oddly similar to having a child.  He's cute.  I love him.  He often makes bad choices.  Whatever.  Hopefully he doesn't die from falling on something sharp or being eaten by a wild animal.

And then, sometimes, I'm watching the students in my classroom, and I think, "Hey, kids, being able to read is probably important in life.  And (more importantly) CARING about ANYTHING sometimes is marginally important in life.  So good luck when you graduate, because no one will be there to call you in sick or make excuses for you or "pass" you through your job with a 59.5%."  (You'll just be fired.)

Other times, I'm watching the news ...

The best of times and the worst of times.

DJ Idiot just called himself a "nationalist", a term which has terrible connotations, but which he and his Kool-Aid drinking followers embrace.  Yesterday, DJ Eazy E (sorry, that's an insult to the actual rapper who died of AIDS) said that we need to let Saudi Arabia have some time to come up with a reason they cut a journalist to pieces with a bone saw, because America needs to make some money on international trading of murder-y weapons.  And a few days ago, he called someone he paid upwards of $100 thousand dollars to shut up about their affair "horseface".

I don't get it.  Has rationality gone out the fucking door?  Are we now a nation of idiot-lovers?  Do we have any credibility left with other nations??

Oh wait, I forgot that he said that the caravan of immigrants headed this way was littered with "MS-13 and Middle Eastern".  While he might not be wrong, PEOPLE SHOULDN'T SAY THINGS WITH NO FACTUAL EVIDENCE!!  He's the president for god's sake; have some composure, and stop fear-mongering.  Have some respect for the people you represent.

Shut up.  Please.

"STOP", said No One.

As a human being, I say STOP.  This shit going on in the world is an embarrassment.  Seriously.

Kanye West was at the White House the other day.  Let me just repeat:  Kanye West was at the White House the other day.

An aside:  Here is a list of things which Kanye West has said out of his face-hole in the past:

• “Every time I say something that is extremely truthful, out loud…it literally breaks the internet. So what are we getting all the rest of the time?"  
• “One of my biggest Achilles heels has been my ego. And if I, Kanye West, can remove my ego, I think there’s hope for everyone.”
• "I hate when I'm on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me. Like, oh great, now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle.”
• “I am so credible and so influential and so relevant that I will change things.”
• “If I don’t win, the awards show loses credibility.”
• “I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.”
• "I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it."
• “Just imagine if I woke up one day and I was wack. What would I do then?"

What the fuck, Kanye?  But I get it.  You're a rap guy.  You are living some kind of dream.  You're married to a super-rich girl who made a sex tape in which some shitty "rapper" came on your wife's back and now her and her sisters and her mom and whomever talk about eating at restaurants or film their vacations at places most ordinary people could never, EVER afford, or some shit.  That's cool.  Who are we to judge?

So ...

What was the next step in Kanye's ascent to the top?  The fucking White House.  Donald Trump let Kanye West come to the White House and spew a bunch of hot nonsense.  KANYE rolled into the room, and DONALD TRUMP was star-struck.  Really?!  How does a marginally insane rapper roll into the White House and awe the President of United States??  Probably because they are both reality TV stars, which is objectively the WORST kind of tv star:  Suck-up, star-fuckers.  

Think about this:  our president is "friends" with a reality TV star /rapper.  And the PRESIDENT is in awe of this vapid motherfucker.  (by the way, that last word is one that Kanye used in front of our president).

Quote from Kanye IN THE WHITE HOUSE:  Trump “might not have expected to have a crazy motherfucker like Kanye West supporting him.”

Okay, then. I guess America has ... changed courses ... (?) . White America now values entertainment over actual reality? Is that a thing? (Probably). Also, I dare anyone to share this Trump/Kanye exchange with the old, white men, and tragically delusional older, white women, who voted for Trump, (who most likely didn't watch this recent, embarrassing exchange in the White House), and ask them if they still agree that DJ Trump should be in charge of ANYTHING - like a light switch for example - let alone the entire United States of America. Ask ALL of them. ALL 50 states (plus Puerto Rico, where he threw some paper towels at victims of a natural disaster).

(Also, apparently, Jim Brown doesn't matter, because he was just there in the background.)

(And then Kid - Fucking - Rock took the mic from the president later in the day ...)

Let's MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN by taking this ridiculous, embarrassing motto off the table and actually making America better. Fuck "great": we're not even in field-goal range of "great". Let's just make America semi-viable again. This grandstanding shit happening in the White House is a fucking joke. On America. America is (sadly) relegated to an Onion hashtag now, because what's going on in this country is a kind-of funny anti-joke.

Communication Breakdown

I have this notion that no one really says what they mean anymore.  Or, they say exactly what pops into their heads, without regard to anyone else's ideology.  

This whole Brett Kavanaugh Senate hearing has me thinking about growing up.  Going to parties.  Being around drunk boys (and girls).  Very few people on the party circuit in high school and college were thinking about lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court.  We were just having fun.  

Here's the deal:  sometimes "fun" gets out of hand.  Sometimes a girl drinks too much and ends up in a room full of stupid, drunken boys.  It happens.  Sometimes the girl has to maneuver her way out.  Sometimes she has to fight her way out.  And usually, the boys in the room are people she knows, vaguely or personally.  She doesn't want to freak out right away, because she doesn't believe that these people she has met before would ever hurt her.  And then comes the moment when she realizes that they (or he) want something far beyond the excuse for going to the second room ("listening to music", "playing the guitar", "checking out a cool space", whatever).  Sometimes people can be too trusting or naive or stupid or drunk to make good decisions in any given moment.

But ... if someone who compromised me and caused me psychological harm - even if it was 30 years ago - was about ready to be given a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, I would speak up.  I understand why this woman didn't tell the authorities. It's embarrassing on every level, and she didn't want other people to know.  But if what she says is true, and if what the others say is true, that this man was a belligerent, drunken idiot throughout high school and college, grabbing girls inappropriately and laughing about it like total dick, then he doesn't belong in a position where he is one of nine people determining & interpreting the law at the highest level.  

Dear Lance

I know that what I write has a limited audience.  I am honest.  Most people are not.  I accept the reality of my life and my choices.  Most people want to believe in a certain version of themselves.  (Generally a self-inflated version)

It's cool.  We shouldn't be judging each other,  even though that's what happens every day, all the time. 

Here's the thing:  we all have certain people who are important in our lives.  For some of us (me), those people are very far and few between.  So when someone I care about wants to talk to me about something, I listen.  Even when I don't want to.  Because that's what love is about:  shutting the fuck up for a minute while someone you respect is talking.  Even if you don't agree.  Even when what that person is saying doesn't vibe with your belief system. 

People always say that life is short, but I truly believe that I'm a fucking highlander or something, because I feel like this life is interminable.  The bullshit I have to endure from both my own brain and then from other people's jaded version of reality is unnecessary.  Sometimes days feel like years, and moments drag on forever. 

If you love someone, listen.  If you care, empathize.  If you respect someone, due diligence requires more than simply showing up.

I don't know you.  I never will.   And if your wife is smart (as I know she is) she won't read this to you.  But I have her back, even if you don't.  I know what it feels like to be marginalized and gas-lighted and made to feel inadequate and/or manipulable. 

Stop it. 

Teaching & Verbal Vomit

I honestly can't believe the level of entitlement and apathy crawling through the hallways of high school.  I understand the Breakfast Club ideology, where the janitor tells the grumpy teacher that the kids aren't getting worse, he's just getting old.  Maybe that's true.  Maybe I'm bitter.  Maybe 21 years teaching is too many.  And maybe, kids are getting worse. 

Here's the thing:  High school often sucks.  I was a fairly shitty student myself.  I barely passed through my senior year and I skipped classes almost every day.  I get it.  But I'm fucking exhausted from caring on behalf of other people.  Their apathy rubs off - it's toxic. 

According to the Washington Post, 17% of teachers quit the profession in the first 5 years, and another 8% quit annually.  Teaching can be very fulfilling, but it also has a tendency to take over your life.  As an English teacher, the mountains of paper alone are enough to drive a person completely mad.  I have over-achieving AP students who push themselves to be better and more educated, and I have seniors who can barely read, don't know what punctuation is, and actively bitch every day about having to do basic tasks. 

Here's a thought:  high school is not for everyone.  What are we doing keeping all kids locked up in school until they're 18 years old, when not all of them need to be there?  We should be encouraging students to graduate early, to take classes online, to figure out what they want to do, and then help them do it.  Yes, some people need all four years of high school.  But not everyone.  It's a waste of time and energy and resources to force students who hate school and refuse to participate to stay enrolled.  Let them go.  No Child left Behind sounds like a good motto, until you realize that some children systematically try to be left behind. 

A high school diploma should be earned.  Many students just expect it to be handed to them, even if they do nothing.  And some teachers, counselors, and administrators will bend over backwards to fudge grades - just get little Johnny to a 59.5% so he passes.  Move him along the system, even he can barely read and hasn't turned in a single assignment all semester. 

That's bullshit.  School should be a meritocracy.  You should have to EARN a diploma, not just show up periodically. 

Change.  One of these days I'll figure out how to help change this nonsense.  Or, more likely, I'll end up in that 8% statistic who leaves.  The only thing keeping me here right now is my paycheck and my benefits.  If I could find any way to leave here, I'd already be gone.

Bullshit

Writing online is a fool’s errand. No one listens. My autocorrect tells a different story. Fuck social media

School shootings

As it turns out, the label" school shootings" and the title "school shooting" and the fact that this is the third time I've typed "school shootings" into this blog entry will make some robot cyber-troller hit this blog post a hundred times.  

What a stupid, American fact. 

P.S. The internet is watching all of us, all the time.  

#bekind

Academia

Just so you know, in case you aren't in the field of education, teachers are forced to read books written by people who sell books to teachers.  These people have advanced degrees in education, which (if you do a simple google search) are a dime a dozen and available online.  An MA in Education is not impressive.  It's a way for teachers to make more money.  Period.  If they wanted to be better at their jobs, they would get advanced degrees in their subject areas. 

So, to break it down, schools buy books on teaching for all their teachers in order to inflate the income of people who write books about simplistic ideology about teaching. 

I thought that's what I got three college degrees to do. 

I thought that's what I've spent the past 22 years doing.  Teaching. 

Why are school districts subsidizing the income of people who take a simple concept, wrap it in academic nonsense words, then sell it back to schools?

The education system is broken.  If you are a student, pay attention to what you're being forced to buy.  (Often books written by the professor who teaches your class.) . If you are a teacher, listen and try to learn literally anything from words which are rearranged to sell books.  If you are a parent, be outraged that your tax dollars are being spent to buy books (and seminars) for teachers who should already know how to do their jobs. 

Make getting a degree in education more difficult.  Require advanced degrees.  Pay teachers more.  Expect more from students. 

Check, check. 

The less we expect from our students, the less they will participate. 

Mental Floss (aka mental illness)

If almost everyone acknowledges that mental illness is the cause of mass shootings, suicide, and egregious health care costs, what the fuck are we doing as a country to fix this problem?

Health care costs are out of control.  I cannot afford to send my child to therapy, even though I have mafia-style insurance mediation as a member of the teacher's union.  How can people take care of themselves, let alone their children, when they can't afford to pay for basic mental health care?  If my child goes to therapy twice a week, I pay roughly $300/month.  WITH insurance.  That's utter bullshit.  Theres a reason people don't seek out mental health care.

(Disclaimer:  I am not a racist.  I am not against immigration.) 

When illegal immigrants can get health care which is better than mine, I  now have a problem.  An Emergency Room visit costs me, at minimum, $1200.  People who use the system (ERs) as primary care treatment pay nothing.  Nothing.  That's a great number for them.  I would love to pay nothing for the medical issues which affect me and my family.  I would love to not be stupidly in deep debt just to take myself and my children to the doctor.  Total bullshit.

Here's what DOESN'T help:  a border wall.  People will get over or under or around the wall.  The change has to come from United States government intervention, legislating properly.  I'm not talking about hurting people.  I'm not talking about separating families or putting immigrant children in stupid-ass government-funded holding pens.  I'm talking about REAL change, not just words that look good behind a politician on a banner.  (Like "Make America Great Again.") .

As Americans, can we PLEASE get our collective shit together and help each other?!  We ALL have issues, mentally and personally and financially, so there's no reason to be partisan and vote with an "R" or a "D:  Choose (vote for) people who will improve the country, not suck the president's dick.  (I get that the last sentence is inflammatory, but I think we are past political correctness at this point.)

Let's actually make America great again, by taking care of the mental health of the American people.

Self-Induced Therapy

In an attempt to be more positive, I am now going to force myself to say a series of things which make me happy:

• My children are amazing human beings who are pursuing life on their own terms, and they all make me proud
• Lane is a force of nature who cares about me without prejudice
• Many of my new students are solidly good people who want to listen and learn
• The flowers in my backyard are beautiful, and the temperature is fall-ish
• I might have the most comfortable bed ever mass-produced
• I don't have to work on my birthday this year
• I have some pretty kick ass musical instruments
• I have a pretty kick ass best friend
• My cat is a support animal, even when he's attacking my face when I wake up
• (I'm beginning to struggle with examples now)
• Sharpies are pretty cool
• My dart board is also a therapy tool, which I love throwing sharp object at
• I am alive

The end, for now :)

Absence - that common cure for love

Unfortunately, I believe Lord Byron was right, when he said that absence is the common cure for love.  So many cliches exist about love that it's impossible to believe them all, but sometimes, the cliche becomes part of a common belief system because it's so true, so often.

Love should be breath-taking, but love also needs room to breathe sometimes.  I entered into a long-distance version of love a couple of years ago, and now the only thing that I know for sure is that even though I love him, and he will always be important in my life, I will never have what I want in that relationship because of absence.  He isn't moving, and I can't move.

For me, love should not be jammed into a couple of days here and there.  Maybe I'm selfish (probably), but I need to have a partner in my life.  Or to be alone.  Having someone only when it's convenient for them, going to bed alone every night, not having someone to decompress with at the end of a day, wondering if the constant stress of maintaining a relationship is worth the emotional and physical side effects, living completely separate lives ... isn't healthy.  The anticipation used to be thrilling; now it just makes me sad and lonely.

I'm not here to whine though.  I'm just in another moment of another day when I want what I don't have.  My job is a drain, my love life is bare, and my body feels like it's shutting down for good.  I have to find a way to find more small moments of happiness, or I may just never recover from this disappointing chapter of my life. 

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Repeat.  Fake a smile until it (hopefully) becomes genuine happiness.

The Grind

When school started back a week and a half ago, I cried every single morning when my alarm went off.  Today is the first day I haven't cried.  That seems like a problem. Maybe a new job?  Oh wait:  I can't quit my job, because then I get systematically fucked by THE MAN, because I haven't worked for 85 years doing my job, thus my current retirement fund might keep me alive for a year. 

Here's the unfortunate truth:  I fucking hate going to my job.  This is not good.  I used to love my job, even though sometimes it's frustrating.  I loved teaching, I loved the challenge, and I loved sharing my love of language and literature.  Now ... well, I actively hate myself for signing a contract to go back to that building.  I just hate myself in general, actually.  I hate the people who run the school.  I hate the kids who refuse to engage because they think school is a waste of their time.  I hate that those students destroy my passion for the ideas/writing that I'm passionate about.  I hate that the word that first comes to my mind about education is "hate". 

I honestly don't think I'm going to make it through this school year.  I don't even think I'll make it through next week.  I'll either have a massive heart attack and die, or I'll purposely swerve into oncoming traffic in front of a semi just so I don't have to do this job anymore. 

I'm fucking sad all the time because I can't stand being in high school anymore.  I went to high school.  I graduated.  I went to college.  I graduated.  (thrice) . I have now taught in high school for 21 years.  I am ready to graduate.  Immediately.  I would like to never see the inside of a high school again.  Starting today. 

I truly think all the negative feelings I have about my job and myself are slowly killing me.  I don't even like or respect myself anymore, so how could anyone else? 

All I want to do is be a writer, live on my own terms and my own schedule, and not feel the compulsion to drink myself to death.  But I don't write, because when I do, this is what happens.  I puke out a bunch of shitty feeling words about how disappointed I am with my life.  Fucking pathetic. 

I would end this rant by saying that tomorrow will be a better day, but based on the trajectory of my current life, tomorrow will be the same Groundhog Day-style nightmare that every other day is.  Thank god for my best friend, who happens to be a 17-year-old, otherwise I'd disappear.

F-ing School

I start back to school tomorrow.  I got the flurry of emails and regular mailers to remind me to (mandatorily) attend a pep rally at 8am to get riled up and excited about educating this next class of students.  Every year, hundreds of teachers attend this terrible "party" and endure the attempt to pump up educators to take on another school year. 

One year, it rained, and we had to leave.  That was my favorite one.

So I will go back to school tomorrow and try to get my shit together.  (It is definitely NOT together yet.). I will attend a handful of meetings and force myself to arrange curriculum in order to properly teach young people.  (Young people who are ardently against coming back to school, I might add.) . I will put posters on my blank, white, suicide-walls so that I don't feel like I'm housed in a prison cell with no windows and brick encasement.  I will find people who make me happy-ish and spend time with them in order to readjust my brain to the institution of education.

I love teaching.  I love English.  I used to love the beginning of every school year, because it's an opportunity to do something new and different . Now, I want to simply not have a debilitating panic attack because I'm going to back to do the same thing ... again.  I will try my best to do things differently and better, if only because my students deserve my best effort. 

Importantly, I will try to go to sleep before 4am, because that's my current timelime.  Sleep at 3 or 4am and get up around noon.  (Sigh.) .

Mantra:  "I will be okay.  Everything will be okay." 

Every Day

I think we might need to rethink the "American Dream", and try to live our lives in waking moments, suspended in whatever dreams lift us. 

America's War on the Middle Class

I don't know exactly what I did wrong, besides getting three college degrees and then taking a job as a teacher.  I thought I was "doing it right", you know?  Engaging in the world in a productive way, contributing to the economy by buying a house, cars, having kids, sending them to college too, and trying to be a good citizen.

Unfortunately, what I end up with at the end of the day is overwhelming debt and a sense of total confusion about how I ended up fucked by the institutions of this great country.  My mortgage interest rates are too high, but in order to renegotiate them, I have to fork over $2000.  I want a divorce, but the lawyer requires a $2500 retainer.  If I go through mediation, I'm still fucked, because I don't understand the law well enough to protect myself and my children.  I am STILL paying off my student loan bills, and am now accruing student loans payments from two of my three kids.  Oh, and the third one will start college next year. 

How, exactly, do we expect the economy to grow if middle class people live paycheck-to-paycheck?  How do we expect this next generation to engage in the economy if they are saddled with crushing student loan debt?  Middle class families who try to do right by their children (sending them to college, enrolling in sports and activities, and so on) try to endure every day. 

I'm not saying I'm poor - I make a good salary - but it's not enough to pay for tuition, room & board, and living expenses for a kid going to school in my own state! 

Every day, I believe more and more that this system of democracy only works for some people, and at the end of the day, America is NOT the great country of opportunity anymore.  I, for one, am tired of seeing people (and companies) totally take advantage of their positions in society, at the cost of the everyday people who go to work every day and just try to keep up with their bills. 

And as a final thought, I say "fuck the government" when they try to tell me that filing divorce papers (which is only the START of financial fuckery) costs $167, but my marriage license cost $25.  I'd rather stay married on paper than give a single penny to the government for something they should NOT be involved with in the first place.  (Marriage.)

So ... piss off, county, city, state, and federal government.  I will find a new way to survive without your needless intervention.  Thanks but no thanks. 

DJ Trump (aka Joseph Stalin)

I understand, America:  you're delusional.  What's happening in the United States right now is fucking ridiculous.  We have a president who is a total narcissist, a congress which is too scared to take action against an autocratic liar, and a general public which is too self-involved to notice the sucking vacuum of stupidity spreading like an STD across the United States of America.

As an educator, I am embarrassed.  I try very hard to teach young people how to learn and engage in the world, but the world itself is a quagmire.  Do I tell a 16-year-old person to remember literary terms, or do I try to impart a sense of civic responsibility?  And shouldn't those two things work in tandem?  Shouldn't we all know how to speak and listen and communicate, without imparting hatred based on partisan bullshit?

According to the current president of the great United States of America, we should go to a foreign adversary and (metaphorically) suck dick on an international stage.  I am not a nationalist, but I am fundamentally embarrassed by Donald Trump essentially rolling over and taking it in the ass by a Russian KGB member.  I mean, congratulations, Putin; you are the person I always thought you were.  You're a mercenary.  My problem is with the American public who takes DJ's treason and maintains that he is "improving" America. 

Any president of these United States who praises a Russian killer, a North Korean idiot, and a Venezuelan murderer, while trashing our European allies is a fucking traitor.  He has no interest in the lives of average Americans; he is trying to assert that his dick is bigger than everyone else's (something I very much doubt is true).  He is a pushover, only interested in himself and his bank account. 

There comes a line when I cannot support the politics of something called a 'democracy", which is anything but.  I will not support this system of government, nor will I be a part of machinery which helps create more idiots who drink the Kool-Aid.  People seem to be purposefully ignoring the fundamental bullshit which presents itself on TV every day.  As a side-note, I cannot be a part of the machine which turns out under-informed, under-educated citizens every school year. 

At some point, it has to stop.  Who will step up?

#donaldtrump, part 3

How funny is it that the web site which publishes this blog has one immediate "reader" of my blog, based on the words:  DONALD TRUMP.

(trolling) . (assholes) . (idiots) . (computer hackers) . (2018)


Hey, Donald:  twitter tweeted back:  shut the fuck up and do your job.

#donaldtrump, part 2

What in the bloody fuck is the current president of the United States of America doing?

Here's a rundown ...

Immigration:  Let them come.  They will find out on their own that the United States is quickly circling the drain, therefore, they should stay home and fix their own countries in whatever way necessary.  ("By any means..." said Malcolm X.)

Immigration, part next:  Do not put children in holding pens.  They are not veal.  They are not industrial byproducts; they are human beings.  Find a way to keep them with their parents or something.  Send them back to their country if necessary, but don't fuck around with kids.  Destroying the foundation of a child's life does not make America "great"; it creates a whole generation of people who have no home, no family, and nothing to lose (which is of no use to anyone).

Indictments:  How many people can DJ Trump fire and/or pretend who he doesn't have collegial relationships with?  The number, unfortunately, is (apparently) infinite.  (For now.) . When a person's lawyer(s) are hiding (seemingly) everything they know, we might have a problem.  I'm reminded of the Kendrick Lamar song "No Make-Up":  don't hide behind the imperfections and reality - just be who you are.  Let the justice system do its job (if America is place where justice still occurs).

International Relations:  I am probably talking out my ass here, but it seems to me that DJ Trump is on his knees in front of many foreign, head-of-state murderers.  Ironically, DJ gave Obama shit for apologizing for atrocities committed by the US of A, but here comes an orange idiot who will sell his soul for a compliment from some dictator who treated him like shit, just recently, if only to make sure he's as "cool" and "powerful" as they are (at least on twitter).  DJ is like a fucking freshman frat pledge-boy who will do whatever makes him seem "cool" to the fuckwads who have more power.  (Remember that just a few days ago, DJ said, "I want my people to sit at attention" like they do for a North Korean dictator who is more interested in Dennis Rodman than he is in feeding his own people.)

Falso idols, DJ.  That's, like, the first commandment, sent down from Moses from the mountaintop.  If you want the Christian vote, read the bible, or shut the fuck up and make another shitty, unwatchable TV show.

(I'm just saying, be careful America.  We are in an Orwellian world of obfuscation and deceit.)

Catherine, and Other Drugs

Getting high is inappropriate (said Nancy Reagan - "just say no" and so forth), so of course I don't endorse ingesting drugs :)

Anyway, Catherine makes me look at the world differently.  She is nervous and happy and absent-minded.  Sounds about like me.  I, however, do not leave my keys, my wallet, my car, or my clothes in a second location.  (Anymore.). Her flightiness is lovely, in the sense that I don't have to directly deal with the ramifications of collecting all the lost goods the next day.  Her problems are not mine.  Her presence, though, is often a bonus.  She's a keeper, for sure.

She is not "mine" in any way - she is simply in the karass.  Kurt Vonnegut would agree and approve.  We choose the people in our lives, whether we know it or not.  We might meet them in a bar, or we meet them via someone else, but those who belong, stay.  Those who don't belong (you know, they make us uncomfortable or awkward) often stick around in our space, but they are definitely not part of our larger/abstract meanings of life.

(By the way, life arguably has no meaning, except to be happy in any given moment, and to potentially improve that which surrounds us.)

* Here are some games to navigate other people (to see if they are your type of person):

Darts:  a good way to know people.  Playing darts is a valid way to interact with other people's personalities.  Do they shoot quickly?  Slowly?  Accurately?  Are they confused about the rules?  Do they have a touch of the ADD?  Do they belittle themselves when they miss?  Do they rub it in their opponent's face when they hit a number they need?  Do they want to bet money on a result?

Dice:  solely a game of circumstance . You roll; you record the sum of those rolls.  You win or lose on (literally) the roll of the dice.  Random numbers in a sequence.  But the REACTION of someone after they roll the dice tells the story of their attitude.  Anger?  Surprise?  Excitement?  Competitive, reactionary swearing?  Do they throw the dice, drop them on the table, or bend their head down in defeat?

Pool:  (my favorite):  this one takes a bit of skill.  Hitting one ball into another ball sounds deceptively easily.  It's not.  People play pool with different attitudes, which speaks to their personalities.  Are they really drunk?  Have they been "talked into" playing by someone else?  Are they looking at the ball when they shoot, or are they saying many unnecessary words?  Are they angry when the ball doesn't fall?  Or are they even paying attention to who's winning and/or losing?  Can they drain the eight ball when it's sitting in the middle of the rail and slide it along the side rail, gently, until it falls into the corner pocket, winning the game?  If they win, do they put the stick down on the table, or talk loudly about how good they are?

Music:  this is a no-brainer.  If someone turns on music for the benefit of others - not just inside their own heads via headphones - what does the vibe sound like?  Are they enjoying it?  Are they emoting?  Are they telling everyone to "be quiet and listen to the words"?  Are they dancing?  Do they close their eyes?  Do they feel it, or just listen to it?

---

I told Catherine earlier that I was writing about her (which turned out to be marginally untrue), her only response was, "really?  cool."

That's the best answer I can give for anything, really.

"Really?  Cool."

In the karass.

17 June (and other random dates)

Farming.

People actually farm.  Like they plant corn and shit.  Hundreds of acres of little plants on which they base their entire budget.  Odd.

And yet, being out in the middle of nowhere is pretty fucking awesome.  The air is better; the clouds are better; the sunset is better; the silence is unbearably beautiful.

And a nice porcelain bathtub, outside, filled with cold water from a hose (after it has warmed up a bit) is an added bonus.  Literally SUNBATHING feels amazing (especially when no one can see me, so it doesn't matter what I am or am not wearing). 

I don't know if I'm the type of person who could live in isolation like that, but a mini vacation now and again is priceless.  Having access to three-wheelers and motorcycles and cocktails - playing guitar in the back of a '69 Chevy -  these are all game-changers too - feels like freedom on a completely different level.  Freedom TO and freedom FROM.  Both are important. 

So, I'll be a day tripper like The Beatles for now.  When days start to blend into each other in the summer, and I don't know the day of the week, my quality of life improves.  I'll drink it in.

Life is a Four, on a Scale of Ten

It's been a while.  I'm not writing.  I'm not doing anything, really, which expands my life expectancy.  I drink too much.  I smoke too much.  I think too much.

Ironically, I think that last one is the one which will prematurely kill me.

I can's stop thinking about everything and everyone.  Here is a list of my (current) top intrusive thoughts:

• I am ready for the next stage of my life.  Unfortunately, due to the current state of the government and the world, I am unable to quit my job to move on.
• Parenting.  (I'm not sure I need to say anything else.  If you have kids, you understand.  If you are a kid, you understand differently.)
• P.S. I'm not sure I'm doing a good job at raising people.  We all think too much and want more than we can afford. 
• Pussy.  I said it.  There's a cat in my house now.  I would never have done that myself, but Humphrey's presence in my house has kept me marginally sane in the past few weeks.  He knows nothing but food, love, play, and sleep.  I love him, unconditionally - something I wish the people in my life would do for me. 
• Nebraska.  Fucking stupid weather.  I hate being hot.  I used to love gardening, but now I just sweat and curse most of the time, because no one will help me do anything outside, nor do they care (on any level) about the area surrounding our home.
• Oh, and maybe they could pick up their fucking shit?  (Just a thought...)
• Love.  What a bitch.  I think I know what I deserve as a human being - at least I know what I want from a life partner, and yet I have never had a partner who cares enough about me to surround me with love and companionship.  Everything seems to be conditional to everyone.  I don't know if part of that is my fault, or if I simply cannot find another person who is willing to give up part of themselves to be part of me (something I do for literally everyone I love).  
• Food.  I eat like an asshole, therefore my body treats me like the asshole I am.
• Marriage.  Fuck it.  What a racket.  I'm not sure what's worse:  marriage or college.  It's all about commitment and money.  Marriage ended up not being about love; and paying for my children to go to college ended up being just a very expensive financial experiment. 
• Death.  Yep.  We're all going there.  Why fight it?

My list is not meant to be depressing or attention-whoring.  I only mean to point out the things in life which make me a little bit crazy, and about which I cannot stop thinking.  I didn't even include the news, because I stopped watching it.  I only READ the news now, because the talking idiots on the tv screen don't get to take up space in my head.  DJ Trump can do his best at destroying America, but I think Americans are doing a fine job of destroying the American Dream all by themselves.  We didn't need a reality tv person as president, but we have one, and now the rest of the world knows what I already knew, which is that people don't really care about anything except themselves.  

I shall make a cocktail and go pick weeds, because that's the only thing over which I have any control.  And even then, the weeds take over.  That's life:  a series of recursive tasks which get me nowhere, in a place where I will never be a star.  I will only be an empty satellite orbiting in space, wondering where all the other satellites are and why I can't communicate with them on a transcendental level. 

#realDonaldTrump

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing today to express some central grievances against you as both the president of my country and as a fellow human being.  As you were elected president of the United States of America, I assume you have an extraordinary ability to empathize with the people of your country, so I would like to provide some feedback, as a fellow American.

(I will bullet my comments for your ease, as I know you are more accustomed to communicating via 140 characters on twitter.)

• Health Care:  Stop whining about what Obama broke and FIX IT.  Please discontinue your verbal campaign of slandering every person who "ruined" some element of American society unless you have a viable (read:  realistic) solution of your own.  
• I have no choice but to keep my government job, because if I quit, I will not be able to afford health care.  You are not protecting the health care system, you are outsourcing it to the wealthiest lobbying campaign.

• Your Cabinet:  Really?  Were you that bad at choosing in the first place, or did all of these people suddenly turn against you?  Did you know what they were doing all along and overlook it, or were you so narcissistic that you thought nothing would ever break through your "lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous" shield?  When everyone has annoyed you (and is then subsequently fired), who will be left to help you run this country?

• DACA:  Once again, the American public hears you whining about the hordes of people running as fast as they can at the American border.  I get it.  Immigrants are a strain on the economy.  That doesn't mean the people who were born here, under no fault of their own, shouldn't be allowed (and encouraged) to apply for immediate citizenship and start paying taxes.  People who were BORN in America are FROM America.  Shaming or deporting or penalizing them is UN-AMERICAN.  

• Mother Russia:  We get it.  You were knees-deep on a bunch of rich Russians.  Stop hedging about who you know and to whom you spoke in the oligarchy of Russia.  Stop throwing your friends and confidantes under the bus, UNLESS you are willing to admit complicity.  You know you always admired Vlad.  That's because he's more manly and powerful than you are.  You are not even in the same league, sir. 
• And stop picking fights with childish idiots, like King Jung Un.  (NO one wins.)

• America The Beautiful:  You're fucking it up.  The only possible positive outcome from your presidency is that Congress will start working TOGETHER to give individuals back their personal freedoms, a concept on which America was founded.  The political shift is already happening, which is probably why you keep firing people who disagree with you:  you're a little scared.  
• You should be.  The president of the United States does not have unlimited power, and I believe that our governmental checks and balances will see through your circus act.  I'm excited to see a united congress.  Something new, in my lifetime at least.  

So, Mr. President, I have many other things to say, but time is short, and you aren't really worth any more of mine right now.  Perhaps we shall correspond at a later time.  (Weirdly, I feel like I just started talking like Jane Austen, but whatever.)

Have a lovely day in the White House.  I'm free to chat any time.

Zombies (All of Us)

I’m trying to write a story about zombies. 

Woke up cold one Tuesday
I'm looking tired and feeling quite sick
I felt like there was something missing in my day to day life
So I quickly opened the wardrobe
Pulled out some jeans and a t-shirt that seemed clean
Topped it off with a pair of old shoes
That were ripped around the seams
And I thought these shoes just don't suit me

Time to put some new shoes on, yeah?  Maybe some Doc Martens or some motorcycle boots or some insulated snow boots or some flip flops.  Just time for some new shoes. 

So, zombies fit in there somewhere.  Government collapse, toxic shit, man versus nature, classic literary shit.  (backlit by Led Zeppelin III, because it’s sufficiently weird and beautiful).

Some people live; some die.  I’ve already made some choices.  Not about myself though.  Maybe for the first time in my life, in this zombie dystopia I’m creating, I will live, rather than dying a martyr. 

Maybe not.  I’m fairly predictable.  Sacrifice is like a practiced art/science for me.

I’m going to get back to the storytelling now …

School Shootings, and Other Surrealism

Once again, today, two kids were gunned down at their high school. 

Let me break this down for everyone in one thought:  a student walked into a school with a Glock and started firing.  He’s dead.  Two students were shot.  The resource officer was on top of it.  (Thank you, Blaine Gaskill, for facing your own mortality to save the lives of others.)

That Maryland high school had a lock down drill the other day.  My school had a lock down drill today.  Here’s what doesn’t stop school shootings:  lock down drills.  YES, lives are saved by having a plan in place to protect students.  NO, there is not a way for schools to stop active shooters.  They can come in through the front door of their school with a gun in their pocket, their backpack, or their sleeve.  No amount of metal detectors will stop shooters from coming in.  Locking the doors helps, but the doors are often unlocked.  The doors are ALWAYS unlocked at the beginning of the day (obviously) because students need to gain entrance to their schools.

Guns don’t kill people, right NRA? 

This is blatant fucking nonsense. 

The school system needs to be fundamentally changed.  If I have to champion this cause (at the risk of losing my job in the process), I will.  I just honestly can’t believe that THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT is so useless in protecting its citizens.  I totally, genuinely, understand the usefulness of the Second Amendment, and I don’t think it should go away completely, BUT … the Second Amendment is the only one of the Bill of Rights which hasn’t been properly challenged through the Supreme Court.  Please get it done, government officials.  I’m not a lawyer or a senator or a representative, but I am a teacher of human beings, and I would prefer that they not get gunned down while trying to get an education simply because a minority of gun enthusiasts are manipulating U.S. laws with lobbying money funneled through the NRA.

As of this moment, 3,060 people have been killed by guns in America since January 1^st.  30 human beings TODAY.  (so far …)  As a citizen of this “greatest country on earth”, I am appalled by our lack of humanity.  So many of these murderers simply kill themselves before law enforcement even shows up on the scene.  Even in my hyper-vigilant suburban area, it would take about five minutes for law enforcement to arrive at the school.  How many people can be killed in five minutes with an automatic gun??  The answer is a lot.  And “a lot” is a fucking terrible quantitative value in reference to human beings, especially children. 

Can we just be better?  Can we stop this antiquated ideology of “America”?

When my students and I had to navigate a “lock-down-turn-off” situation at school today, they turned into a militia.  They didn’t want to die, even in a drill.  They threw tables up against the window and the door and hid like someone was actually shooting.  They moved around to different positions to see where they were most safe.  They kept talking about the logistics of different scenarios.  They were preemptive striking against an enemy, AND THEY WERE JUST TRYING TO GO TO ENGLISH CLASS. 

Fucking stupid.  We all (including the students) need hazard pay.

Sunshine and Other Elusive Things

Today is a beautiful day.

 

I didn’t know that, of course, until 3:30, because my work space is a cinderblock square with no windows, located in the middle of a cinderblock hallway.  Sounds like a prison, yes?

I only knew that the sun was shining and the weather was warm after hearing it from other people who had ventured outside.  So my students and I decided to explore a surprisingly nice February day in the Midwest by going outside to have class.  What we discovered (which is something I already knew, but tend to overlook) is that our outside perimeter has no place to sit and commune or read or discuss.  We all sat on a concrete sidewalk by a parking lot in the back of the school.  There are no benches.  No seats of any kind.  Don’t get me wrong, the experience was far better than being totally Vitamin D deficient, but having ANY sort of semi-comfortable gathering place outside would be a bonus. 

We could have gone to the front of the building, where there are a handful of concrete benches, but there’s no quiet out front – just cars and noise and surveillance cameras.

Even INSIDE, the school provides no place for people to find solace.  The library has comfy chairs, but the comfort ends there.  The benches at the ends of the hallways are made of hefty metal mesh.  The benches in the commons area of the school are all concrete.  Repose is elusive there.  It’s as if the school is saying, “here’s a place to sit, but we don’t want anyone to get too relaxed, so here’s some concrete”.   

Oh, and there is no teacher’s lounge or even department commons – those rooms look and feel (and smell) just like the rest of the building:  industrial.

My old school had a senior lounge.  And a junior lounge.  And an outdoor amphitheater for things like reading Shakespeare out loud, in the sun, to recreate a literary and personal vibe. 

Since when did public schools become part of the prison industrial complex?  No wonder the kids just want out all the time.  We should let the kids OUT, not lock them in.  We should encourage high school students to graduate early, if they have all their credits.  We should encourage kids to schedule a late start or an early release, so they can get a job or get more rest or go for a run or just LIVE THEIR LIVES outside of an antiquated zone of containment.  How else can we expect them to function as proper adults once they graduate?  Yes, some kids need the whole eight hours, five days a week – but not all kids need that. 

High school students dislike regimented school for a reason:  they are being treated like cattle.  They are just learning to cheat (or “use all their resources” as they like to tell me), because they don’t have time on a daily basis to do homework for seven or eight different classes every day.  When students have found an app on which they can simply hold their phones over a math problem, and the app does all the work for them (steps included), they aren’t learning anything!  (Well, to be fair, they’re learning how to differently navigate the operational systems of their phones.)  I’m just saying that people of ALL ages need time to just breathe in the air and figure out who they are, independent of a million rules, all designed to regulate their behavior. 

Try to remember being 16 or 17 or 18 years old, and acknowledge that high school students are among those “huddled masses, yearning to be free”.

For Robin

I’ve been lost.  Cyberspace and whatnot.  My brain is too busy with superficial nonsense to properly write.  No one really cares if I’m absent or not, but Robin does. 

My problem with writing is that there are roughly a million thoughts running through my head at any given time, and committing them to written words is difficult.  There are many, many things on my brain right now, so I’ll just puke some of them out:

1.      Has the news media been taken over by The Onion, or am I crazy?  (It’s quite possible that I’m crazy, so don’t worry about judging…)  America has turned into one of the dystopian novels everyone is forced to read in high school!  America 2018 is social satire, but for REAL!  What in the bloody fuck is this president (lower case p) of the United States of America?  Did people actually go to a voting booth and check the box by this dumbass’s name?  He is quite literally the worst person at the wrong time and in the wrong place to make America great again.  What a childish moron.  I understand that descending into personal attacks is the argument of one who’s losing, but … AMERICA IS LOSING RIGHT NOW.  We are regressing, Retrogressing, actually.  I truly believe that DJ Trump is a Stalin-esque psychopath. 

a.       P.S. Donald, if you were in Russia, you’d be in a Siberian prison camp (and don’t think your butt-buddy Vlad wouldn’t put you there in a heartbeat).

b.       And if you were in North Korea, they’d put your entire family in a camp (not that you seem to care about any of them).

c.       Oh, and Melania?  I feel you, girl.  Get the fuck out of dodge while you can.

2     Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.  Florida.  Unbelievable.

a.       ANOTHER school shooting.  As a high school teacher (for 20 years), and a parent (for 26), I can say with personal experience that school shootings are a fucking travesty.  I remember watching Columbine on TV.  I remember watching the raw footage from the school cameras, and the kids filing out with their hands up.  I remember watching that poor kid trying to climb through a broken library window (after he’d already been shot) and basically throwing himself onto the police and firemen below him, while he was essentially bleeding out.  He knew what was up.  He had probably just heard those other two fucking murderers shoot each other over in the library book stacks.  He wanted the fuck out of there.  Immediately. 

b.       Carnage.

                                                               i.      Oh, but two decades later, how many school shootings have happened?  As of today, since January 1^st, 2018, there have been 18 school shootings.  2,281 people have been killed by guns since the beginning of 2018.  And America does (essentially) NOTHING about it.  We talk about stupid shit and then do nothing.   17 more human beings murdered, while they were trying to go to school.  Gunned down in cold blood by a boy who needed help that just isn’t available to people like him.  Not in America.  Give him a gun, right, but don’t him any access to mental health.  In America, you have to fucking murder people before someone pays attention.  How fucking sad.  How embarrassing. 

1.       Until … Emma Gonzales opens her beautiful mouth.  Bless you, baby girl.  Maybe you’ll be a catalyst. 

c.       Carnage, Part 2.

                                                               i.      As a society, we should be surprised that there aren’t MORE school shootings in America.  We force these kids to attend school for 8 hours a day, surrounded by other hormonal human beings, and make them ask permission to use the restroom, and suspend them for not attending school (an obvious irony).  What. The. Fuck.  (And then add on athletics, and clubs, and band, and activities … some teenagers are strung out.)

1.       (And then some of them are totally alone.)

                                                             ii.      Every day I see a school shooting “situation”, even though no one has a gun.  Everyone in the building wants out, all the time.  My school is built like a prison.  I have no window.  I have no idea what’s going on outside of the four walls of my classroom.  But, if (god forbid) a school shooting happens in my building, I will absolutely, 100% of the time, open the door for a student who is trapped in the hallway.  If I get shot, well, I get shot.  I don’t go to work because it’s a job – I’m trying to mentor the next generation of human beings.

d.       So  … let’s stop shooting other people right now, okay? 

                                                               i.      And let’s take a minute for the brave, young, sad, broken souls who are newly engaged in the political process for the first time right now, even though they aren’t even old enough to vote. 

3.       Last, but not least:  Mother Russia.  Yes, that makes me sound like a communist , but Russia has a coherency that America will never have.  They are being taken as fools by an oligarch, and everyday Russians suffer every single day.  They are not better off than Americans; they are simply better trained to suffer. 

a.       We are America.  There is no need to suffer.  As a country, as human beings, let’s get our shit together.  Let’s help people who suffer from mental illness.  Let’s get the guns out of everyone’s dirty hands.  Let’s have some common sense about the reality of teenagers being able to walk into schools and kill whomever they want in a short period of time.  Let’s not make school teachers shoulder the burden of being teachers, police officers, counselors, social workers, substitute parents, and subsidiary circus acts who are trying to teach a life subject area.  As a teacher, I’m tired.  I love my students, but I have come to mistrust the very foundation of my government job. 

b.       Our children, our teenagers, need us. 

Let’s remember that these little motherfuckers are going to take care of us when we are older, so let’s show them some respect.  Let’s just SHOW them how to be better, rather than demanding untaught skills from our students, our children, their friends, and the entire next generation.  Don’t tune out. 

Today

I need to write.  I tell myself I want to be a writer, but I don’t write.  As Franz Kafka said, “a writer who doesn’t write is a monster courting insanity”.  I am that monster. 

I know that all I need to do is sit in front of this computer and puke out words, so I will try today, and then I will try again tomorrow, and then I might make a habit of it. 

So today was pretty shitty.  I didn’t sleep well last night.  I woke up feeling like a zombie.  I was crying before I went to sleep, so my eyes were all puffy this morning, and I had to somehow get up and get dressed and venture off to work in order to teach things to high school students.  I didn’t want to.  I almost never want to.  To be fair, I usually love my job.  The students are the only reason I drag my ass out of bed and make an effort to be an extrovert for eight hours. 

So why was I tired, and why didn’t I sleep?  Because I was on the phone last night for several hours with a boy, who is my friend, and we got into an argument about nothing (which is probably untrue).  The middle part of that sentence needs attention.  “A boy who is my friend.”  This is a grown man, but he is still a boy, who is my friend.  He likes the word “boyfriend”, and I don’t.  All sorts of qualifiers come with that word.  Once we went from being friends to being “in a relationship”, the rules changed.  Gradually, sure, but now there are labels for things.  And now there is a line I can’t cross, which was a different line when we were just friends. 

Suffixes are important.  They change the meanings of words.

There’s a difference between being “childlike” and “childish”.  Childlike is fun.  Childlike is running outside during a thunderstorm to play in the rain.  Childish is a petulant brat.

I don’t want to be a petulant brat, but I definitely want to play in the rain with you.

Hope Is Not A Strategy

I’ve tried to right most of my wrongs in life.  I’ve tried to love and be loved.  I’ve tried to parent and be parented.  I’ve tried to try. 

Once again, the French-Algerian philosopher speaks up in my brain and says, “happiness is the absence of hope”.   

He understood that life is not a box of chocolates or a warm puppy (or a warm gun) or a bowl of cherries or a highway.  Life just IS.  We can either be hopeful for something we don’t have, or we can acknowledge that we have no control over the big picture, thus there is nothing for which we should hope.

To quote some other (green, plunger-like, alien) beings: “Here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”     

And yet it’s so difficult not to ask “why?”.  Why me?

(“Vy anyone?” said a German soldier.)

I will continue to practice caring a little, but not too much.  Caring too much is like a social STD; it burns, and it will probably never go away.  If only not caring was easier.  Some people have it (not caring) down to a science.  Or an art.  Or a weapon.  Some people tank the odds of finding other like-minded humanists with whom to spend time, because they don’t care about the hopes and dreams of other people. 

I’m just trying to stay alive and just be peaceful.  Both are becoming elusive. 

Emily Dickenson wrote that “hope is a thing with feathers”.  What the hell is that supposed to mean?  Hope is a bird?!  Birds suck.  They shit all over everything, and they have beady, weird eyes.  Yes, they can soar through the sky, but since I don’t have wings, I will pass on the feathery hope analogy.

 

I’m not trying to say hope is bad.  Maybe it carries certain people through their days.  But I am certain that hope changes nothing, improves nothing, and inspires nothing.  Life is chance. 

Hope is most often a vestige of fools.