A Happy Moment

Honestly, if you have any sense of music and vibes, listen to this song, right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaCrQL_8eMY

Divorce Sucks

Don't get married.  

Love someone, and have that be enough.

$30 to get married, and thousands of dollars to get divorced.  

Just live together, breathe together, and be together, until that's no longer an option.

Don't buy things together.

Don't let lawyers and a court decide what's "right".

Fuck the system and do things on your own terms. 

In-Service Day: Another Assault on teachers

Today was an Inservice Day.  If you're not a teacher, you don't understand.   Let me try to assist in your understanding.

Schedule:
8am:  a meeting about cultural competency.  My basic take from this meeting is to not be a racist.  Quite specifically, don't go up and touch a black person's hair just because you think it's cool looking.  (I believe children learn this lesson in elementary school, with the personal bubble and all.)
9am:  a meeting about teacher "feeling words" and how to navigate, well, your feelings.
10am:  another meeting about LGBT+ students and how to deal with their identifying names and pronouns (to be honest, this one was probably necessary for a lot of people, specifically older people who don't think transgender people are real).
11am:  a 2 1/2 hour meeting about ... ?  I honestly don't know.  What I do know is that the person who was speaking was being paid to talk to a roomful of adults who are all teachers, but talked to us like we were painfully ignorant children who were raised by wolves or something.  And then, there was a mass herding of people to four different locations with gigantic sticky notes to write down feeling words and ideas to help students deal with their feeling words.
12pm:  I didn't go to lunch.  Instead, because I'm the head of the Staff Appreciation Committee, I typed out a note to get teachers to do something fairly simply, cut 100 pieces of paper to fit on 100 small manilla envelopes, and then taped the note to the envelopes.  Then I assembled 3000 little "apples" for students to write a nice note to a teacher.  Then I sent out emails to explain the simple thing (which teachers will inevitably mess up).  And then I put them in the mailroom.  When those are filled out, I will have to go through all 3000 and sort them by teacher, in order to redistribute those notes to the right teacher.
1:30pm:  yet another meeting about which insurance company/plan our district should go with (as if our voice really matters), plus I've already attending three of those meetings and watched several videos online.
2:00pm:  went to Sam's Club to pick up the food I ordered for Staff Appreciation, which I will have to somehow get into the school during the next week without wanting to punch someone in the face because I have to sherpa that shit in, so people can have snacks all week.

Then, I came home, and now I'm grading the papers I should have been grading WHILE I WAS AT WORK!   But no, I have to do my actual work at home, because when I'm attending a staff day, I can't get anything productive done.

Meanwhile, students have the day off.
Super-productive use of my time.

So It Ain't So

My love is a heartbreaker.

I break my own heart, all the time, by caring too much about other people.  I periodically break other people's hearts, accidentally.

 The best version of me is fairly fucking invincible.  The worst version of me is a doormat with a target painted on it - just a red X with a footprint overtop.

Unacceptable behavior for a human of my capacity is to self-medicate and lie still.  Acceptable behavior is to engage.  Best scenario behavior is to blow in, over, and around life, like the smell right before a thunderstorm.

I want to bring the rain.  I need another baptism to cleanse my soul of the pollution of humanity, and of my own vapid stupidity.

In the meantime, I going to go pound the congas and share my heartbeat with them.  I can think of nothing better to make me feel alive and powerful.  Because as it turns out, no one really cares, so we might as well roll with that.

The Anti College Recommendation

The time of year has come when people are asking me for recommendations for student council, class president, and college admission.  Let me just say that when I write a college recommendation, I knock that shit out of the park.  I can make just about anyone look good, on paper.  But sometimes, someone asks me to write a recommendation and I have to say no, because they fail every category on a recommendation form.  So ... let me give you a generic, amalgomous version of the letter I would love to send off to college for some students:

To Whom It May Concern:
      Do not let this kid into your school.  I mean, if he or she wants to pay full tuition, then go ahead, but if you want someone who is ready to take on the responsibilities of being a semi-adult, this person is not a good pick. 

     Let me give you some examples, to solidify my lack of confidence in this person.

• This person failed my class.  They couldn't manage to turn in assignments, regardless of how easy or difficult.  They waited until the last possible minute, and then tried to get me to pass them.  I didn't.  Because they didn't deserve it.
• This person is incredibly vapid.  A total airhead.  Nothing is getting in their head, except notifications from whatever social media site is on their phone.  Total inability to pay attention to anything except their own version of the world, channeled through an app.  No attention span to speak of, and no desire to be better on any level.
• OR ... he/she is so filled with manic-depressive thoughts, that it will be a fucking miracle if they get through even one semester of school before dropping out and moving back home. They should spend their parent's money on therapy, not college. 
• This person's life plan seems to be to go to college, in order to get out of their parent's control, and then systematically vomit in a series of bushes on campus, because getting drunk and/or high is more important than learning anything academic.
• This person can't read.  For real.
• This person has literally no idea what they want to do with their life, except for texting the person across the room in order to talk shit about other people in the room.  A real gem.
• I have watched this person cheat on virtually every assignment for every class - in front of me - and use the excuse that they're just "using available resources".  None of their transcript grades are accurate, except to show how good they are at navigating around the system for personal gain.
• This person's National Honor Society community service hours were ALL forged, by them.  In front of me. 
• Responsibility, you ask?  I wouldn't trust this person with a plant that I don't even care about, let alone to take care of themselves or lead others (unless they're headed toward a cliff, and weed is growing at the bottom).
• While I'm 100% certain that this person has been taught how to use punctuation and write sentences, I've seen no evidence of that.
• Quite often, this person turns in assignments four months after they are due, then acts like I'm a bitch for not telling them how special they are for actually turning in something with words written down. 
• Personality, you ask?  Honestly, this person is kind of an asshole.  I've seen them bully other people, belittle other people, and generally act like a dick on a daily basis.  (I mean, if that's the kind of person you want, then they must be applying for ASU or UC Boulder and joining the Greek system.

Other than the obvious human flaws, I'm sure this person would be super great at your university.  Just let me be really clear about the fact that there is a very high chance that they won't make it past freshman year, or they will accidentally light their dorm room on fire with a hot plate they're using to heat up crack, or melt bath salts on a hot surface just to see what happens.  

Peace out, said an educator.  

Marketable Words

My notebooks, just like my head, are full of nonsense scribbling.  They're full of feelings or thoughts that I had for a moment, but by the time I go to write them down, they've mostly dissipated.  Just like when I try to turn my thoughts into actions.

I spent about four hours gardening today, which clears my head, and I'm now just sitting outside - in the sun! - trying to decide how I feel about the word "alone".  "Alone" is different than "lonely", but sometimes I can't tell the difference.  I think loneliness stems from wanting to share you life with someone who knows, understands, and appreciates me, but not having that person. 

I could outsource that need by having friends, but the sharing isn't the same.

The worst thing is thinking you've found someone, but that person doesn't feel the same way, or is wildly insufficient in satisfying either one of us.

I get that "trying too hard" is often the path to failure, and I guess I haven't figured out what it means to "try", versus what it means to "try too hard", until it's too late.

As Noah Marley says, "I'm trying to save me from myself, and I'm flying with no control straight towards hell".  ("Somebody save me.  Am I worth saving?")

He's a wordsmith, that one. 

I used to think I could be a writer, and I haven't given up on that dream yet, but I can't write with direction or purpose when I'm constantly assaulted by teaching, parenting, and trying to pretend like I'm like everyone else.  I need a hot minute to look inside, without anyone else's input, and find myself. 

I'll keep looking, because I'm pretty sure this person inside of the trappings of society has many stories to tell.

In the meantime, I'm going to get back into the soil in my backyard and dig.

Irrational Anger

Here is a list of things which make me irrationally angry:

• owning like 30 towels, but never having more than two which are clean, because my roommates (apparently) hoard the dirty ones
• people who speak "feeling" words out loud, and pronounce those words to be "fact"
• having irrational angry feelings
• people who disrespect others, because they don't care about anyone but themselves
• apathy
• being ignored 
• doing the same things over & over, which I know aren't good for me
• fringes on the side of notebook paper
• being dependent on anything or anyone
• people who are stupid, on purpose
• other people leaving only ONE of something, so they don't have to buy more of it
• people projecting their shit on other people
• people who refuse to listen
• cup and glasses and dishes left in my white room
• people who drive too slow in the fast lane
• my own, intrusive thoughts

But the upside of this anger is that I just typed it out and wrote it down, some it can't make me angry in the current moment.

Something cathartic.