This year... was a long one.
At the beginning of last year, while physically I was not much different from how I am now (something I plan to correct in 2019), I was mentally at a very different place. I was just finishing college, and experiencing the hurdles of that "final" chapter.
What has happened to me from that space until now seems... amazing, looking back. We shut down our business. River converted to being at home full time with Hatchling and Eggbreaker. I remember starting off thinking I would get so much done this year.. and I did. Most of it, though, was highly unexpected, and for the most part an attempt to limp forward.
I taught. I started this blog. I graduated. I participated in the teacher walkout. I screamed in the Oklahoma Capitol building until I was hoarse. I yelled at students and lot my temper. I did research with them. I spent many nights enjoying D&D with friends, and even finally began a campaign. I found out how far a dollar can truly stretch after being jobless throughout the summer, and found out how much further those dollars stretch when they only come in minimal amounts every two weeks. I finally relented philosophically and joined the Democratic Socialists of America, who I feel have, if not all the answers, at least the right ideas about how to solve our problems. I got hired at one of the most amazing jobs I could ask for, and since I have started teaching middle school I have been trying to keep up with the surge that is the life of a first year teacher.
That doesn't even cover the fights, the sleepless nights, the sicknesses, the mourning of passing pets, the many roads I have traveled in my mind in my desperate attempt to make the transition from a person trying to reach a goal (graduating and getting a job) to a person who has now reached that goal and now has to find his way. It doesn't cover the pains River and the kiddos have experienced. It doesn't cover even a quarter of the experiences we had this year.
All in all... in many ways, 2018 was the worst year I have had yet. I fell behind on my mortgage, my car payment. I struggled to keep my sanity.
In other ways, it was the best year. I finally graduated and got a stable income to provide for my family. I started writing again. The relationships I have with the people I want to have them with are, I think, mostly excellent.
I think I'm going into 2019 with hope. A bit of anxiety, surely. I think it's crazy how when we are young we assume that age will bring confidence, when in fact the opposite seems to prove true more and more. I want my babies to be safe this year, I want River to be happy... I want so many things.
I don't know what I'm going to achieve this year, or what I will fail in. I know I will do both of those: achieve success and admit failure. I know this year will not be perfect, will not even be what I imagined it to be. Looking back over my life, no year has been. I know, though, that I'm going into it with my eyes wide open. I'm going to walk into 2019 ready to experience, to be changed. Yeah, a little of that is fear, but mostly I want to feel alive, feel as though the 29th revolution on this orb can create some meaning in the swimming chemicals in my brain.
I hope you all will join me.
Monday, December 31, 2018
Monday, November 19, 2018
Late Night Thoughts
Do you ever feel like you're holding your breath, waiting for something to happen? But either things just keep happening... or nothing really happens? Or both?
I feel like I've been waiting for something. Like I had some date with destiny that was supposed to happen. Like 2012 was supposed to destroy the world... but it didn't, and now I just have to continue.
I don't know. Sometimes, it feels like I can feel the world spinning under my feet, and other times I can't focus on a single thing besides the pain in my left eye or some other such thing.
To be clear, it isn't a bad thing. Feeling this way. It's just a feeling of being held in suspense, waiting for the action. Maybe subconsciously my mind never came back and I'm just waiting to be called back to formation, but I doubt it.
Although I do dream about the army.
It's fleeting, this feeling. I can't determine when it will strike me. Just like I can't determine when I'm driving and the cars will feel too slow or too fast and the vertigo hits and my mind blackens and it takes every fiber of my being just to grip the wheel. It's strange, because in those moments, I feel the most alive, the most in touch with whatever is out there in the universe, pulling at the puppet strings. But then the moment passes, and it's like the echo of a gong in my head. Hollow. Fading. Until eventually my mind latches on to something that I need to do that day, and I forget all about this feeling.
I used to feel it most when I laid down to sleep. And I thought that the older I got, the more trouble I would have sleeping, but it's the opposite. I sleep better now than I ever have, or at least my mind rests better.
When I was younger, I used to think that I had some disorder, because it felt like I was constantly at war with myself. And I realize that there are people out there for whom that never goes away, who actually do have clinical disorders and imbalances of brain chemistry, and my struggle will never compare to theirs, but reaching this point... a point where it feels like I have what I need about myself figured out... I feel like one of those mythical heroes who misses the battle so much that he creates an enemy just to have the excuse to go hunting again.
I guess I just have to remind myself that, in lieu of catastrophe, I can stand down.
The crisis is over.
Shut down the watchtowers, boys.
...
But I don't think I will ever be able to do that.
I feel like I've been waiting for something. Like I had some date with destiny that was supposed to happen. Like 2012 was supposed to destroy the world... but it didn't, and now I just have to continue.
I don't know. Sometimes, it feels like I can feel the world spinning under my feet, and other times I can't focus on a single thing besides the pain in my left eye or some other such thing.
To be clear, it isn't a bad thing. Feeling this way. It's just a feeling of being held in suspense, waiting for the action. Maybe subconsciously my mind never came back and I'm just waiting to be called back to formation, but I doubt it.
Although I do dream about the army.
It's fleeting, this feeling. I can't determine when it will strike me. Just like I can't determine when I'm driving and the cars will feel too slow or too fast and the vertigo hits and my mind blackens and it takes every fiber of my being just to grip the wheel. It's strange, because in those moments, I feel the most alive, the most in touch with whatever is out there in the universe, pulling at the puppet strings. But then the moment passes, and it's like the echo of a gong in my head. Hollow. Fading. Until eventually my mind latches on to something that I need to do that day, and I forget all about this feeling.
I used to feel it most when I laid down to sleep. And I thought that the older I got, the more trouble I would have sleeping, but it's the opposite. I sleep better now than I ever have, or at least my mind rests better.
When I was younger, I used to think that I had some disorder, because it felt like I was constantly at war with myself. And I realize that there are people out there for whom that never goes away, who actually do have clinical disorders and imbalances of brain chemistry, and my struggle will never compare to theirs, but reaching this point... a point where it feels like I have what I need about myself figured out... I feel like one of those mythical heroes who misses the battle so much that he creates an enemy just to have the excuse to go hunting again.
I guess I just have to remind myself that, in lieu of catastrophe, I can stand down.
The crisis is over.
Shut down the watchtowers, boys.
...
But I don't think I will ever be able to do that.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
It's Been Too Long, And I'm Tired
It's been 6 months since I posted a blog.
Really, it's been 6 months since I've written anything larger than a classroom activity.
What to say? After the walkout, I graduated. I tried like hell just to get through the summer, which mostly involved trying desperately to ration out the little money we had saved while trying to find a job that would allow us to eat, even though I technically already had a job in the fall.
Damn, this last summer sucked.
My kids are growing, like weeds. Every day is a new struggle. I've thought, in small moments throughout the day, about writing a blog about one of the momentous days here at my new school: the first day, the first month, the first quarter. The first time I gave detention. The first time I saw a student learning what I taught them.
I don't really know why I chose this insane profession. I mean, my entire job basically consists of sitting in 5 separate rooms (or even 6 if I have to cover for another teacher) and convincing a bunch of children that what I have to say is important and that they should pay attention. Granted, I don't lecture a lot, so that cuts down on the frustration, and the workload, but I feel simultaneously like a parent, a preacher, and a circus conductor.
It's a life. I think I love it, most days.
I'm putting grad school on hold. I'm not ready for it yet. River says to stay somewhere for a while, and I've been mulling that over constantly for the last few days. I haven't stayed in one particular place or mind-setting since I was 16 years old. I have been, more or less, on the go for my entire adult life, constantly looking at the next thing, searching for the bigger opportunity.
On the plus side, being a travelling teacher (yeah, my school doesn't have enough room for me this year) has allowed me to walk a lot, so I feel better than I have in years, even on the nights when I eat too much.
I'm happy.
I'm not over-the-moon, young love, every breath is a miracle happy. I desperately want to see my kids more, I have problems at work. The small, insignificant amount of bugs in my house, which is (everyone assures me) perfectly natural to have in a house in Oklahoma, keeps me up at night. The corners of my brain feel like an attic which haven't been cleaned in years because the highways and common routes are constantly in motion. But overall, every night I go to bed and am easily able to sleep because I'm doing what I love, surrounded by people I love, and trying to take it easy.
But there's still an emptiness, made up of the things I haven't achieved that I want to. I hope my children never know what it's like to regret wasting time, but my brain says that everyone knows what that's like, even if my heart doesn't. I want to write. More broadly, I want to create. Hank and John Green have been massive inspirations to me in the last year, and this video says almost exactly what I feel on the subject of my writing, except that I haven't done what Hank has done. I have created very little. A few scattered poems, a handful of blog posts... The most I've ever written in one go is, what 50 pages, with sustained, constant effort?
It doesn't come naturally to me to think about my creation as something I need to make time for. I am constantly imagining far off lands, interesting and thrilling scenarios, the what-ifs and whys that would make great plots or scenes. I love fiction, and I read more of it than I should, but lately (and by lately I mean the past 5 years or so) I find myself with the taste of sand in my mouth when I go to read something new, because there's a tiny voice in the back of my head saying why haven't you done this yet?
Except lately it's more like
Why haven't you done this yet?!
But by the end of the day, after making it home, My Brain and My Actions become separated, disjointed. I know I should be staying up till odd hours, ignoring everything and burying myself in the craft. But...
It's just so much damn work, on top of everything else I'm doing.
I don't know.
Time to move on to the next activity. More on this later?
Really, it's been 6 months since I've written anything larger than a classroom activity.
What to say? After the walkout, I graduated. I tried like hell just to get through the summer, which mostly involved trying desperately to ration out the little money we had saved while trying to find a job that would allow us to eat, even though I technically already had a job in the fall.
Damn, this last summer sucked.
My kids are growing, like weeds. Every day is a new struggle. I've thought, in small moments throughout the day, about writing a blog about one of the momentous days here at my new school: the first day, the first month, the first quarter. The first time I gave detention. The first time I saw a student learning what I taught them.
I don't really know why I chose this insane profession. I mean, my entire job basically consists of sitting in 5 separate rooms (or even 6 if I have to cover for another teacher) and convincing a bunch of children that what I have to say is important and that they should pay attention. Granted, I don't lecture a lot, so that cuts down on the frustration, and the workload, but I feel simultaneously like a parent, a preacher, and a circus conductor.
It's a life. I think I love it, most days.
I'm putting grad school on hold. I'm not ready for it yet. River says to stay somewhere for a while, and I've been mulling that over constantly for the last few days. I haven't stayed in one particular place or mind-setting since I was 16 years old. I have been, more or less, on the go for my entire adult life, constantly looking at the next thing, searching for the bigger opportunity.
On the plus side, being a travelling teacher (yeah, my school doesn't have enough room for me this year) has allowed me to walk a lot, so I feel better than I have in years, even on the nights when I eat too much.
I'm happy.
I'm not over-the-moon, young love, every breath is a miracle happy. I desperately want to see my kids more, I have problems at work. The small, insignificant amount of bugs in my house, which is (everyone assures me) perfectly natural to have in a house in Oklahoma, keeps me up at night. The corners of my brain feel like an attic which haven't been cleaned in years because the highways and common routes are constantly in motion. But overall, every night I go to bed and am easily able to sleep because I'm doing what I love, surrounded by people I love, and trying to take it easy.
But there's still an emptiness, made up of the things I haven't achieved that I want to. I hope my children never know what it's like to regret wasting time, but my brain says that everyone knows what that's like, even if my heart doesn't. I want to write. More broadly, I want to create. Hank and John Green have been massive inspirations to me in the last year, and this video says almost exactly what I feel on the subject of my writing, except that I haven't done what Hank has done. I have created very little. A few scattered poems, a handful of blog posts... The most I've ever written in one go is, what 50 pages, with sustained, constant effort?
It doesn't come naturally to me to think about my creation as something I need to make time for. I am constantly imagining far off lands, interesting and thrilling scenarios, the what-ifs and whys that would make great plots or scenes. I love fiction, and I read more of it than I should, but lately (and by lately I mean the past 5 years or so) I find myself with the taste of sand in my mouth when I go to read something new, because there's a tiny voice in the back of my head saying why haven't you done this yet?
Except lately it's more like
Why haven't you done this yet?!
But by the end of the day, after making it home, My Brain and My Actions become separated, disjointed. I know I should be staying up till odd hours, ignoring everything and burying myself in the craft. But...
It's just so much damn work, on top of everything else I'm doing.
I don't know.
Time to move on to the next activity. More on this later?
Thursday, April 5, 2018
The state of the state I'm in.
Both mentally and physically.
It's been a long week. Not the least of which is because I am progressively having less and less energy, because the closer I get to my doctor's visit, the more I dread it.
That, plus the whole "protest because state legislators suck" thing.
I briefly considered running for office. River is (rightly) against it, plus I need to focus on my career, not to mention grad school. I should really think about things before I post them on Facebook.
What else, what else...
Writing eases all the tension out of me. I really need to work on my damn novel. Maybe I'll go there after this.
Yeah. A lot is complicated right now. And I really can't blame anyone but myself. I tend to complicate things. But that's what life is all about.
It's been a long week. Not the least of which is because I am progressively having less and less energy, because the closer I get to my doctor's visit, the more I dread it.
That, plus the whole "protest because state legislators suck" thing.
I briefly considered running for office. River is (rightly) against it, plus I need to focus on my career, not to mention grad school. I should really think about things before I post them on Facebook.
What else, what else...
Writing eases all the tension out of me. I really need to work on my damn novel. Maybe I'll go there after this.
Yeah. A lot is complicated right now. And I really can't blame anyone but myself. I tend to complicate things. But that's what life is all about.
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Monday, March 26, 2018
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Busy Brain, Still Body
Installed the blogger app on my phone. This will be easier for the daily posts, when I have mostly just random thoughts.
I know you care, devoted audience. *wink*
When I get super stressed I tend to go still. Don't snakes or some other reptiles do this before they strike their prey? For me, being still helps me think. Imagine one of those stock tickers running at about 50 times its normal speed.
Then imagine there are 20 of those, and you're trying to read everything at the same time.
I imagine most people are like that though.
I have a job interview tomorrow. I'm actually really excited, but I never know what to say, and I always worry I will end up oversharing or overstating my goals.
Okay, random not stressful fact: there's a character in Star Wars IV: A New Hope that is standing in the cantina as Luke and Ben come down into it. He's a humanoid, but he has these weird puffy cheeks. That guy had a short story written about him in Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, back when Legends was Expanded Universe, and he is from a species that eats the "soup" of other creatures, which is their brain matter, by extending two probosci from its cheeks.
What is interesting about this is that the writer made it a point to talk about how the "soup" can get spoiled based on the different kinds of emotions the being is feeling near the time of death.
Funny to think that the computer that runs our bodies could be so temperamental.
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Jumanji!
River and I had a good date night tonight. I highly recommend Jumanji, for both people with kids and without. It's a cliche comedy flick, but with a hilarious cast, funny references, and some good snippets of message throughout. The end had me tearing up!
Friday, March 23, 2018
Memes
Or, "On The Efficacy of Communicating Via Pictorial Representations of Our Emotions."
Hey all.
You probably have not read this blog. If you have, welcome back. If you have not, you probably are either a) a Facebook friend, b) a Twitter follower, or c) someone who stumbled over this randomly, and are now confused as to why you are reading some dude rambling on about things.
If it's any of those, the real quick rundown about me is: veteran, father, husband, teacher, guy who rants about things. See, wasn't that easy?
I find it easier to express myself like this:
(Even that's not really true, though, because I cropped the image. But hey, now you know what I look like! I'm the dude with the beard, if it isn't obvious, and that pretty lady next to me is my wife, who you will henceforth know as River. It's a long story.)
Anyway, what got me thinking about this was, when I posted about reinvigorating this blog (for a variety of reasons that even I am not really clear on/haven't figured out yet) on Facebook, thinking about deeply insightful, meaningful things, I got this:
via GIPHY
And this:
via GIPHY
Got this too:
via GIPHY
Even got this:
via GIPHY
At first, I won't lie, I was irritated. If you know me, you know why: I take myself way too seriously. Even though I'm pretty sure I've won some internet meme wars in the past. But this is the restart of my blog. Here's how I saw it going in my head:
via GIPHY
Then these images got me thinking about some really serious stuff (probably because I've been listening to this lately, which by the way I highly recommend: https://twitter.com/anthroreviewed?lang=en) like how, for most of human history, we have this weird dichotomy where people express themselves mainly through visual means, yet it was only "civilized" nations that wrote things down. It got me thinking about letters that colonists and frontiersman wrote home to their families, how they had to spend sentences describing the land and how they got sick from food poisoning and how hard it was to travel, and nowadays I can send a cat GIF to River, and she knows exactly how I'm feeling and in what context and what that means for how the night is going to go.
My point here, as I ramble on (and as I have struggled to figure out how to embed GIFs, which is a lot easier than I assumed it would be) is that we are so saturated with images, yet for some reason people like me (or maybe, really, just me) value the written word. When I posted about ideas for restarting this thing, I was expecting:
"Talk about the Trump presidency!"
"Describe 50 things you did today!"
"Discuss your philosophy about how the world should be xyz way!"
But that's pompous of me to assume, because in the end my friends posting memes is exactly what I needed, because as always they keep me grounded when my head is in the clouds.
So, I'm back. I'm going to write something every day. It might not be meaningful or insightful. It might just be posting a GIF. But my goal right now is to at least jot down some thoughts every day. I want to be an author (in case you didn't know) but I also have a lot of opinions and ideas and just plain rants. If you want to read it, fine. Great. It's not really for you, if you're actually someone reading this. It's really about using my voice, putting things down to be heard, but I will write as though I have an audience, because I think even a man shouting into the black emptiness of night should think about courtesy.
Speaking of courtesy, here are some images that show a being who has no sense of that word (oh yeah, I have two kids. They will most likely feature pretty prominently in this blog).
See you tomorrow.
Hey all.
You probably have not read this blog. If you have, welcome back. If you have not, you probably are either a) a Facebook friend, b) a Twitter follower, or c) someone who stumbled over this randomly, and are now confused as to why you are reading some dude rambling on about things.
If it's any of those, the real quick rundown about me is: veteran, father, husband, teacher, guy who rants about things. See, wasn't that easy?
I find it easier to express myself like this:
(Even that's not really true, though, because I cropped the image. But hey, now you know what I look like! I'm the dude with the beard, if it isn't obvious, and that pretty lady next to me is my wife, who you will henceforth know as River. It's a long story.)
Anyway, what got me thinking about this was, when I posted about reinvigorating this blog (for a variety of reasons that even I am not really clear on/haven't figured out yet) on Facebook, thinking about deeply insightful, meaningful things, I got this:
via GIPHY
And this:
via GIPHY
Got this too:
via GIPHY
Even got this:
via GIPHY
At first, I won't lie, I was irritated. If you know me, you know why: I take myself way too seriously. Even though I'm pretty sure I've won some internet meme wars in the past. But this is the restart of my blog. Here's how I saw it going in my head:
via GIPHY
Then these images got me thinking about some really serious stuff (probably because I've been listening to this lately, which by the way I highly recommend: https://twitter.com/anthroreviewed?lang=en) like how, for most of human history, we have this weird dichotomy where people express themselves mainly through visual means, yet it was only "civilized" nations that wrote things down. It got me thinking about letters that colonists and frontiersman wrote home to their families, how they had to spend sentences describing the land and how they got sick from food poisoning and how hard it was to travel, and nowadays I can send a cat GIF to River, and she knows exactly how I'm feeling and in what context and what that means for how the night is going to go.
My point here, as I ramble on (and as I have struggled to figure out how to embed GIFs, which is a lot easier than I assumed it would be) is that we are so saturated with images, yet for some reason people like me (or maybe, really, just me) value the written word. When I posted about ideas for restarting this thing, I was expecting:
"Talk about the Trump presidency!"
"Describe 50 things you did today!"
"Discuss your philosophy about how the world should be xyz way!"
But that's pompous of me to assume, because in the end my friends posting memes is exactly what I needed, because as always they keep me grounded when my head is in the clouds.
So, I'm back. I'm going to write something every day. It might not be meaningful or insightful. It might just be posting a GIF. But my goal right now is to at least jot down some thoughts every day. I want to be an author (in case you didn't know) but I also have a lot of opinions and ideas and just plain rants. If you want to read it, fine. Great. It's not really for you, if you're actually someone reading this. It's really about using my voice, putting things down to be heard, but I will write as though I have an audience, because I think even a man shouting into the black emptiness of night should think about courtesy.
Speaking of courtesy, here are some images that show a being who has no sense of that word (oh yeah, I have two kids. They will most likely feature pretty prominently in this blog).
See you tomorrow.
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