Moving Forward

I'm looking at my desk and most of it is several inches deep in paper that I need to attend to. I have spent the past twenty minutes working at it and still there is so much to do. It is disheartening. There is some clear space that should give me hope, but I find that it's not enough to outweigh the anxiety I feel about the remaining stacks of paper. They are all things that have to get done, that should have gotten done, that I'll have to do. It's enough to send me into a bit of a panic if I'm not careful. If I forget to breathe.

So it goes in this life. I remember when I started with my current therapist. This was five years ago and among the first things we talked about was that I wanted to reach my destination. I felt like I hadn't achieved the things that I needed to achieve. I needed to get there already. We began by asking what my destination might be. I had no idea. That was my first clue as to what was going on. We then spent months getting me to understand that life is a journey with only one final destination, Hamlet's undiscovered country. I shouldn't rush to get there. That there is no other destination depressed me (still does), but it shouldn't. I arrive at destinations all the time, but then I have to keep pushing on to the next thing.

Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but it has been anything but obvious to me. I look at my desk and think, "If I could just get it clear, if I could just get all that work done..." but the ellipses at the end of that quote is where I should concentrate. What comes at the end of getting that work done? I can get that work done and I will as soon as I'm done with this writing, but then I will then spend the day teaching and end up with more to do. There may be large stacks of paper in the exact same places on my desk. This is how life goes. I can't keep the desk clear, I can't finish all of my work, I can't get to a point in my growth where I can stop. That's okay if I simply acknowledge that it's okay. Fighting against it causes panic. Working through it encourages growth.

Today marks the end of my first month of publishing on this blog. Last night, a friend said, "you've been doing a lot of writing lately." He checks in here regularly, which is nice of him. I said that I had been doing a lot of writing and that now I'm ready to think of ways to better focus that writing. It's time to elevate the game. It's time to work through what I'm doing and grow in it.

I started yesterday revising my entries. I'm pretty good at first-draft writing, but getting to a second or third draft will make things more applicable to an audience. Already, in the second pass, I've tightened this piece considerably.

I'll shift my writing about schools and teaching to another blog so this one is more focused. I still need to figure out exactly what this blog is about. I have a feeling about it, but don't know exactly. Maybe after another month of writing I'll have that down. Maybe I'll have to keep writing.

This morning the sun is peeking through the spaces between clouds. I can see large patches of blue sky. This is unusual in Syracuse. Already, the clouds are moving fast. The weather report predicts rain, maybe snow, and falling temperatures throughout the afternoon. My own weather report predicts a clearer desk and then clutter increasing over the course of the day. There will be more work to do, more things to figure out, and challenges of every kind. Some of them I'll master and others will, at least for a time, master me. The only thing to do is to keep going. Or, to put it another way, and to sign off for the month of November, all I can do is write on.

Always the Habits

It is tough for me to sustain new habits. As the saying goes, old habits die hard. This morning I'm thinking about how I have slipped back into old habits and trying to remember to stay clear of them. Deciding to change is easy, I can do it in a second. Sustaining the change is something that I have to maintain over the long haul. That's more difficult.

I weigh myself every morning to have a feel for where I'm at with my eating. I have learned bad eating habits over my 43 years. I eat when I'm not hungry and when I'm bored. The scale this morning read 208.3, up five pounds from where I was only two weeks ago. Part of that is daily fluctuation. I get that. But it's higher than my weight ought to be.

Yesterday, at 207.9 pounds, I told myself to eat better and get my body back down to where I want it. When I saw today that I had gained rather than lost, I wondered out loud, "how did that happen?" I was genuinely confused. Then I remembered having had a beer and a half yesterday afternoon, two servings of chocolate, half a bag of chips, and so on. I didn't exercise yesterday either. Go figure.

I'm not all that worried about the things that I ate. I'm unhappy that I ate and drank without being present. I was dog-tired yesterday and it shows in how I ate. I wasn't there for most of the things I put in my mouth, didn't taste or enjoy them. I was tired, not hungry. I'm unhappy that I forgot to notice the difference.

Today, I'm again telling myself to eat better, but the idea is different. Yesterday I meant "don't eat so much!" Today, I'm saying "three deep breaths before eating." If I'm hungry and the food is going to ease that hunger, I'll eat. If I'm just tired, bored, sad, or anxious, I'll put the food down and try to understand what I'm feeling.

There are other habits I'm trying to change and the lesson is the same. I struggle with eating, sleeping, exercising, working, writing, reading. The struggles aren't Earth-shattering, but they make me notice that things are going on and that old habits are coming back. Which brings me to the idea of changes.

I work with students who have had trouble at school. They come to our school as their last resort. I used to preach that they had to change. Then I  wondered why they refused to do so. How presumptuous of me to demand that they change and how laughable to expect that they will just because I say so. My demand that they change says that they aren't good. Being judged doesn't lead to good change.

There aren't bad kids. They are people who have gotten stuck in old habits. Rather than demand that they change, I need to help them become aware of themselves. I try to help them see that their habits screw them over much more than any outside force. I'm working to have them see themselves clearly and to feel power instead of helplessness. I tell them about my own struggles. I tell them about how I blamed the world. I show them the power I have to be aware of what is really happening and how that makes my life better.

And I tell them that I struggle with it every day. I tell them about my date with the scale each morning. Then I tell them that change can happen. Things can get better.

I've seen the proof. Today is my 52nd day of writing 750 words each morning and it's my 30th day of publishing them. The change has been good and I'm understanding more of what it means to write for an audience. This one change has been powerful and made me more aware of myself and the world around me.

I've read that a new habit takes 30 days to become, for lack of a better word, habitual. I think that it takes me much longer. Which means there is only one option for me to improving: write on.

I made another change today that I hope to carry forward into my second month of publishing. Originally, I had planned to publish these as-is, first-draft. Reading this piece showed me the problems in that. I've revised it once and it is geared toward an audience outside my mind. That's important for me to work on as a writer. I'll go through revisions of December's writings and see what other changes happen along the way.  (Brian)

Scandalous Thinking

I hadn't planned to be writing about Bernie Fine, but the news broke last night that he would be fired, and as I drove to work past the SU campus this morning, I saw the satellite trucks parked there and knew that this is what people will be talking about all day, all week, and for a while after that. It's also my first day back with kids after the Thanksgiving break and I wonder how we will talk about the tragedy here. So, this morning, I'll write about what has happened and try to figure out where I want to stand on all of this.

I don't know Bernie Fine or any of the Syracuse Basketball staff. I simply live in the city where they all work, have followed the basketball team for years, and have now read some of the coverage of all this. After the Penn State debacle, Syracuse's problems are a bit more muted than they would have been otherwise, but still, there will be a lot of howling and talking to come. I suppose that someone will (if they haven't already) say that Fine is a monster, that Boeheim should have known, that the school covered it up, and so on. I'll let all that go and talk instead in the abstract for a moment.

Something terrible has happened. That much seems clear. And now a lot more bad stuff is going to come down. It will take a while before that calms down. I'm not in the mood to call for any kind of revenge. I'm not looking even for justice. I don't know what those things would even look like yet. They are all outside of me and beyond my control. Instead, I'm looking inward.

I feel sad about all of this. I have a feeling that I've lost another layer of innocence. It's like finding out again that there is no Santa Claus. I'm not a child, I don't believe that everyone is wonderful and perfect, but I like to believe in the essential goodness of people. I want to believe that, at heart, we are kind. This sort of thing is enough to shake that, but it might not be enough to knock it down.

When I think about what would make a man do this sort of thing, what would cause someone to hurt children in these ways, I come to the conclusion that this is a result of sickness much more than evil. When I consider things that way, I feel some hope. A sickness is a thing that happens rather than a choice. I just got through a sickness, a sinus infection. I hadn't chosen to be ill, it just came upon me. Still, there are choices to be made when one is sick and I made choices that I hope kept others from coming to harm. I wish that in these cases the people involved made different choices and I imagine that many, many people suffering from similar sicknesses are able to choose not to hurt anyone. They push it down, they seek help, they find ways to keep the sickness fenced in so that no one gets hurt. It doesn't seem as though Bernie Fine was able to do that. So it goes.

I've had many times in my life when the choices were clear. Choice A was clearly the right path, Choice B was folly. Most of my life I have chosen wisely, but there have been those moments when Choice B was too tempting, too easy, and provided a way out of misery. I've chosen the wrong path and each time two things have happened: I've come to regret what I've done because, more often than not, others have come to harm and I have also been able to live through and recover from the mistakes. The road out of sadness is a long one. There are quick fixes, but they are all Choice B options and they only pull me out of sadness for a moment, then they plunge me into the deeper darkness. The first rule of finding happiness is to know myself.

I don't know Bernie Fine, but hearing about his situation and trying to feel compassion gives me some hope for him, for the people who may have been victimized by him, and for myself. We get better. We survive. It takes awareness and a patience that is tough to muster in moments of misery.

Today, if my students and I talk about this at all, I'll ask them mistakes that they have made and how they have survived them. I'll ask them to consider themselves in a way that isn't selfish but instead helps them find some measure of compassion. I'm convinced that compassion is the only reaction to all of this that will make any of it any better.

Write on.

Relapses

We all make mistakes. Truism? Sure, but only because it's true. And bad things happen from time to time. I've been thinking about such things today mostly because my neck is sore. That always does it to me.

A few years back my right arm got sore, a couple fingers started going numb, and I went to the doctor. The thought was that it was a problem in my bicep, but after about a year of trying to treat it, my neighbor, a neurosurgeon, felt the sides of my neck and told me that one of my disks was bulging and likely herniated. Get it cut, he told me.

This story puts aside about seventeen months of ache. I was going to say pain, but the pain was only here and there. Mostly I ached for all that time and felt that something was wrong. So it goes in life. I sought this or that solution, this or that doctor or physical therapist, and all of it was for naught. I look back on it now and can see that the real solution was to have someone operate on my neck.

But things like that are difficult to face. They are for me. I tend to think I'm supposed to tough out the aching. It's not really that bad, right? And what if the surgery goes wrong? This is my neck that was getting cut open and my spine that was being played with. I thought many times about what it would be like to wind up paralyzed from this thing. So I tried to not face my problems, to play along like they weren't problems at all. I went in all the wrong directions. And I ended up making myself really unhappy.

And now my neck is sore again. I have a feeling that one of the other disks that the surgeon said was likely to go has indeed started to go. The decisions this time around are almost as complex even though I've been through it before. Relapses are like that. I think that I'm all set, that I have t all figured out and then I get stuck in the same situation and run up against the same old sets of solutions both true and false.

This time, however, I know enough to breathe. To take a moment and live with the situation instead of trying to respond to it. I'm not looking to beat the opponent, win the game, prove something to myself. Instead, I'm sitting still for this moment letting myself feel what there is to feel. And what is that?

My neck, down near my shoulder is sore especially when I lean forward. There is a slight, warm pain in my bicep and down toward my elbow. Today, there is a touch of something in my left arm that feels different from all of this. The pain in my neck (ha-ha) goes away when I lean my head back against the couch while typing. That's a good thing but not exactly practical since right now I'm typing this without any hint of whether or not I'm spelling actual words. So, I'm going to have to make some sort of change and leaning back all the time is not the sole solution.

I've talked with my wife today about it instead of trying to figure it all out for myself. She is well practiced at breathing with a situation and so hasn't said a great deal. She let me know that she feels badly for me. That's what I need right now from her and she somehow knows that. Next, I'll keep track of things for a week or two and see if things are constant. Lately, when I run, it gets better, so I'm curious if that keeps up. And then, if things are still wrong, I will get myself back to the doctor and let him figure things out in depth.

I guess, the point of this for me is that a relapse isn't a bad thing so long as it comes with some new knowledge and new ways of working through. I don't have to have figured out all the angles on this either. A relapse is a chance to learn again. And a relapse isn't a failure unless I choose to make it into one. This relapse is a chance to see what I can do this time around, to see how far I've come, and to make myself new again. And so, as things go, a relapse might be just the thing for me.

Of course, I wouldn't mind at all if this ache in my neck went away this week and was never heard from again. I think the lessons would still apply. Whatever happens, I'll write on.

Holiday Shopping Holiday

I wish I was one of those people who hadn't shopped on Black Friday, but I'm not and I'll live with that fact pretty easily. I wasn't camped outside Walmart or Best Buy. Instead, I waited on a very short line to get into American Girl (as described yesterday) for my daughter's birthday. There wasn't any pushing or shoving, no guns or pepper spray, no busting of doors. There was just a small group of parents and kids talking amicably about how silly we all were waiting American Girl to open but how grateful we were that we weren't rushing in for a sale. Nothing, absolutely nothing ever goes on sale at American Girl.

I have harbored dreams of not spending any money on Black Friday. Again, I would love to say that I achieved that goal, but instead I probably dropped about $500 yesterday across New York City and again I'm okay with that. No sweat. Everything we did yesterday was in support of my daughter's birthday and it was all very good stuff indeed. What I realize today, reading about the nonsense that went on yesterday across the country as people tried to get cheap deals first thing in the morning or in the dead of night, is that I don't have to pay attention to the date on the calendar and that avoiding spending begins with me.

We were in New York not for Black Friday but simply because it happened to be the day my daughter was born. In a couple days we will have Cyber Monday for reasons passing understanding. Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday are antiques. Black Friday is left over from a time when the only shopping options were to go to a store or get on the telephone. Now, I do almost all my shopping (aside from groceries) using the laptop from my couch. Going to the store seems like far too much of a bother. Why waste the gas, take the time, and brave the crowds? And Cyber Monday? That's a left over from when people had dial-up at home and waited until they went back to work at businesses with high-speed connections and shopped then. Do people still do that? Maybe they do, but I don't see any reason to.

As for the spending thing, it begins with me in that I have decided this year that there are very few things I need. It's a good feeling and I hope that my loved ones will be okay with it. My mother likes to get me a book, so I'll ask her for a book of poetry. Those I like to own since I go back to them again and again. Fiction and nonfiction I can borrow from the library. My wife understands that I don't really want anything. We will exchange tiny gifts at Hannukah, but there won't be large things for Christmas (yeah, we do both) for me.

I don't need much of anything right now. It's a good feeling and one that I often fight during the holidays. The thought goes like this: I have to think of some things for people to get me. Well, that's just silly. Instead, I can ask for things that don't cost any money, that don't require a trip to the store, and that are better. I've asked my wife for a note or story she will write. My daughters are going to make a piece of art for me that I can hang in the bedroom. My parents will get me the book of poetry and I might ask my father if he has any hand-me-down tools that would make it easier for me to build a project I'm working on. My brother, this year, is going to do an elevation drawing of our house if I have to sit him in a drawing chair in the road and direct traffic around him.

As for me, I plan on giving things I can make, things that someone will remember longer than a sweater, a calendar, a knick-knack. I haven't figure out what those things will be yet and will have to work at that, but I have this writing thing I do and people seem to like to get things that have something to do with them.

We aren't going to get an X-box, Wii, or iPad. So it goes. I don't think that we'll miss any of those things and I know that the present we will have instead is that we will have missed the shopping season and instead, just maybe, have been present for the holiday season instead.

Write on.

I Love New York

We are just back from New York City and my girls are playing on the floor of the motel room with their American Girl dolls. If you don't know American Girl, you probably don't have daughters or you're a sensible shopper. American Girl makes outrageously priced dolls packaged the way Steve Jobs would have packaged and sold dolls if he hadn't been busy with computers and i-things. The whole thing is nigh irresistible to my girls and, if truth be told, to their mother and me. The store is several floors of wonder and watching my girls wander through it together, talking about what will be the best toys for their girls (dolls) and how something will or will not work for them, is the purest kind of pleasure I know.

I understand the contradiction in the facts that I find pure joy in watching them acting the part of consumers, but that's not really the whole picture. What I love is seeing them so happy and so together. They talk, they consider, they plan as partners in a way that I think they are bound to remember or, at least, continue through their lives. I find this irresistible and, holding my wife's hand, leaning in to listen as she whispers in my ear about the two of them, and then smiling together I realize that there isn't anything more that I need or want in this life than to follow behind them as they make their way through the world.

New York is becoming their city in a way that makes me proud of the ways in which we are raising them. Though I was a life-long resident of New York State, I didn't make it to the city until I was twenty-two. I wasn't courageous as a child or as a young adult. New York seemed beyond my abilities. It was too big, too busy, and too unfamiliar. I thought that I was somehow not able to make it work. I thought wrong.

Now I drive through Manhattan happily and confidently. I know my way around (how hard is it on a grid). And I feel sure bringing the family there. Of course, my wife, a life-long downstate resident has long been comfortable in the city and has always planned to bring our girls there. This is now something like our fifth or sixth visit and this time, more than others, I could see that they have become confident with themselves there. What took me twenty-two years, they have each found in themselves within their first decade.

New York is a big city, obviously, and it has everything that I could ever ask for in a destination. I've yet to ever have a bad time there even the time that my wallet was stolen and I missed the first three songs of Rent (original cast!) because of it. There is just too much goodness and excitement. I'm unlikely to ever run out.

More than all that, I find that I'm big enough for New York and that my capacities for joy seem to be growing as I pass farther into my forties. At forty, I was a lost soul, grabbing at straws, believing in fool's gold, and making mistakes large, small, and gigantic. Looking back, I'm embarrassed by forty through forty-two. I never thought midlife would strike me down so hard. But thinking of it now, I have to laugh a little at how much I thought I knew compared with how much I realize that I failed to understand. There's still so much that I don't understand. Happily, now I realize some of that and I realize that all the answers are in following in my daughters' footsteps, holding my wife's hand, and being calm inside my own mind.

New York, you see, is just a tremendously large and busy metaphor for love and I return to it over and over again, bringing my girls, walking beside my wife, and putting my one foot in front of the other. I don't feel tension in New York, I don't think about what I have to do next or what I have done, I am simply standing on whatever street or avenue and moving forward to wherever I need to go next.

My girls would tell you that their home in New York City is American Girl Place and they can tell you the address. Drop them just about anywhere in Manhattan and they can navigate their way to the store. These days they make a beeline for it only occasionally looking at the things they pass by. But with each trip they notice more and more of the city around them. Soon enough they will casually stroll, looking at people passing by, listening to the taxis gunning their engines through the intersections, and feeling a quiet peace that only a noisy city can bring. They will feel at home wherever they happen to be.

Perhaps, like me, they will think of their family, the ones they truly love as they revel in each step they take through the city that speaks to them of life, and family, and the purest kinds of love. And like me, but hopefully long before they turn forty-three, they will realize that this kind of love is all they will ever need.

I love New York. Write on.

Motivation...

I'm typing these words from a motel in the Catskills. We have dined on turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, pickles, olives, brie cheese, and more desserts than anyone should ever have. Thankfully, this was all served to us at a restaurant and no one in the family was working in the kitchen all day or will be washing dishes all night. I'm beginning to think that, aside from the enormous cost of such a thing, this is the way to go.

Now we are in our motel room. The girls are on the other bed reading books, my wife is doing whatever she does the night before we go into New York City, and I am sitting on the other bed trying to type. In the middle of this, my wife comes over to tell me that the toilet is likely stopped up and looks at me with that expression that says, "do something." I tell her that it will have to wait, that I'm writing for a few more minutes, and that she can call the front desk if need be. She says she'll try flushing a few more times. So it goes.

This is life on the road. This is life out of sync and in reverse order. I'm tired from having driven most of the day, from staying in odd places, eating all our food from restaurants, and there's the bourbon on the rocks that I had with dinner. I'm full, stuffed really, and ready for some sleep, and yet here I am typing these words. It's that simple fact and the other fact of my early morning run that I want to talk about.

I'm typing these words because I have a streak of forty-something days going on 750words.com. It is impressive how effective a streak is in keeping me doing something. Were it not for the streak, I would have let myself put my head down and been asleep before my girls. Were it not for the streak it would be an easy thing to not write. I'm here, in part, because of that streak and because I'm a little stubborn about such things. I don't want to lose. I don't want to feel disappointed.

By the way, there is no prize for keeping the streak alive. There is nothing at the end of the rainbow, no reward of any obvious sort. There is just me and the feeling I get from doing something (or, in the case of fast food, not doing something) for a long time.

Another kind of motivation that works is to set a goal, spend some money, and let myself know that I have a reason to do the thing other than it is just good for me. Last night, knowing that it would be a struggle to get up a little earlier and go for a run, I saw that there was a charity event online that allowed me to donate some money toward a good cause and run a 5K in the process. I gave the money and pledged to run. Then, lying in bed this morning not wanting to go out and run, I thought of the money I had spent on running and decided to get out of bed and do it. There was just enough motivation in having clicked a box on the web that said, "here's five bucks; I'll run tomorrow."

Motivation is a strange thing. It eludes me all too often, but then, with just the right conditions, I have the right amount. It's that way with writing these words and running this morning. It's that way with not eating fast food and avoiding most meat in my diet. I wonder why it takes motivation to do these things. When I get out and run, I enjoy myself almost every single time. When I write, even when it's going poorly like it is now, I still feel better doing it than I do in almost any other aspect of my life. Still there is that initial moment of having to make a decision that is hard for me. I'll call it inertia at work.

Tonight, I've been wanting to get these words written, so it was just a matter of deciding to sit and do it when the moment came. This morning it was different. I made it downstairs, but I was still undecided. Then, as I was debating the matter in my head, I realized that I was pulling on my underwear. "Hmm, I said," out loud. "I guess I'm going running."

I could use some motivation to go back and edit this piece, to get it to say something clear. But to tell the truth, I'm too damn tired and I think I would end up editing it down to about two hundred words. Tops.

Instead, I'll say, Happy Thanksgiving all. I'm grateful that I ran this morning, that I typed tonight, and that I've been with my family the whole day through.

Write on.

Just Thinking About My Father

Dad's 73rd birthday was last week and we are celebrating it today when he and my mother come visit. For the past couple of weeks I've been thinking about the man and today feels like a good day to put some of that thinking in writing and see where it takes me.

He was born in 1938 here in Syracuse and has lived around here pretty much ever since with the exception of the past few years when he and Mom retired to the 1000 Islands. They'll be back in Syracuse soon as that place sells and it seems right for him to come back home.

He grew up at the base of Seneca Turnpike, dropped out of high school after his appendix burst (there's a great story in that), joined the army, then became interested in funeral directing. He graduated out of Simmons School of Embalming and took a job. Eventually he managed Garfield's Funeral Home on Westcott Street near where I now live. (It has since become Taps, a cleverly named bar.) In 1978 he bought his own business in Manlius and turned it from a run-of-the-mill funeral home into a thriving business that he ran through to his retirement.

Along the way he married my mother, had two sons (I was the second), rebuilt one house, rebuilt most of another, and did more things than I can even begin to list in 750 words. Instead, let me think of a few things that maybe only I can say.

He used to run with me from the neighbors house back home to ours. He had a halting run that was more of a shuffle than anything else. He always let me win. When he ran, the change in his pockets and his keys jangled like band instruments.

He wore black rimmed glasses when he had black hair. The hair turned grey early on, about when I was nine and he was thirty-nine, and he got metal framed glasses after that. The glasses were the kind that auto-tinted in bright sunlight and took a few minutes to come back to normal when he came inside.

I could always tell his step on the stairs even when he was barefoot and didn't have his usual change filled pockets. I used to try to walk upstairs the way he did. I still don't have it.

As with so many other fathers, he found it mysterious that I could never find the tool he sent me for. He often showed me the tools as he used them. He explained what they were called. He tried to get me interested.

And when he saw that I was more interested in sports, he helped me with that. Dad was at most every game. Especially for Pop Warner Football. He stood in the freezing rain and somehow kept a cigarette burning. I don't think he ever used an umbrella. Such things seemed beneath him. Besides, I was out in the cold, so he was too.

I looked through chain link fences at Dad. He would be behind the fence as I was crouched down playing catcher. He called out the occasional encouragement and I know he groaned inwardly when I dropped the ball or swung and missed. I know that he held his breath every time I came to bat.

He sponsored the little league team and he bought us ice-cream win or lose. He always did. There was no question about it.

When I crashed his car, I called home, told Mom to put him on the phone, and told him what had happened. He asked if I was alright. I was. He asked if the car could be driven home. It could. And then he asked if I wanted him to come up and get me. I said that I would be fine. He said that he would see me in an hour or so. And when he did, he took my picture next to the wreck.

He told me about flipping a car when he was in the army. It's a good story.

And now, Dad provides me with the silence I need sometimes. He sits in his chair next to me on the back deck looking out over the river. He asks a question and he'll wait for an answer. When I give him the answer, he listens. He's pretty good at that, better than I knew. I think it comes from the funeral directing, but it's more likely that it comes from having known me for 43 years, knowing himself for 73 years, and having in him a quiet fortitude that has seen him through everything and that has taught me more than I even know.

Write on, Dad.

Taking Thanksgiving Break

Today is the last day of school before Thanksgiving Break. I don't mind even a little. The kids at school have been great, the work has been good, and I feel like I've been working well, but I've been sick for two weeks and it's draining to keep going when I'm sick. The sickness is beginning to fade and there is hope I will be able to get back to running over this vacation. I'm ready.

More than sickness, I've been worn down lately by the news. The pepper-spraying of students at UC-Davis, the failure of the super-committee to resolve the debt troubles, the continuing nonsense of the Republican candidates for President, and a host of other political disasters. Last night, lying in bed talking with my wife about all of  this, I mentioned that I feel hopeless. I feel as if we're going right down the toilet and there is nothing that I can do to fix it. Wisely enough, she said, "that's not a great thought to take with us into sleep."

One way or another, I got myself thinking about other things and drifted off into a very deep and refreshing sleep. I woke this morning thinking something new: "Hopelessness is not the thought to take with me into waking."

So I've been thinking this morning about how to get past hopelessness. The first thing that has come to mind is to not pay too much attention to the things beyond my control. Notice that I'm deciding to pay attention still, but just not too much. It's worth my while to know about the Occupy movement, to know that Grover Nordquist is a selfish prick, to know that we are still at war in Afghanistan and that the economies of the world are falling apart faster than I would have imagined. But it's not a good idea to pay all of that too much attention. I can listen to it, think about it, but then I have to get on with matters closer at hand.

I can say this better.

Last night I said to my wife that I felt as though there was nothing I could do about any of this stuff. I feel like the idea of one person-one vote is out the window. I don't make enough money to matter in the political process. The Koch Brothers will always matter more to politicians than me. I'll still go to the voting booth, I'll still know the issues, but I can't continue to grind my teeth about all this stuff every moment. I'll write a letter or two. I'll talk with friends. I'll ask difficult questions. But then I'll go for a run, I'll read a book of poetry, I'll play with my kids, I'll hold my wife's hand, I'll shoot baskets, I'll go out with a friend, I'll take my wife to bed, I'll...well, you get the idea.

The news is depressing the hell out of me. So it's time to take a break from that and Thanksgiving Break feels like it is meant for just such a thing. Over the next five days, I hope to not write much of anything political. I hope to have conversations with people about things that have nothing to do with economic inequality, educational policy, or any of that. Instead, maybe we'll talk about what has been going on in our lives, what makes us happy, what our children have been doing. I hope to live my life instead of being overly concerned with the larger picture.

I need a news diet. Not a fast, but a diet. When I think of it that way, I can limit myself to just a few small meals throughout the day instead of constantly snacking on NPR, the New York Times, Twitter and all the rest.

If you're still reading, I'm impressed, because I've really just been thinking out loud now, making a case to myself for a plan that I have decided to put in place. If you're still reading, I wonder what you do to get healthy in your own mind when the politics depresses you. What do you do to survive the feeling of hopelessness? Does it come over you the way it comes over me?

Last thing: there are so many things that I go through without thinking and many of those wear me down. That's what has been happening for me with the news. But when I bring to bear the power of my presence on these things, they become easier.

So, instead of wallowing in a feeling hopeless, I'm going to bring my mind to the front of things, make good decisions, remember that I'm not a helpless victim, and start deciding where my life should go.

And, of course, part of doing that will mean that I continue to write on.

Happiness

I'm thinking this morning about the ingredients for happiness. This is a work in progress. I've been at it for forty-three years and figure it will take me at least fifty-seven more to make much headway. This then is a status report, an update on what I know and what I'm thinking. I imagine that my thoughts will have changed by the time I get to the bottom of this writing. It usually works that way.

This morning I feel fairly happy. I didn't feel that way when I woke or when I drove to work. I didn't even feel that way when I took the first sip of coffee here at my desk. It wasn't until I wrote my customary note to my wife. Each morning, you see, before I do much of anything else (aside from making a cup of coffee), I write a note to my wife that she will find when she boots her computer. Toward the end of this morning I was saying how grateful I am for all the ways in which she shows me her delicate and beautiful love. At the typing of that, at the moment of having that thought, I found morning happiness.

Is it as simple as that? Having good love is what makes happiness? I suppose that it is, but I also think that it's intriguing to think about what else there is to it. And what there is that's not connected to it.

I've been pretty sick lately. I started with a head cold two weeks ago, went through a night of fever and chills, and have been lethargic and aching for a week. Friday, I got some antibiotics and there was hope in me that they would knock this thing down in seconds. No dice. Today (Monday), my nose is still running, I'm already tired (and it's only 7:18 in the morning), and my head just started to ache. What a mess I am.

Throughout all this I've been on the couch, I haven't been able to run, and there has been next to nothing on television. So I've found myself browsing the web and looking at a GPS running watch that I have been thinking I should get for Christmas. I figure it will make me happy.

But I'm wrong.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with having a GPS running watch. It might be fun to get a toy like that and use it some. But happiness isn't there. How do I know? Already, this morning I'm regretting purchasing it. And I haven't purchased it yet! I can feel the regret of trying to buy happy before I shell out the money.

The ingredients of happiness aren't at the store. I know that and yet, I'm still a sucker for a good sales pitch. The iPad, a new Google phone, the Nissan Leaf, and on and on. Last week I got two catalogs for fountain pens. I have two fountain pens already (and use them all the time), but there I was leafing through the catalogs thinking about pens that cost more than GPS running watches. It took a concerted effort to toss the catalogs in the recycling and forget about that stuff.

The obvious thing to say here is that all I need is the love of my wife and children, a connection to my family, the friendship of a small group of people. It's more complicated than that and I don't think I have a grasp on all of it yet. There's also good food, music, books to read. There are the good miles of running out on the road, the occasional trip to somewhere far away, the game of basketball that leaves me dripping and panting for an hour afterward. There are so many things that make up happiness, but all of these seem to have one ingredient in common.

Being aware of feeling happy is what it takes. The GPS running watch I've been looking at is my way of trying to anticipate happiness. "If I buy this, I'll be happy." Meanwhile, I'm missing the things around me that could make me happy. I'm sick, I'm stuck on a couch, I have the damn television on and the laptop open to nothingness. I'm wanting happiness but not going toward it. Instead, I'm looking at $200 running watches.

To be happy, I just have to switch off the television, close the laptop, and maybe go take a nap. Or talk to my girls. Or just sit and consider the world. I don't need to buy happiness. The Beatles were right about money and love. They might as well have been talking about happiness too.

I don't think I've gone as far with this as I wanted to. I'm thinking of the Japanese poet Ryokan who lived with one robe, one bowl. I won't ever live so simply, but there is something to getting down to the basics. I wonder if I'll ever get down to those. I wonder.

Then again, this morning, typing a note to my wife, telling her how strongly I felt her love, I was there already.

Write on.

American Dreams

I had dinner last night with friends and we got to talking about schools because we each have kids in school and about politics. At one point in the conversation I got riled up. This is not unusual and the people around the table know me well enough to not be shocked by any of this. We had been talking about what is going wrong with schools and I stated, for about the millionth time, that President Obama has been the worst education President in our history and that I won't vote for him.

People were taken aback.

I've been thinking about it ever since.

I have two daughters and I want them to lead great lives. I want them to be healthy in mind, body, and spirit. I want them to have enough money to feel secure. I want them to have a home if that's what they want and to find someone to love. I got thinking about how difficult all of that is going to be fore them. How much more difficult it will be than it was for me. And it pissed me off.

Let's start with health. My daughters are growing up in an America that promotes bad food, bad habits, bad health. My wife and I just returned from Wegman's where there is more non-food than there is food. I include in the category of non-food the following (to name just a few): Doritos, Pepsi, Nutri-Grain bars, white bread, margarine, most juices, most cereals, and so on. Even the things that ought to be food such as turkey, chicken, salmon, beef are chemically induced Frankenfoods no better than hotdogs. I found out this week that most honey in the store isn't even honey.

My wife and I fill the cart with as much produce as we can find. Even here we're hobbled by the lack of good food. I picked up a tomato that was way too big and that I knew would taste like nothing at all. It cost $1.61. I put it back. It's just too hard to get good food in our America and it costs an incredible amount.

So, my family and I are faced with a difficult road when it comes to eating healthy.

Being healthy in the mind requires that they have regular access to books, that their school is phenomenal, and that they have time for imagination. We use the library which, thank goodness, still exists even though the funding has been stripped out of it. They read a lot at home and they read some in school (though too much of this is textbook crap that no one in their write mind would want to read). Their school however is falling apart, overcrowded, underfunded, and buried in tests. They take state or national tests about once a month and the teachers, knowing that their tenuous jobs are on the line teach to those tests. If it's not on the test, there is just no time in the day for it.

Hmm, I could go on complaining about all this stuff, but maybe I should change directions and think about solutions.

I need to raise my kids to say the hell with what they are told. Or, at least, I should teach them to question it. Last night at dinner, when people said to me that they still believe in the President and know that he can make a difference, I nodded and then asked, "Why do you believe that?" They said because of the things that he had said. "When?" I asked. "What did he say? How do the things that he has said match with what he has done?" And then I asked, "how has he fought for you?"

My point isn't that Barack Obama is such a terrible President. I think that he is a mediocre President, one who just wasn't ready for the job, and that he is saddled with a nearly impossible job. But he keeps playing by the old rules and by doing so he is reinforcing them. My point isn't that he's terrible, it's that I can't support someone who plays by the rules.

"So what other choice do I have?" asked the person who was most surprised by my lack of support for the Obama Administration.

My other choice is to rebel a little. I'll support the Occupy movements and work with other candidates for office. I'll write about how we have become slaves to corporations. I'll tilt at windmills. And I'll train my girls to ask questions and make statements that every so often make people at dinner parties gasp.

And I'll write on.

Occupied

I've been following the Occupy movement a little bit. I had been having all sorts of trouble figuring it out, deciding where I stand, and just wading through the odd coverage of the thing. News organizations seem to be having a very difficult time following this and, like me, figuring out a way to understand and then cover it. But a lot has changed in the past week and Occupy is a bigger presence in my mind than it was before. The reason is that the police have been ordered in and each time an Occupy movement is attacked by the police, something bad seems to happen and I end up feeling for the protesters much more than for those who have ordered them broken up.

That, and it has given me one more reason to not like President Obama.

Throughout the Arab uprisings this past Spring, the President was trumpeting the rights of peaceful protest. The Egyptians in Tahrir Square were exercising their rights to free speech and to a participatory government. But now that Tahrir Square is on American soil, the President has been absent and his administration may be working with local authorities to put down the Occupy movement. It is one thing to praise a movement that stands up for the people when it is in a country half a world away, but it seems to be more than this president can do to support it when the protesters are his own people.

I like the idea of the 99% because I'm one of them, and maybe therein lies both my motivation and the motivation of our president. He is firmly in the 1% and that's the thing that we all neglected to notice last time we cast votes. We thought he was a 99%-er, but then he pledged allegiance to everyone with a whole lot of money in their pockets. We thought we were getting change but instead got more of the same. So it goes with elections right now.

As for me, I'm a working man, have been working as a teacher for 17 years. I have a wife and two young daughters and, after all this time, I have just enough to get by. I work a second teaching job in the summer. My wife works. We live a modest lifestyle in a three-bedroom house. I am happy to pay taxes. I follow the rule of law. Yet I'm dissatisfied with the simple fact that I struggle to pay bills while banks are bailed out of their criminal behavior. I want my bailout. Or better yet, I want the government to look out first for me, second for the big guys making billions of dollars.

But you've heard all this before. It's likely the story of your life too. So I guess what I'm wondering is this: what are we going to do about it? People say that Occupy has no goals. Maybe the goal right now is to simply stop for a moment and be aware of the situation. Maybe the goal is to be present and aware. The people occupying Wall Street, Oakland, Portland, and so on have all taken time out of their lives to stop and think about what is happening. In doing so they have tumbled to this thought: "Hey, something ain't right about the way we're doing things."

Is this why the protests are being broken up so harshly? Are we not supposed to notice? It sounds like that scene in the Wizard of Oz: pay no attention to those men behind the curtain. Just keep believing in the mythology they are selling. Oh, and keep buying.

The protests are being attacked violently. Unlike in the late sixties, the movement doesn't need to be televised. It brought its own cameras (and backpacks filled with modems sending the images to the web in real time). The images are striking. The 84-year-old woman having been pepper sprayed. The Iraq veteran critically injured by the police. And this morning, a UC-Davis officer crop-dusting kids with pepper spray while they sat on the ground in the archetypal pose of the non-violent protester. The protests are being attacked violently and, each time they are, I become more supportive of the Occupy cause.

That and I'm a teacher. Education is being sold to the same 1% corporations and moguls as everything else in our culture. President Obama is not only letting this happen, his administration facilitates it. I hope that Occupy brings someone down, and I would be okay if it is Obama that falls. I hope that Occupy remains. I hope that Occupy shifts the balance by even 1%. Then we can really go to work.

Success in Schools (for teachers) - Part III

In our previous episode... I've been talking about a foundation for my educational philosophy. That philosophy is being built on the ideas of kindness, compassion, and generosity. You get more of that today, but tomorrow, I promise, I'll move on.

Today, in Chicago, the National Writing Project is meeting in a scaled down version of its Annual Meeting. I have attended the Annual Meeting in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 but not this year. The National Writing Project is a teacher support system, it is an organization that honors teachers and helps them to be better at what they do. And it is one of the initiatives that was defunded by the Obama Administration.

The reasons why the program was defunded aren't too hard to discern. Budgets got tight, programs had to be cut, and the administration doesn't value anything that isn't based on tests, numbers, and votes. The National Writing Project helps teachers help students learn to think through writing. It does a lot more, but that one thing is enough to merit funding it. That sort of thing, however, doesn't fit as well into a campaign speech as "Race to the Top" or budget cutting. And so it goes.

I had hoped for better from the office of the man who was the candidate of hope and change. I've learned that hoping for changed is nice, but it doesn't make it happen. We have more of the same in office now even though I thought I was voting the bums out. Let that be a lesson to me. Change in the classroom comes from above, but it is almost always the wrong kind of change, it is almost always change in the wrong direction regardless of who the President might be.

So change has to happen in the tiny space of my classroom and it begins, for me, with kindness, compassion, and generosity. Here's an example.

The fundamental assignment in my classroom is Writing Practice. We do it every day. It is largely ungraded and I don't explicitly use it as a teaching tool. That said, I use it as a learning tool every single time.

Writing Practice is an idea I stole from Natalie Goldberg who wrote Writing Down the Bones, Wild Mind, and others. Writing Practice is basically a timed-writing. We begin with a prompt but students are encouraged to go off that topic into the places their minds take them. I tell them not to worry about spelling, punctuation, paragraphing, or even making sense. Just write. Our only rules are that writers can't stop writing until our timer goes off and that we are writing in school. That second one doesn't limit my kids much. They're willing to say what they want to say. Instead, it helps them think about audience and gives me space to redirect some topics.

Writing Practice is the first thing we do every class. After we write (and you bet your ass I write with them every single time), we share either the whole thing, part of it, a thought about it, or none of it. That part varies. Then, I hand back the pieces they wrote the day before. On those I have written a comment back to each of them. I like to write (as you can see) and so my comments are usually about 75-100 words long. The content of the comments is not the usual English teacher stuff I remember.

I have conversations.

I pick one or two ideas that they have talked about and I write my thoughts about that. I talk to the student's ideas instead of to their writing. I don't ever correct things on their writing because this is practice and it's okay for them to do it as they please. That said, if I see a word regularly misspelled, I work that word into my comments and spell it correctly. If I see that they run on, I write shorter sentences to show them how its done. If they haven't used a paragraph, I make sure that my comments are two paragraphs long.

My first mission is to be kind, to understand what they have written and to value it as their thoughts. I do that by writing back to the ideas. My second job is to be compassionate. I don't have to correct their ideas, tell them the party line. Instead, I think of how this is informing my understanding of who they are. Then, third, I have to be generous and give them back a comment that reveals myself a little, that is lengthy, and that helps them move forward.

I've run up against the end of my entry here which means I don't get to explain things much more. Maybe that's for the best. There isn't a good way to can this, to get it into a sound-byte other than to say this: Writing Practice honors kids, writing, and learning. Oh, and there's the fact that non-writers in my classes have now written on the order of 5000 words this year. It's a start. And, as always, we will write on.

Success in School (for teachers) - Part II

I wrote yesterday that success for teachers begins with kindness, compassion, and generosity. Today, I want to get into those things a bit more and think about what it means to base a curriculum around my actions as opposed to the things that I'm going to get kids to do. I haven't had great luck at getting kids to do the things that I want them to do simply by telling them, creating assignments, and then testing, quizzing, and grading them into submission. It just hasn't worked for me. Your results may be different.

On Tuesday I sat in on a meeting about a kid who has been recalcitrant and pretty snotty to some of the staff. I haven't had as much trouble with him, so I was sitting in on the meeting with his parent and social worker more as an observer than anything else. I listened as the teachers documented the kid's failings. "I give him the work, I get on him to do it, but he won't do it." That was the general theme.

The mother said that the boy is just so angry and that to do things such as take his cell phone away will send him into a rage. I could hear that she was afraid to do this. She didn't want to have to go through the abuse he was likely to bring down on her.

When it came my turn to talk I mentioned that his problems in class are that he's just so out of practice. His spelling is primitive, things like that. But I said that he was willing to write, willing to read, willing to put the cell phone aside. No one asked me, but I could feel at least one teacher trying to figure out what my magic was. If she had asked, I would have said that it comes in three parts:

Kindness, compassion, and generosity.

Kindness is simple. We all know what that is and we ought to know how to put it into practice, but we teachers are trained out of it by experience, by other teachers and administrators, and by fear. Kindness demands that I treat students as I would have a teacher treat me. Note that I'm not saying to treat the kids as I would have them treat me. Instead, I'm saying that I have to put myself in the class. I have to be a part of it. If I would be reluctant to do the assignment, it's a bad assignment. If I wouldn't want to be talked to in a certain way, that's not the way I should talk to students. And so on.

Being kind means listening to what they have to say. It means writing back to the things that they write. It means sharing myself with them. Kindness means being friendly with them (though not necessarily worrying about being their friend). It means giving them good advice even when it's not about the subject matter.

Compassion goes along with this. I have to think as they might think and try to figure out not just how they feel but why they feel that way. The kid we were meeting about has suffered horrible things in his life. Horrible. Beyond what I can imagine. When he gets upset about being told to put his phone away, it's not because he just wants to be a pain in the ass. He's reacting to what has happened to him and he's reacting to something much larger than what happens in my classroom.

This doesn't give him a free pass to do anything he pleases or act out of control. Instead, compassion helps me to be calm and not react as though his flare-up has much at all to do with me. Simply acknowledging that he is angry changes my whole demeanor. Being compassionate in this way makes the confrontation about what's happening to him and not how I'm getting angry. It also takes my emotions down several notches.

And then there is generosity which isn't about giving kids Tootsie Rolls or telling them "good job!" Generosity is the giving of kindness and compassion. It is the willingness to give away the classroom to the students, not by abdicating control of order, but by addressing their needs more than mine. Generosity is as simple as getting kids to say "I'm going to the bathroom" instead of "may I go to the bathroom?" The difference is that they get to be in charge of their bladder but they are checking in with me to let me know where they are going.

Generosity is taking into account who they are and who I am, it is sharing who they are and who I am, it is working with individuals on their needs and also getting the whole class involved.

Generosity, compassion, and kindness. Imagine a curriculum based on those three things. Tomorrow, if my nose will stop running (and even if it won't), I'll try to describe such a curriculum in practical terms. Until then, write on.

Success in School (for teachers) - Part I

Last year I wrote a snotty two-page note to students about how to be successful in school. It consisted of about seven bullet points that listed the things that they needed to stop doing in order to be successful. Basically, the note said, "cut it out you stupid kids and stop wrecking all the good I'm trying to do here!" I am very happy to say that I never passed that note on to students.

I found that note a couple days ago when I was thinking about things that do or don't make students successful in the at-risk program at which I teach. I was remembering it as brilliant and was a bit crushed to find that it was just the opposite. Right away, I figured that it would be the perfect thing to write here at bgfay750, but when I started sketching ideas in my notebook I found that I didn't have a lot of good stuff to say. Not yet.

It turns out that before I could talk with students about how to be successful I had to think about how teachers can be more successful. And so, here we are.

Success in School for teachers begins with kindness, compassion, and generosity. I'm convinced of this. Standards, expectations, and all the rest are good too, but they are secondary to kindness, compassion, and generosity which, I suppose, could all be filed under the general heading of understanding.

This year, my second in an alternative to homebound instruction program, I came in with a new goal. In other years, I have set about to raise scores, to get kids to write more than ever, to (for lack of a better phrase) do things to kids. Those initiatives have worked fairly well but have always left me disappointed in the larger sense. This year was different in that I spent the summer teaching summer school and developed a new sense of what my role is in the classroom.

Over the summer, I met kids who had stumbled for a wide variety of reasons and were now looking out the window at summer sunshine instead of being out in it. They weren't excited to be there and they weren't looking to learn a whole lot so much as they expected to serve their time and be released with the credit. Knowing this, but also knowing that I wanted to help them achieve something (and knowing that I was being paid to help them learn), I designed a program that was based on knowing them, letting them know themselves, and putting a focus on their lives and who they wanted to be.

The resulting curriculum began with writing practice every day. For five to ten minutes we wrote from a prompt and then we shared. They handed these in to me and got them back the next day with a personal note from me. That note did not ever discuss grammar, spelling, mechanics, or give advice about how to write better. The writing itself was the instruction and the note back showed how writing could be a conversation. Along the course of 24 days, kids wrote more, spelled better, structured writings, and acted in the ways that writers do.

After writing practice, we read a poetry, short stories, a novel, a play, and we watched two movies. All the while we took time to talk about things. Sometimes the talk was about the stuff we had read or written, sometimes it was about how one guy's math class sucked and how it made him hate math. Sometimes it was about a car, a trip, a game played on the football field. All of this was in the curriculum.

And at the end of summer school, all but two kids passed the course, and all but one who needed to pass the state exam did, with pretty high scores. More than that, nearly all of them talked about how they felt differently about writing. Okay, that was enough evidence for me (I don't really need too much hard data) to try it this year in school.

Thus, I have begun building a curriculum based on kindness, compassion, and generosity. It isn't as though I haven't had any models for this. The program at which I used to teach and the one before that were designed on personal relationships. In each instance, people realized that before real achievements come real relationships.

Tomorrow, I'll go through the three words guiding my curriculum and describe the types of relationships I'm trying to build. Then, either tomorrow or the next day (depending on how verbose I am), I'll talk about how this has radically transformed my approach to conflict and discipline in the classroom.

Until then, write on.

On Feeling Overwhelmed

I like thinking about what something means, taking it apart, getting down to what it really is. I was going to title today's essay "On Being Overwhelmed" but before I typed it, I got to thinking about what that would mean. Being, as opposed to feeling, is a state that one exists in. If I was "being" overwhelmed, I would be helpless, the world would be coming in over the gunwales. I would find it impossible to breathe. The best metaphor I can think of at this moment is that I would be held underwater and running out of air. That's what being overwhelmed is.

But that's not what is really happening. Instead, that's what I imagine is happening when I panic or when I forget the difference between seeming and being.

This morning I am returning to work after a sick day and my desk is a mess. In ten minutes I have a staff meeting (hurry, 600 words to go!), and I'm not at all sure that I have finished looking at the stuff kids turned into me last week. I have to attend a parent conference at my kid's school this afternoon and just realized that it conflicts with my usual appointment with my therapist so I need to reschedule that. I also need to order tickets for my other daughter's birthday before the show we want to take her to sells out. On top of that there is the usual day-to-day stuff.

Help me! I'm drowning!

Except, I'm really not.

My desk is often a mess and I live with it just find. I have more time than I usually use to get my 750 words typed. If I haven't looked at kids' stuff, I tell them that I was sick and they will understand; they always do. The parent conference is going to be fun because the teacher adores our daughter and my therapy appointment is easy enough to reschedule. Ordering tickets can be done online and I'll be able to attend to that at 8:15 after my first class of kids takes off to go to Spanish. And as for the rest of the stuff that I have to do every day, well, I do that sort of thing every day.

And so it only feels as though I'm overwhelmed and feelings are something that I can live with. Now that I have gone through that idea, and accepted the simple fact of feeling overwhelmed, I have little to fear from it, don't need to push back against it, and in general feel like there is a way through. It's as though whatever was holding me underwater has let go and I just broke through the surface to find that I'm in warm water under blue sky and the shore is just a little ways away. That and it turns out that the thing that was holding me underwater was, no surprise here, me.

It's an old lesson that I have to learn over and over, but it's coming to me faster and faster each time that I revisit it. I get to choose how these things go. I get to choose how to be. That's a freeing thought. Hell, that's a freeing fact.

And so today is a day to deal with thing and to remember a few other lessons, some of which I've talked about here already. They include:

Do one thing. Right now I'm typing my 750 words. I don't have to do anything other than that right now and, in fact, if I'm attending to this task, I can't do anything but type 750 words right now. Do one thing.

Choose not only what to do but also how to feel. I get to make decisions about how I am, what I want, and how to react to things. I don't have to abdicate responsibility for these things and in fact, it's unwise to give up those choices. Choose how to feel.

Don't sweat it too much. There's nothing to be gained by panicking and rushing through things. There's nothing to be gained by thinking that it's the end of the world. And there is nothing to be gained by thinking that I can't do it. Don't sweat it too much.

Finally, remember that things have been worse and that I'm still here. I have survived and thrived in worse situations than this. I can and I will be fine. Remembering that just takes all the threat out of the situation. Remember, I'm still here.

That's it. That's the lesson. Oh, and one other thing, of course: Write on.

Being Sick But Not Sorry

I've had a head cold for a few days now and might just have to go see a doctor if it continues. That's not very interesting, but what has held my interest this morning is my daughters' reactions to my being on the couch under a blanket instead of at work where I belong. That and my wife's reaction too.

The girls really don't care that much if their schedule is interrupted. My eldest walked into the den this morning, saw me sitting on the couch and gave me a look that said, what are you doing here? I told her that I wasn't feeling well and was staying home today. Oh, she said. And then she had other things to do. She's trying to teach the dog not to be afraid of the kitten. This involves a lot of talk-therapy, some leash work, and the occasional holding of the kitten near her face. The dog, I'm sorry to say, is not responding very well to this.

My younger daughter didn't even respond to my good morning as she was already on board with her sister's plan and was maneuvering the cat into couple's therapy with the dog. Now, as I sit on the couch typing, they are both running around and around the house while the dog keeps trying to come in and hide under my legs.

My wife, on the other hand, loves her schedules. Having me home is a bit of a nuisance for her. This explains some of why I'm in the den typing while she is going about her morning routine in the kitchen. I could sit in the kitchen at the table or make a cup of coffee, but I would feel her annoyance building. It's not that she's such a shrew (I feel like this is making her out as such) but that she simply abhors having her schedule in any way altered.

Being sick, however, alters most everything. Today, I won't be going to work which means that someone else has to teach my classes, that I'll have to figure out what went on, and that the rest of the week will be a little bit off. It will be a lot off if I don't get in there tomorrow. Even this post will be late today as I struggle to get it done at quarter to eight instead of my usual before seven writing.

More than all that, I tend to feel guilty when I'm sick. I've apologized to the people at work already, I'll apologize to students when I get back. I apologized to my wife and the kids too. Why? An apology should be reserved for times when I do something wrong. Still, being sick feels like I'm doing something wrong. That's a warped way of looking at life. Do I thank people when I feel happy? Do they thank me?

Part of being present in the world is to understand that most of life isn't good or bad, it just is. If I can accept that today I am sick and have been sick for a few days, then I can get beyond apologizing. The apologizing doesn't do me any good anyway. I'm not saying that accepting that I'm sick will make me better, but I know that fighting it won't make me better either. All too often in life I fight against what I'm feeling. I push back, I lie to myself, and I work against whatever it is. If I'm sick, like today, my first idea is to blow it off, go about my normal life, act as though there is nothing wrong at all. That way no one will be troubled.

Except me.

I guess that in some ways I'm suggesting a bit of selfishness. I need to accept that I'm sick, that I need to lie still for a good portion of the day, that I'm inconveniencing my wife a little (but not terribly), and that I'll get better when I get better. Rather than think only of how being sick is a bad thing, consider instead that being sick is a thing that isn't bad or good. It just is.

One problem with being sick is that my brain is working on about 80% speed right now. I'm not sure if this has made a lot of sense. I would apologize for it, but it's just how things go. The problem isn't that I may have written a muddled entry, the problem would be if I was too sick to write at all. At least I'm well enough to put together a mildly coherent essay. At least I'm well enough to write on.

Messages

I have messages broadcast at me all day. So do you. Most of them I rightly ignore, but it's a struggle to sort through the things to which I need to pay attention versus the ones I can safely shove out of the way. There ought to be a guide to such things. Below is 750 words of me trying to figure that guide out.

When I was a little kid watching cartoons, my mom was in the room cleaning. A commercial came on about something that was "new and improved" and I asked her if it would be better to get the new and improved version. She said, flatly, simply, and while still attending to whatever she was doing, "Every commercial on the television is a lie. You don't need any of it." I think I was four or five at the time and I'm surprised by how much those two sentences resound with me still. That, and I'm impressed by how correct she was.

I think of this often when I am filling the gas tank of my car. I stand at the pump and try to find a direction in which to look that isn't filled with advertising. It's difficult, and even when I do find that direction and look that way, I hear advertising broadcast over the stations speakers. Most of it is for cigarettes, soda, chips, candy, and a host of other things that are not only not necessary but are damaging. Only once, at a station just east of Binghamton on Route 17 did I see an ad saying, "we have fresh produce inside!" I would have bought some but we had brought our own along.

Other messages I'm having more and more trouble with are those spewed by politicians and, since I'm a dyed in the wool Democrat and taking shots at the Republicans is just too easy, I'll mention our President, a man I voted for the first time around. He is going around the country talking about how we have to create jobs, cut the budget, and all the rest, but he has cut education to the bone, left us in two wars, and failed to resist being purchased by corporations. His message is lovely, but it's just a message.

On Thursday, I was talking with a very young woman about the Republican debate. She said, "...but I'm biased." I said, "you're a Democrat." She said, "yes, and I mean, we have the greatest President right now." I asked her if she really thought that Obama was great. She said that he was. I asked what he had done that made him great. She couldn't answer. She instead talked about the ways in which he talks. She thinks he is the greatest President because he has broadcast a great message, the new and improved America.

I should have my mother visit and tell this woman her theory of politicians.

And then there are the personal messages we all receive. Over the last week and a half I keep receiving messages calling me back to the past. I've been thinking about friends from college, my life as a seven-year-old in Syracuse, and a host of mistakes I have made throughout my 43 years, one in particular. In the past, I've heeded those messages as though it were God himself talking in my ear. I went backward, I lost myself in nostalgia and self-doubt (should haves, could haves, might haves).

This morning, even with my head clogged with a nasty, mucas-filled cold, I feel clean of those messages and know exactly what message to listen to. It's the message of this moment, the awareness that what I'm doing right now matters more than what I'll buy tomorrow and who I knew yesterday. It's the message that reminds me of my two children upstairs asleep, waiting to wake up and say good morning to the dog and cats. It's the message that my wife is so lovely she makes my heart hurt as I type this. It's the message that the politics will go on with or without me and that I can take a break from all that.

Today hasn't broken yet. It's still pitch dark out there at this early hour. And yet, already I know the messages I will be listening for: the rising sun, the call of my legs to go for a run, the need I have to hold my wife tight to me in the warmest hug, the kiss of my girls, the feel of my dog's fur under my hand, and the constant pull of words, words, and words. All that crowds out the new and improved products, the empty promises of politicians, and any pull the past once had on me.

Write on.

Intelligence Is Not A Crime

I have been reading this morning about Herman Cain and the Republican field. They are pushing common sense as policy, which is a fine enough thing to say, but they are doing it at the expense of intelligence and wisdom. They are pushing common sense in order to appear folksy. I get why they are doing it. This sort of thing plays well in our country. People who manage their own finances day to day are appalled by the machinations involved in managing and mismanaging the budgets of our country. They want the government (a folksy idea in and of itself that our government is one thing) to cut spending, pay off the bills, and make everything hunky-dory. That our politicians largely reinforce such simplistic ideas isn't a good thing though you wouldn't know that from the polls. Intelligence and deep thinking aren't bad things, they just don't seem to be ideas that, in this day and age, can be sold on a national level.

This push away from intelligence starts early. With women there is a push to not be good at math. I work in schools and see this every day. It is perfectly acceptable for a young woman to say, "I'm terrible at math" and go on with her life. I see it with adults too, especially women, who claim that they just never get math. This sort of thing is trumpeted as an achievement or at least as an acceptable bit of stupidity. I wonder if it would be the same for these people to laugh and say, "I don't get words longer than five letters long; I let my husband take care of those."

Complex ideas are seen as someone else's realm. Consider the idea of climate change. Well, that's too tough for any of us to understand or do anything about, right? I mean, even scientists don't agree on that or get it completely. Right? No, not at all. Climate change is complex but not impossible. It's about like trying to ride the New York City subway system: a task that seems impossible until you need to understand it, at which point it becomes something that you learn.

Herman Cain is a master simpleton. I don't mean that he's stupid (though I will say that he makes incredibly stupid statements and decisions). Instead, I mean that he is brilliant at appearing as the simple man with the simple plan. 9-9-9, baby! He knows that the way to the White House is through the use of simple answers that people don't even have to chew before swallowing. He also knows that the answers he gives need to cover over the fact that the world is a complex place and requires intelligence and deep thinking. Like most of our politicians operating in a 24-hour news cycle that requires 10-second sound bites, he is a typical charlatan selling tickets at a carnival. Step right up to see the tiniest economic plan in the world! Feast your eyes on the common sense of it! And then he takes our money and shows us a fake.

Perhaps its the fact that I have been stuck with a cold for two days and my head is stuffed full, my lungs are coughing up phlegm, and my nose is either stuck shut or leaking steadily. Maybe that's why I have had enough of this nonsense. Maybe that too is why I'm so crotchety about it.

But I think it also has to do with the simple facts of my young daughters having breakfast out in the kitchen. They know that the world is not simple and they dive into things with their eyes and minds open. They wouldn't suggest that balancing our home budget is as simple as eliminating feeding the cats and dog (those free-loaders!) or to stop paying the taxes that keep their school open. They even understand why a lot of their teachers have been let go and their classes are over-flowing. They get that things often go beyond common sense.

Unless...

Maybe common sense dictates that big problems require big thinking. Maybe things such as the current economic crisis require us to go well beyond the obvious and consider possibly spending our way back to fiscal health. Maybe common sense demands that we set aside ten-word answers to problems, that we research the depths and complexities of things and work together.

Common sense is the sense we have in common and that has been handed down to us through the years. It is not the simplest answer. It is not the sound-byte. It does not have to be folksy and appeal to the lowest common denominator. After all, the common sense for years has been to listen to the smart women and men around us, to learn from and challenge their ideas, and to strive always to become more intelligent and to fill ourselves with more wisdom. I can get behind that. Herman Cain I can get behind only so much as I can then push him off the stage.

Write on.

Play

Today is, as you have probably noticed, the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the eleventh year of the millennium (give or take a year) and I would suspect that twice today people will be glued to their digital clocks and watches to consider the number eleven coming up six times (three for the time, three for the date). There will be those who attach significance to all this and I'm one of them, but not in any mystical or superstitious sense. Instead, I'm attaching a whole lot of gee-whiz significance to all those elevens. It is simply, to use a quaint term, neat.

As a child I liked running across moments like these with numbers. I grew up before it was usual to wear a seat belt and so, when taking trips, I stood so that I could rest my chin on my father's shoulder as he drove. I talked to him pretty much non-stop and we both watched the odometer and played games with the numbers there. I liked when he hit 98,765, and I thrilled when he turned it back to 00,000. (Most of our cars weren't expected to make it to 100,000 and I remember Dad selling a really old station wagon with only 11,000 miles or so on it because he'd done round the odometer.) We liked numbers like 32,123 for their symmetry, and 77,777 for their consistency.

Beyond this, on trips, I would inevitably ask how much longer we would be driving. Dad would tell me how many more miles we had to go and then suggest that I figure it out. Often this would get me off his back (literally) and into my seat for a while to figure in my head or with pencil and paper. "Dad, if you're driving sixty miles-per-hour, does that mean we go a mile every minute?" And he would show me the road signs marking tenths of a mile and tell me to count them while watching the second hand on the clock. (Yep, there were analog clocks in our cars then too.)

None of these number games were set up as work. This was play for him and he made it play for me. We played until we tired of it and then, rather than force the issue, we would switch. I would talk to him or to Mom or to my brother. We would listen to an audio cassette my brother had made of a favorite M*A*S*H episode. We would listen to Mom read a book. And sometimes we were just quiet and watching the road pass by.

I learned a lot from our math play. Mostly I learned that numbers are for playing, that there is supposed to be fun in numbers and in manipulating them. Much the same way that I learned to play with words (as I'm doing now) and not worry about how things came out, so too with numbers. Often, I started in on one question only to drift off into others. I didn't necessarily come back to the original or worry about finishing the thing I was playing at. Dad sometimes forgot the question as he thought about whatever he thought about on these drives and I would be left to either re-explain it or just go with whatever I had figured.

The best comparison to all of this that I can make is that it was very much like how my friend and I played in the summers. We had no set plan. We started each day with "what do you want to do?" We played Hot Wheels until we tired of that. We threw the Trac-Ball back and forth until we were done with that. We listened to music for a while. Hell, sometimes we cleaned the cupboards in the kitchen. It wasn't work, it was play. So too with all that number stuff in the car with Dad.

On the television last night our local news reported that our local schools are all failing. I'm a teacher and I know about this. We are failing a bunch of tests and outside measures that say kids aren't working up to standards. Note the word: Working.

I learned math by playing with numbers. I carried that play-ethic into school and continued to play with them, racing Sean McGinn to finish our multiplication problems, inventing number-based codes with Scott Jackson, and looking for elegant solutions alone in my dorm room. One problem with schools is that we do too much work and far too little play. Work isn't that much fun, but play is. And if school isn't at all fun, people won't do it very well. I know. I've taught for seventeen years and it is miserable to try and get kids to do work. On the other hand, it is a joy to get them to play. My English classroom is all about playing with words. We do a tremendous amount of play. My hope is that none of them will remember doing much work at all. I don't remember doing that with Dad and I aced every test I took, mostly because I didn't worry about them and figured they were just another game to play.

There's a lot more to say about this. Lucky for me, playing with words is what I do. More to come when I write on.

Paying Attention

I went to bed early last night, a nagging cough and general cold weighing me down. I hoped to sleep the night through, wake up and be ready for a run in the morning just like yesterday. Things didn't work out that way and I'm trying to pay attention to how I feel about that, what it means, and where to go from here. This might sound silly. I mean, so what if I didn't run? What's the big deal? That's exactly the sorts of questions I want to pay attention to today.

I woke this morning at three to the sound of our oldest daughter struggling with the same cough I've been feeling. She just couldn't beat it and, at four, when I heard her get up to use the bathroom, I got up too and found the cough medicine. I gave her some, almost smiled at the yucky-face she made swallowing the stuff, and hugged her off to bed.

"Dad," she said, "you won't believe it but all my coughing hasn't bothered the dog at all."

I believed it, but I was surprised by how happy I felt, standing in the hallway at four in the morning having this little talk with my daughter. Then she went back in, stepped over the dog, and got herself back into bed. I went back to bed wondering how I was feeling physically. It was hard to tell because emotionally I was so good. I knew that I was going to wake up tired, but the little conversation in the hall lingered and I drifted back to sleep for a bit, woke to my alarm and knew immediately that I wasn't going running. I went back to sleep right away.

I woke again at six to shower, dress for work, get my things together and get out of the house. At different moments throughout the morning I worried that I hadn't run. The weather, though a bit moist, was perfect for a run with temperatures in the fifties. But I wasn't perfect for a run, I kept telling myself. And for some reason I believed.

In the past (the recent past even; such as yesterday) I've struggled with this kind of understanding. My body isn't ready to run. I have a cold, a hacking cough, running nose, sore bones. What I need is sleep, quiet, and orange juice. (I've always felt like orange juice is a magical elixir.) And so this morning I've paid attention to how my body feels, not trying to anticipate or look backward, not trying to act in a certain way. I feel a soreness in my left thigh, a clogging in my throat, a hitch in my breathing, and a dullness beneath my forehead. But my body is loose and I don't feel tense. That's an odd thing for me. I usually fight my body, but today, I'm just hanging out with it, checking in, saying hello, and so on.

What's the point of all this rambling? (The excuse for the rambling is my general malaise and petri-dish-like nature.)

I'm paying attention to a couple of things today. One, my body and how I feel. What I can and can't do. Trying things and seeing how they go. Two, my mind and how I feel. What I need to think about and what I can cast away. Thinking about where I focus my energy. Three, my daughter, my other daughter, and my wife. How they make for moments of wonder almost all day. How they are like food, vitamin C, some magical elixir of life. And four, what makes me happy. How do I choose happiness?

It seems to me that I choose happiness by being alert and paying attention to things that matter. Simple things like why I didn't run today, my daughter's happiness that her cough hadn't disturbed the dog's sleep, the fact that Rick Perry can count to three but can't remember three things, and all the other stuff that makes me smile and know that the day is a good one no matter how often I need to blow my nose.

Even a rambling 750 words essay like this is okay. It's not the best thing I've written in this series and just might be the worst. Okay, well, then I've reached that level and, like mine and my daughter's health, there seems nowhere to go but up. I just smiled at that bit of thinking and there again is some happiness. See, all I have to do is keep going. All I have to do is pay attention. All I have to do is write on.

Things I Know Are Right

I spoke with my therapist for our weekly appointment yesterday. After I mentioned that something had worked for me I said, "yet again I reluctantly admit that something you told me a year ago turns out to be right." It's an old joke between us that most of the things we come to understand in our sessions take weeks if not months to make it into my practice. I know they are probably right when we first talk of them but often I can't make sense of them yet. Then I make sense of them, sensing even more than ever that they are right, but can't seem to make it happen in my life. Finally, almost by accident or through sheer repetition, I integrate the idea into my life and it turns out to be a great way to go. I guess, in therapy, I'm that kid who just can't learn right away. I fail the test but then, later in the school year, I have all the answers. So it goes.

I'm like that with another thing that I've been working on for about eight months: running in the morning. Two years ago, I belonged to the local Y and would be at their door at 5:30 each morning to get in and work out. The price of the Y membership went above my threshold and I was also running more, so I dropped out of the place and set about running instead. But I found that I had more and more trouble getting myself out of bed. I couldn't sleep well enough to wake rested. I couldn't get to bed early enough to wake up without an alarm. And I tended to turn off the alarm and wish it away. All of this left me frustrated and confused. It has been like that through yesterday.

In fact, yesterday morning is a perfect example of what was happening. I went to bed early the night before, slept well, work at 4:15 feeling reasonably well-rested and ready to go. Except I didn't go. I lay there in bed and thought about getting up, told myself to get up, wished myself out of bed, but didn't get up. I wanted to get up, but for whatever reason felt that I couldn't. It was warm in bed. It was comfortable. It was me not running and that felt...safe, I guess.

Still, just as I knew at the time, I got up later and felt nothing but disappointed that I hadn't run. I knew that I wanted the energy boost I feel from running. I knew that I wanted to feel healthy going into the day. Instead, I felt physically and mentally and emotionally unhealthy. Poor, poor me.

Last night, thinking of Leo Babauta's zenhabits.net column "The Rut & the Way Out," I simply announced to myself that I would run the next morning. I set only one alarm (as opposed to the early running alarm and the later safety alarm). I set out my clothes. I decided. And for whatever reason, this morning, I woke before the alarm, lay there for a few moments, and then got up and went for a run. It was hard. It really was hard to get up out of bed. But then, once I had put one foot on the floor, everything was easy.

My therapist and I talk about this sort of thing often and it's one of those things that I know is right but still have had such trouble accomplishing. I know that I feel great when I run in the morning. I know that I feel better getting up early and running than I ever have lying in. I know that it is a good thing, but there is an inertial force originating in my brain that I have trouble overcoming.

I wonder how many other things there are in my life that I know are good for me but resist in favor of doing nothing. Writing for sure is good for me, but I don't have much trouble making that happen. Going out with friends--arranging adult play-dates--is tougher for me but always works out well. Taking time out of the schedule to get my daughters kicking a soccer ball often seems like too much to arrange, but it's always good. And just holding my wife is enough to make any day as good as can be. It's simply a matter of trusting in the rightness, the goodness of these things and trusting too that they will carry me through that inertial malaise. If I can begin to trust in these things it might not take me weeks and months to learn.

Write on.

Today is the birthday of my best friend, Chris, who I have known for all his and my 43 years. Happy Birthday, man.

Back to "Do One Thing"

I spent some time with a friend yesterday helping her get wi-fi hooked up so that she could make better use of an iPad she had just bought. We don't get to see one another often enough and so it's a treat to get up to her house, hang out, and be of use. I was working at trying to get the wi-fi router working for a little while and we talked the whole time.

The cable modem is under her desk so I had to crawl under there and get the wires plugged in. About every other time I came out from under there, I banged my head to some degree on the underside of the desk drawer. It didn't hurt but it must have looked and sounded bad. On top of that, I was frustrated in my work to get the router working and so was searching online for solutions.

All the while, she and I were talking and she kept asking if she shouldn't go somewhere so that I could concentrate. "No," I said and meant it. There was nothing that I was doing that couldn't be done just as well with a friend to talk to. Then, as I was running a Google search and also showing something to her on the router, she chided me to "do one thing." Yep, she's been reading this blog and was throwing my words back at me. I like that. Gives me something to think about and helps me rethink an idea.

I'm a father of two young children, a husband to a lovely and thoughtful wife, and a teacher to a bunch of at-risk kids. There are few times in my life when I have the solace of only one thing to do. Even now, typing these words, I have a pile of paper on my desk to attend to and at any moment people will come through the door vying for my attention. I have music going in the background, traffic out the window, ideas on my mind of what my therapist and I will talk about this afternoon, the notion that I need to reschedule my doctor's appointment, wondering why the computer across the room is on, and a couple dozen other things. I also need to brush my teeth. But for now I am writing these words.

Doing one thing doesn't mean that I can shut out everything else in my life. For my money, I was doing one thing yesterday when I was hooking up the router, talking with my friend, and searching for solutions to the lack of data flowing through the wi-fi connection. I was focused on solving the problem of how to get wi-fi working. Sure, we were talking and that sort of thing, but it was all part of the larger whole. Doing one thing means being in the moment of that thing. I don't want to lose myself in thinking about what is to come, what has passed. I don't want to lose myself switching between tasks. Doing one thing means sticking with something and, I don't think I've talked about this much, enjoying the task.

Enjoying the task is easy when I'm out for a run, reading a book, or writing 750 words. It can be more challenging when I'm emptying the dishwasher, folding laundry, or hooking up a wi-fi router. In the more challenging do-one-thing tasks, I like having a friend at hand to talk and keep me company. I like to daydream while I fold the laundry or sometimes just count how many pieces I fold. And this morning, emptying the dishwasher I made a point to pet the kitten each time I returned to the dishwasher from a cupboard. But even so, I was doing one thing, focusing on what needed to get done.

Back to my friend and the router. It came down to a simple solution. I had to power down everything, power it back up and let all the parts see one another. That done, we started to play with her iPad, downloading apps, getting used to the interface. We updated iTunes. We tried to get the printer to work, but didn't. Then it was done. We said our goodbyes, she paid me in fresh baked bread, and I got in the car to drive home. I thought about texting my wife to let her know I was on my way, but I figured that driving was the one thing to do just then. As I drove, the view of the lake from high above got me thinking of a poem idea. I drove thinking that when I was done driving, I might just have to get out a pen and some paper to write that poem. After that, well, I'd figure it out, one thing at a time.

Write on.