030114 #morning *This? Today?* Today is the thing you couldn't tell me yesterday? *This* was the big secret? Today begins as any other day; big, watery, horrible, faintly wonderful but primally horrifying, a flatworm crawling under a door. #steptoday not. "Today i wrote nothing." oh well i spent a lot of money though household and OM. 030214 #morning the queasy undercurrent of the night remains. big pieces of paper were laid out on the table in my dreams, saying things like"money," "jobs," "parenting," the usual suspects. we've been hemorrhaging money. i have so little, my defenses are overwhelmed as by invisible viruses of hopelessness. I am infected, I am a zombie. we need to be protected from myself. I have to inoculate myself against myself so that I do not destroy my children's future. in the blinding soup of the day, things like battery life and autofocus speed consume and irritate. they gnaw at me as much as or more than actually important things should but don't. these little horMill embarrassing things that annihilate my patience are little signals, the vanguard of the midget fairy dwarf army of imaginary spirits who are my only line of defense against my virus's constant supply of distractions, intoxicants, and seductive tranquilizers. 1: Why do you drink so much coffee and tea all the time? 2: Oh, I'm always drinking something. Back home they used to call me the tea-drinking son of a bitch! #steptoday - filled out application so as to be ready for interview tomorrow. Am full of ambivalence about this prospective job, though. That may show through in the interview. Just be honest & positive, and make a rational decision. Making contacts in special ed world, vs the pay is a goddamned insulting pittance. Based on the format of the application, I am clearly overqualified. Which is fine, I'm not too proud, but it all comes down to this: *Is there a reasonable chance of advancement,* either in this company or by this experience leading to something else. Obviously, there's not going to be a guarantee. It's just, is it a reasonable gamble????? 030314 #steptoday - Job Interview. Not bad. Pulled my shit together and overcame the "I don't want it anyway vibe" for the most part. Choked on a couple of questions. Should have planned ahead more and taken a resumé. Need to follow up tomorrow. Still, good practice getting "out there" and could be a career lead if I want to go down that path. At this point, I kinda need to go down *any* path. Wait. What am I saying all this stuff for? Keep it simple: Could have done a better job of it, was kind of surprised by the big wave of "don't really want to do this" that came up as the time drew near, give myself credit for doing it anyway. Still need more practice with that energy balance. Also need to practice certain interview responses so I don't sound like a) I'm hiding some kind of sinister secret when I talk about my "life transition", and b) I'm in so much of a hurry and am so panicked I can't stop and ask for simple clarification when needed, like, "What kind of assistive devices do you mean, for example?" Dude. It's okay to breathe. But you did good. I'm proud of you. Really? Yes, really. Now follow up, and then assume we're moving on. Find out what happens next. Keep doing steps. 030414 #morning Some of the grains of tea spilled onto the tablecloth. It was beautiful but uncertain, dry leaves scattered in a perfect, temporary pattern. own your story. you are imperfect and beautiful, tragic, broken, ugly, perfect; an essential note of the symphony, unforgettable character of the story you're also kind of a freak and you don't know how to act natural in professional situations but hey. afraid of success, afraid of people, longing simultaneously for warmth, connection, love but also quietude, solitude, space. fierce need for and devotion to family. you really want to do a good job at *something.* you struggle with established standards of professional accountability, mainstream social and educational values, you're not always sure what part of your thoughts are baloney, rationalizations, or some kind of deeper truth. you're scared of a fiery decrepit painful old age because you feel like you've failed for so long to do the normal, accepted things you're supposed to have done to be secure and successful in the economy and ecology you find yourself in. you feel guilty because you don't have a college fund for your girls and you rely on the state to help take care of them. "the state" is just "other people," sure, but just not necessarily the other people that would be your first choice. you simultaneously hate conformity and want to be a soldier. you are basically a wrinkled dog on a weathered porch, barking against the sunset. 030514 so this little bitch, basically fresh out of college, is gonna give me a three star review. OK. why, because I played with her retarded looking stuffed unicorn? the fuck ever. I think I am actually deciding not to give a shit about that kind of petty snotty sorority girl first world indignation anymore. you know what, fuck her and her pissy faced droop shouldered cross armed way she stands in the hallway not smelling anything. and her stupid smile frown. I am so done kowtowing to little shits who think they should be rewarded for being lucky and following the rules. so done. I am so done not giving myself credit for the shit I know, I've done, I've survived, I've learned. I'm so done being an overgrown baby. it's time to claim my REAL professionalism for myself, define it on my terms, and work with my own integrity to improve it. you can give me one star or a bucket of frowny faces, I don't give a fuck. the only requirement, as my man said, is knowing what's needed, and then delivering what's needed on time. and I'm done giving two shits what "Brittney", if that is her real name, thinks about it, sitting in her comfortable little white bread armchair tsking, going um, yeah, he didn't do it right, ugh, i mean seriously. Gradualism. Social ineptitude, defaulting to demurral, disavowing my own authority--these neotenous traits are my version of a combover. It's time to shave and face the grown up world, pate shining unabashedly. Fuck em. Maybe it's some kind of manifestion of the _____ effect, that thing where the incompetent overestimate their abilities. I do the version where the competent underestimate themselves. Or maybe there's some double-rainbow thermal-inversion yin-yang type shit, and i actually (probably don't we all) do both versions. I don't want to swing all the way from graceless self-effacement to pompous windbaggery. But yeah, somewhere in between the extremes, I think I could have a good time and do some interesting things and be, as I said in my email to that lady from that school, *of genuine service* somehow. If, you know, that's really important. "Plot" is basically logic puzzles dressed up in frosting. 030614 #steptoday - interviewed for and got offered a long term subbing assignment at Muskego High School. And that's all I'm going to say about that right now. :-) 030714 #morning you can learn a lot about survival from a morning, from a glade of adolescent maples casting slender black shadows on the snow. 030814 #morning I said Are you... Mrs. Little? cuz I knew it was but I just--it had been so long, and she said Yes, and smiled. And I said, You were so kind to me (somehow she had helped me through my adult crisis), and we hugged, and I said I just want to thank you, and she said I *am* you, and smiled In 5th grade I went to her class for reading, and I became known as the human dictionary. I read out loud, "Mono-*toe*-ny," and she said, Ah-ah, come on now, implying thoroughly and with perfect faith that she knew that I knew better, and I said, "mo*not*ony," and read on. There was no coddling and no judgment, no superstardom. Just plain old honest teaching. 030914 #morning You know what I mean? Yep. Yep, I do. He toes the dust. They stand there, like two men who do not yet know each other's properties. 031014 #morning Nervous. About to attempt the very thing I've failed profoundly at multiple times before. What to wear. Last night the repeated stings of having been distant from the kids kept me awake. Where do I go when I'm not here? Hiding from the dull terror of lone responsibility and a reckoning from a lifetime of marshmallow decisions. Scared shitless. The mouse that--- roared? #steptoday - enjoyed myself at MHS, though a bit nervous about next week when I'm left alone with some fragmented guidance and piles and binders of slightly random materials - observed, took notes - am going to take care of some business now, even though i might like to watch tv and snack instead - including going back through my notes - realized that only one thing needs to really be different this time: actually do the things on the list. I am smart and experienced and intuitive and observant enough to pretty much, enough of the time anyway, know what to put on there. Have even learned some about how to make the things do-able. So that one little switch of actually doing the things, that could make a world of difference. "Will my mind let me?" as I was ruminating last night, well, I think being somewhat calm and happy will go a long way towards giving my mind the love and momentum it needs to indeed let me. Cascades. A little changes, a lot changes. You smiled at people genuinely today. Even at the frumpy lady in the library who took your picture. You damn near flirted with her, and she clearly enjoyed it, and maybe that's normal for her, and maybe she doesn't have to know it isn't for you. There was early morning shocking sun of a sudden thaw, it was streaming in through the east windows of the high school, in your picture on your ID card it looks like you're being blasted by some kind of goofy angel light. - oh, almost forgot some of the best parts. Thought about printing and how teaching doesn't have to be much different--it's about getting the work done, not about overthinking it and having something to prove. Through ordinary, non-superhero work there are plenty of opportunities for surprising magic to precipitate out of the thunderhead in a previously mundane sky; you don't have to force it or do some kind of impressive flatulent pomposity in order to transcend. - Ydira said hello at the Y. Convo ended with sweetly awkward half hug. She has a little boy. Dad stayed in Hawaii, so she's a single parent too. Maybe we'll get some kids capoeira going with Wayne again, either way it was damn nice to talk to her. Made me feel old and young at the same time but above all kindhearted and civilized and warm. - sitting at the slow DQ waiting for a stack of cheeseburgers, Megan puts Brett Dennen on the iphone thru the stereo. A wave of foreshadowing summer washed over me and even though I'm still scared of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, for a moment everything was perfect, alive, vibrating, perfect. "Thanks for the sack of cheeseburgers!" Megan yells, and for a second that nice slow lady who's always in there looked taken aback, but then she smiled, and the clockwork of perfection ticked on. 031114 #morning snow again? my own skin touching my own skin & and an ache i can't remember never having felt #treefrog Here's a thing I'd largely been missing for the first several years: the ways it's *not* like printing are just as significant. Some things you can't get except through long experience. Some of these "things" are hard to quantify, even harder sometimes to identify, but quite easy to sense, to feel, to appreciate. It's not, for instance, necessarily the things you say but the whole energy package of your presence in the room. Okay, I would've agreed with that from day one, but then I would've either despaired of affecting it, or failed to realize you can't fake it AND you have to suffer through however long a time you just don't have it. Which in my case was (is) quite a while, but it starts to come in little speckles like darker blue on a robin's egg. Imperceptibly the speckles begin to grow together--but ONLY if you have sufficient MOTIVATION (intrinsic!!) to wait, absorb, think, blink back tears, outlast the throbbing headaches, wonder where your fucking mind is, and basically just persevere 031214 #steptoday - Though I powerfully wanted to just say FUCK IT, I read the text for seventh hour tomorrow, so I may be more calm and prepared to start doing some actual "teaching" before my guardian angel departs for Arizona. 031314 tea is good. cookies are good. I'm not terribly comfortable being gross yellowed and or fat. coffee is psychosocioculturally profound. but I can't really handle the poison element of it anymore. same with alcohol. never could really. I've always been a pussy but I'm light on my feet. #steptoday what little energy remaining was spent on driving the girls around, doing laundry, changing sheets, paying bills.... but at least I did that. had a famous-mat-style halting roda moment in 7th hour today. but as Clements suggested, I forgive myself for not being a perfect instructor. 031414 #treefrog Alienation tends to be a thing, I think, that I do to myself, or at least that I invite, rather than a thing that is just haplessly heaped on me from "outside." I FUCKING **HATE** BELLS. Not actually *bells,* but the horrible square-waved atrocities they use in schools to slice up kids' imaginations into utility-grade freeze-dried packages of premasticated pabulum. They literally make me sick for just a moment every time they pierce the cinderblock walls. I can already feel the rational engines of defense begin to rev. Preparing for failure. Protecting against the social weirdness of this profession at whose fringes I nip. Giving myself good, sound, medical reasons why it just isn't ever going to work out for me, and even if those aren't enough for you how about the fact that I just don't want to do it, really, because I'd rather be taking pictures of walls, or well wait a minute. Isn't this tirade against the self thing getting tiresome? (Didn't it get tiresome about 20 years ago but STOP you're doing it again.) Let's do this a different way. While you're here, there will be some discomfort and even pain. You will find a way to do the job well enough to get through it and get what you need out of it and give what is needed. Beyond that, if anything magical or mysterious happens, great, even if the magic is nothing more than another chalk-white arrow pointing you in another crooked line. Have faith, stay strong, don't fetishize your identity vis a vis your job, and just take the garbage out, man. Also, let go. Instead of preparing for failure by preemptive withdrawal, by fear-based foreclosure, how about just going ahead and failing? *No, not (this time) by choosing to skip homework or acting like you don't care* or whatever, but what if you just opened up to the reality of trying and failing in the roda? Again? Yes, this lesson repeats. As many times as necessary. It's easy to respond with bells and chimes when someone writes "failure is important; failure takes you places; failure is how you learn;" it's quite another thing to LET GO AND LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU. Keeps you young, though. I will say this: **Fail differently.** How's this for a byline: I'll do all kinds of stuff that no-one else wants to do, with small groups of your most cast-off and difficult people, just don't make me have to remain in charge of a regular classroom full of normal students. 031614 #steptoday Instead of doing any school work this weekend, I bought another camera. it's like there's a part of my brain that shuts off. gets so full, so packed full that it just can't remember where it is or where it was going. full of beans. nights creep up like this and I feel so alone, so vulnerable, so wretched. like there's a wall. I have a cold and part of my mind is sure I'm going to die. any time one of the girls goes to some normal, successful Muskego person's house, I come back here and I don't even have to stare at the cat-ripped leg of my thrift store reject couch and the clichéd paint peeling off the upstairs bedroom ceilings to feel like I have no future, I'm a mistake, a fraud, a betrayal to my children's trust and innocence, and it's only a matter of time before they see me for what I really am, and then — I can begin the inevitable process of growing old, dottering, losing my vocabulary, art? what art? alone. mixing my sorry things around in a feeble attempt to make them— my life— to find some combination that's presentable. "life is a shit sandwich and on a good day you get a bit more bread" as the fella said. now that I'm lying here shitepokes to Tuesday with insomnia, I'm sure I'll have a tub of energy to do a smash up job at school tomorrow, that'll be good. a small success is supposed to give momentum; I feel like mine is already damped because my brain, there's this part of my brain that just. shuts. down. or, or maybe, maybe it's that it *won't* shut down, just keeps feeding me gratuitous juice until my rollers are glazed, my carburetor is flooded, my prop is fouled, my dough is tough, my blade is caked with damp sweet grass and there's bad gas in the tank, left over from last summer. #mentor Okay, wait. Wait. Wait. Woah. Hold on a minute. Just now (014246), in the bath, reading yet another photography blog, I had a quiet flash, like a bottle rocket going off underwater. The engine that does "this" to me is a feature, not a bug. The blogger said something about how his dream digital camera would have this and that feature, and what? No zoom? No, because it's a light, carry-around camera. It wouldn't replace the DSLR, it would complement it. And then it hit me. When I'm in one of these brain-fogged, distance-from-kids-and-everybody weird funks of hyperfocused research and purchasing, I'm looking for the nonexistent complete, instant, immediate solution to everything. I'm looking for the perfect camera when there obviously isn't one. This quest will never end—but I could possibly learn to disengage from it. "You are solving the wrong problem." The hundred percent solution has never existed, and never will, and has actually a kind of chaotic evil to it; it's a kind of demon. Here's the thing: my grinding, weird, scaring-me brain, when it digs into one of these things, whatever they are, is *working on something.* It's grinding away, following internal logic like any good old computer, regardless of obsolescence or futility, calculating bit by bit to solve some deep problem—and it's most of the time doing this before I even realize the command was issued. Maybe I need to learn how to work with it, instead of hating it for doing its job. I'm an imperfect gadget with a hell of a processor. Time to see what this baby can do, instead of all the time shopping for a version of me that is the perfect solution for everything. What I'm good at? Let's learn how to really do that on purpose. Everything else? That's what other people are for. And we don't all have to have the same kind of camera, either. 031714 #morning Bracing for impact. Wish I hadn't taken this job, powerfully wish, even though I kinda "had to." Faith—it has to be a step along the way of *something.* #steptoday - hammed it up some too much shuck n jive but did manage to get respectably through my first day without KC. - did not totally abdicate to Ms H in 7th hour, did not just throw my hands up - did not freak when the two medium-big-wigs came into the room smiling all creepy the way administrators seem to like to do around here - asked for help in the copy room when Ms F offered it, instead of just mumbling and saying i was okay - listened to Ms H's suggestions respectfully at end of day, am absorbing without freaking - am remaining open to awareness of just exactly what/how much I'm aspiring to here; don't need to be a rockstar but don't need to just say fuck it either - didn't freak out when angry Kelly said this is pointless & we're not learning anything; didn't just leave it either, but found a way to address it that left me feeling pretty well balanced and dignified - still don't think regular ed is my thing, but I'm not going to use that as a high-and-mighty excuse to not try to do a good enough job for the next couple a months; going to come through this with some self-respect and a hard nugget i can have in my inventory for whenever i might need it - got the girls to swimming and back and to bed without losing my temper or poise very much, even though i have this sinus thing going on - actually did some homework at the Y, and am about to do a little bit more before I fuck off for the night 031914 kinda feel like I may never be fully normal. or have a future. or provide for the girls. or refrain from pissing away my money every time I look at the naked face of the world and find it intimidating. if I had even half the money I've spent over the years on toys for suckers, I'd l probably have the beginnings of a retirement account. I need help. more help. I need oversight. I need will power. I need structure. I need a blueprint. 032014 #morning seems like PERSPECTIVE is the word of the day. I can't fix everytinng all at once, so I throw up my hands and fix nothing, because in those funky moments, the small bits and pieces seem so meaningless, futile. The full stop. The difficulty seeing the bigger picture. Those articles said that about ADD. Does it matter whether that's a thing or not? 032114 a loud noise in the middle of the night can turn stiff hands into old age the heart pumps gasoline the faces of the valid sneer confidently in the darkness you eat your faults and try to sleep again before the morning eats you 032314 what am i avoiding? the morning, the sense of no place to go but into that damned classroom, not having a solid plan (again), not wanting to stay up late and solidify one because i want to do anything but stand up there and be gazed at by all those young hot judgmental eyes haven't graded papers making deals with myself at least look at your notes sinking feeling in the roof of my gut would rather just fuck around with pictures and half poems but really? why? what am i avoiding? time to be quiet Okay so I glanced at my notes (amazing how much such a small thing can do), and I remembered something. I can stop trying to force the actuation of my self-expected credentials, and just concentrate on responding as a reader, a human being, and someone who is willing to help. So I can play little games with the stuff at hand—like, make the three most important comments on each paper, and then move on*—rather than avoid the whole stack because it's impossible to correct every error without going crazy with futility and boredom and I would hate myself for failing to *fix* their whole writing, who can do that, it's an impossible expectation, or no maybe it's just that I'm a failure—you see how it works? So instead, I get crucial about what game I can play that will be do-able, maybe even fun, and still be helpful, and I can be open to tweaking it (and forgiving myself) as experience and new information arises, and then if that's not good enough then fuck it, embrace failure, don't get invited back, and find a different gig. This is the next stage of the thing that had its quiet profound start the day I didn't totally freak about that one young teacher lady's bad feedback on AESOP. It's also the next stage of my solidity, my *adulthood* (better late than never). *aka, "cheating with integrity."