OK, I've figured it out folks (he said, again, making his buddy laugh as the train's high pitched whine was the highlights to its distant-thunder shadows). Here's why it's worth being a teacher, even a kind of shitty one, and why it's worth not succumbing to the luxury of going ALL THE WAY, EITHER-OR-THINKING into adopting the identity of being so shitty at it that I can't do it and should just crumple up in a heap and try to get people to pity me and my tortured self instead: Because it makes your pictures interesting. See what I'm say'n? Like, I'm kind of a shitty parent too, but I'm not going to crumple up in a heap about that, because I have a deep sense of NEED around it. I don't FEEL (for whatever reason; society, genetics?) like I have the OPTION of crumpling up in a heap, so I just do the best I can, or at least close enough to the best to get by, and occasionally I do even better than that. And the payoff? I go back and look through my pictures, and the ones that are just of "things" or "landscapes" or artsy macro bullshit—they're not totally depressing, but they would be if they were all I had. They're kind of fun and amusing *because they exist in the warm glow of the pictures of my kids.* It's the people pictures that really drive me, folks. Those are the ones with max magic. I knew it when *I* was a kid, though I resisted knowing it because I could sense that knowing things like that was going to make it really difficult to maintain my safe distance of disdain for my fellow stupid monkeys. I knew if I gave in to liking people, and loving them, and admitting that I wanted to take pictures of them, that I was going to have to risk looking like a stupid monkey myself. Turns out, it's worth it. OK, so being a teacher—it's hard like being a parent is hard. It's actually harder because I don't have as ready or built-in a sense of that NEED about it. But if I can cultivate one, it can be a way to generate some of that magic—even after my kids grow up and aren't there all the time for me to take pictures of. Cause did you ever think about that? What are you going to take pictures of after they move out? I thought of that the other day, and it made me think. (2015)