Modus Operandi

Thoughts on 2007:
I wanted to have a blog.
I feared having a blog.
I thought a blog would become a chore I would avoid.
I am successful at self-fulfilling prophecies.
Since this is the only entry for December so far, and I have merely 2 days remaining, I detect a need to catch up on my life. Determined not to use this as some casual diary, I hesitate to list 2007's happenings with resulting feelings. I think I will instead concentrate on one recent occurrence: I resigned my position at a community college.
Quitting has been my modus operandi for much of my life. Chidlhood was less than ideal in the details although above average in the aggregate. In other words, someone viewing from a safe distance would have seen an okay family of comfortable means with two bright children. Purposefully myopic glimpses would have yielded none of the damaging pathology, but I digress. Baggage from childhood and several interstate moves while an adult have made me adept at leaving--before someone or some project leaves me. I have been trying for years to change that pattern, so quitting my job was anything but frivolous. And now that I consider it, I wonder if the job had really not been quitting me over time. I came to teaching at the college level eager and willing to contribute to committees and such. The 22-30 hours per week tutoring gig was an opportunity to work with a great variety of students. So I taught part time, served in small ways, tutored, and learned. Life at a community college all comes down to this: there are good and bad in every group from students to faculty to administration. Additionally, the truly bad, be they lazy or ignorant or too self-centered to see any other world view, comprise a small percentage of the population of any group. Only when that small percentage bullies the rest of some group into believing they, the shortsighted, have control does life become unbearable.

The Plague and Other Annoyances

Whatever this uber-bug may be that some of us are passing to one another, one of the tutors at work--Josh--referred to it as the plague. I believe he has hit on something here. 'Tis so much nastier that the "common" cold and super-bug is already overused. So why not hearken back to terms of olde like the plague?
Why not? I'll tell you why not. . . because we won't be havin' any o' those wasted letters like the "e" at the end of olde. That's just too damned medieval elitist.
Now that I think about it, the word "olde" is not so elitist. It's more the Walmart version of elitist, isn't it? You know, you can't afford the real thing so you buy the cheap, mass produced item. A quick google gave me too many golf course links (no pun intended) including the word "olde," along with American shoppes and B&Bs trying to be British, I would guess.
Can you tell I have ingested way too much cold medication of various sorts? No longer running on empty, I am buzzed an an assortment of drugs ending in drine. My brain has become its own small scale, portable meth lab.
I think I will randomly telephone some friend to spread the confusion. Toodles.

Europe

Green is supposed to be soothing, isn't it? I could use some of that. Has anyone ever considered the categorization of European travelers by their relating of sites visited? I have encountered the following three groups so far: the tourists who tick off the familiar cities, regions, and sites already seen or on the agenda for an upcoming tour (either guided or semi-self-propelled), the visitors who may comment on food and currency exchange as they list the castles and shoppes they have haunted, and the travelers who mention sometimes obscure towns with opera performances or history rich ruins or childhood homes where someday-to-be-famous writers met their muses. I want to belong to that last club and travel for a year or more like some of my peers said they might back in our college days. I would be content to limit my wandering to a country or two. A year in the British Isles, hmmm. Could I pull it off?

To Teach

Some rewards do come from teaching college. This week I learned about emo from an essay by one of my students, and later a student tutor demonstrated google documents for me. I feel so young and with it. At a regular job I might have fumbled along without this knowledge. Think of the lack of conversation fodder at cocktail parties. There may be meager compensation, and as an adjunct, I may not garner respect nor be acknowledged. At least I get to approach cool. I think I'll go listen to some Weezer, put on my studded belt buckled in the back, and allow a collaborator or two into the nefarious plan I stored in the great ether I imagine google documents to be. (It's probably less romantic--an abandoned fridge sans door with tapes carelessly tossed on to the rusted shelves.)

Two Google employees

head for a newly arrived

storage unit. Note cool

attire and attitude.

So, Like Wow

I have been taking an additional medication for a few months. I am not going to make this a confessional about the meds I have experienced along the way in an effort to "stabilize" my life. However, this new ingredient in the cocktail has implications I am attempting to accept. The stuff is called provigil and its original purpose and claim to fame is as an antidote to narcolepsy. Supposedly, the person who ingests provigil is able to remain alert, purposefully and appropriately grab a twenty minute cat nap, and then awaken again alert. Two different medical professionals claimed it is used by military who might at any time be engaged in battle. They may go for days without the opportunity for long stretches of sleep, so short naps and return to alertness make sense. I wondered if the same pharmaceutical rep had given the same spiel to both doctors. More recently, the medication has been approves for other uses.
Whatever the medical explanation may be, I believe provigil has made me more aware. Now I am left with all this damned awareness. It is similar to when I finally admitted to myself that I was an incest survivor. Oh swell. Now I have this yummy information. Don't I feel better? No.
This time I am becoming aware of things around me and inside of me that I don't like so much. So, deal with it. Right?

Fear of Writing

Maybe it is more a fear of life in general. It's difficult to determine. I have flirted with writing in this blog again for several days but was afraid to actually follow through with any writing. I don't know if I feel guilty for not having visited for so long. I really did not want to be tied in that way to a blog, having one more thing I would feel guilty about not doing any particular day. So much for my whining.
My life is typically messy. I have a family and a neighborhood and friends and church and work, so of course life would be messy if I am paying attention at all. Sometimes I just pay such close attention that I wake up one day and realize that craziness is reigning. Then there is the crawling back. In the Bill Murray movie What About Bob? the Richard Dreyfus character talks about baby steps to mental health. He publishes a self-help book about the concept. I personally think baby steps are a leap (forgive the mixing of metaphors). Crawling makes more sense to me. That action better expresses the weights that keep me from standing. I'm not envisioning a baby crawling but an adult in one of those Renaissance paintings of a classical figure pulling himself up out of the abyss. Cheery, huh? So I am crawling back once again, and posting to the blog has to be a positive component.
Work sucks. Not being listened to sucks. Being powerless sucks.

Honesty

So why is honesty the best policy? There is always the moral consideration, but I vote for simplicity. Keeping track of lies wears out the liar. Some may view lying as a challenging game, but the stakes get higher and higher, and I do not relish the possible embarrassment. As a teacher, I would find a few truthful explanations so refreshing instead of the tired, old and often lame excuses. Even originality does not impress me when I consider what the lie is doing to the person making up the excuse. I remember fondly a game show called Truth or Consequences, not so much for the format as for the title. It might be fun to live by that motto.