Life Navigation

I work with college students. I hope they come to me with a desire to learn and some kind of work ethic that Is reflective of their purpose for being in college.

I hope that they understand that my role is mainly that of facilitator. I am not their disciplinarian or their monitor. Many of the course requirements are not monitored by me, but they are requirements to get the most from the class and make the most progress.

I do not think they realize that they have their own time. Maybe they are so used to having their time managed by people in authority that they use their time to do the things they have to do. They maybe don't understand that they should always use their time doing what they want to do.

Wants are a big thing to understand and maybe that develops over time. There are long range wants which are really the guiding principles one uses to navigate life, which are learned and developed through trial and error. This is maybe part of what college is about, a sandbox for life navigation.

Finisher

I am a finisher. I start things, in my own good time, and finish them when I am able. I start things solely to have the experience of completing them. This is different, I think, than to start things in order to finish them quicker or better than others. I think it is fine to do things quicker or better than others, if that's what you're into, I guess. It's not for me though. I think I am not alone and there's a lot of us out there, people who do not find satisfaction or validation in comparing themselves with others. Of course for us, the fact that there are others like us is not relevant really, as we do not need external validation, but maybe you competitors out there who don't understand us will feel better.
I think it's hard for people to understand, if they are the competitive sort, what the point of doing difficult things just to do them would be. I also think that a lot of the competitors were just told that the way to evaluate themselves is to measure against others, and that they might actually really dig doing things for the experience of doing them.
I like to set goals that blow my mind a little bit, to do things I never believed I could do. Thanks to the plethora of voices, whispering, shouting, and some just passing notes or giving dirty looks, I entered adulthood with a rather narrow idea of what my options were in life and what I could accomplish. I wasn't raised to beat the standard, but to meet it, and it turns out that the standards set had very little to do with who I was and what my possibilities were or are.
I did not give up on my doctorate because there was so much telling me that it was beyond my reach. I didn't have to be the one with the most publications or job offers at graduation, I just had to graduate. It was so super hard, but I persisted. That mattered more than anything.
Recently I ran an 8 mile race up Lewiston Hill, which is Lewiston Mountain if you are running up it. I did it because I live in Lewiston and I see that Hill all the time, like most of the time my eyes are open. It is inconceivable that anyone would run up it. I knew if I did, the Hill would be a source of inspiration to me on my bad days, and a source of affirmation on my good ones. My race was to finish, which I did. It sucked. I will never do it again.
What would have really sucked would have been to have given up and to have never done it.

Poor Portia does not seem to care a bit.

My bunny Portia had a still born baby bunny today. I think it's so sad, but Portia seems fine. I feel sad like when a person looses a baby, but I don't connect to Portia like a person. I feel that she is a rabbit.
She is a small brown bunny, shy and skittish, a 4-H reject. According to the person I got her from, the bunnies of a single color are not a very popular 4-H choice and most pick the multi colored ones. I do not see Portia as a single color, she is brown with lovely darker brown lowlights and a lighter brown undercoat. She's a tiny lop, but sometimes she holds her ears out sideways and she looks like an airplane.
So she does not seem to care one tiny bit about the lost baby, she is very excited about the ears of fresh corn I put next to her food bowl. She doesn't seem to know that she could have had a little baby friend, and I guess that's better. I would hate to think that she is missing a baby that never really was, and longing after possibilities and hopes. I wouldn't know how to console her, as I do not speak rabbit.
People feel sad when they loose babies, they miss their babies, even if the babies grow up, they sometimes have to mourn what they hoped that the babies could have been. Sometimes the babies turn out very badly, and they just have to be accepted for what they are. Not all people are fountains of joy. Some are duds. Sometimes the babies are a dream come true and a total delight, and even those babies might get lost. You just never know what's going to happen.
Good thing for Portia, she really doesn't care.

Crab and Chocolate.

A chronicle of events is the shallow thinkers response. A reflection, a snapshot with words, the finding of significance in the mundane, well that is perhaps the hallmark of the (somewhat) motivated individual.
 I currently feel hungry. This is a universal experience that everyone can connect to. Might hunger be a metaphor for something else? Might it be symbolic of my lack of connectedness to the universal experience of my fellow humans?
Might it be the result of the four hours that have transpired since lunchtime?

There are so many things in life that are pleasant. Hunger is not one of them. I find it intolerable. As entertaining as the grumblings of my stomach are, and they are pretty durn funny, they don't make up for the overall unpleasantness. I get all drooly, I can't concentrate, and I find no nobility in the notion of depriving myself of food.  So I feel that when one is hungry one should eat, unless it is too close to dinner time and eating would diminish the full impact of the pending culinary experience. This of course only applies when someone has actually taken the time to prepare an actual meal, meant to be enjoyed. If you have nothing but crap food in your immediate future, feel free to snack at will.

I think it's amazing that I have so many choices of what to eat. It's quite luxurious. Two fourth of Julys ago I made barbeque and I purchased a fifteen-pound shoulder roast of pig. I just loved it so much, looking at that roast in my fridge, just loving the obscene good fortune of all that pork. This morning I had scrambled eggs, which were like little puffs of ovo cloud, and a quarter of a pound of bacon for breakfast. Not only was it delicious, I reveled in the perfect balance of wholesomeness and depravity as I reflected on the ironic nature of the meal itself. The continual renewal of life juxtaposed with preservation after death which together most likely sustained me as it clogged and hardened my arteries. What a delight to have such thoughts, to experience each morsel as a culmination of flavor and future, things forgotten, remembered, and foreboding.

Later, my husband read me something from the paper about people purchasing crab legs and candy bars with their SNAP benefits. Apparently this is a Big Deal to some people, evidence of the rampant abuse of public assistance that breeds laziness and favors entitlement over hard work. Oh fuck that, say I. If you are in a place where you would begrudge someone some delicious buttery crab and a Snickers, you have your own things to re assess. I say seafood and chocolate for all of humanity, regardless of ability to pay. I look forward to seeing the butter drip down the chins of humankind.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Welcome back to school all my students. Let's enjoy this wonderful ride called Fall 2013 together. I love my job, it's my dream. I don't now remember how old I was when I decided that what I wanted to do for my job was what I would be doing all day if I didn't have to work and I was left totally alone with no pressure to do anything other than what I felt like doing. So here I am. It's so awesome.
I realize that I am not everybody's flavor, so I apologize to those of you that find my means and ends unpalatable. Perhaps you can see me as someone who is conscientiously struggling to live an authentic life, at least. I offer myself as a role model in that regard.
My brain is shot, I have to clean my bunny cage, I am drinking a rock star, I haven't exercised today, I feel like a bloated blob, I want a nap. I've been eating way too much lately. I'm tired for most of the day. This adjustment back to school, totally new schedule, really kicks my ass. It is curious that I do not recall the adjustment to summer living being so taxing.
I am going to super focus on my internal sensations to guide me through this. When I get stressed in any way I go full on external, grasping outside of myself for anything soothing. It's not like the stress is always unhappy stress. Back to school stress is great, happy stress and I am happy to have it. My reaction doesn't vary much, happy or sad when I am stressed I am usually shoving something down my gullet which leads to me feeling very uncomfortable. So maybe I need to focus on paying attention to the internals. Maybe I am full, tired, thirsty, confused, etc.

The Ultimate Safety Net

I am super fascinated with prison documentaries. Something about how a human mind can exist under those circumstances all those days in a row, one to the next, busy with living and either denying or facing your crime. I've seen a bunch of those episodes where a predator of some sort meets face to face with the person they hurt so badly or the family of that person. I always thought it was so selfish for the criminal to ask for forgiveness from the person they wronged, and never quite understood where the victim's head was at. I always figured they were just so fucking shot out by the devastation left in the wake of the crime that they just grasped on to any possibility of making sense if it like grabbing on to a life raft. Often, the victim would offer the predator forgiveness. I always figured that to be bullshit wishful thinking toward the impossible.

Sometimes you find that you have the opportunity for vengeance when someone has done you wrong. Sometimes you think about it for years and cry and yell and scream trying to make sense of the wrong that was done to you. You lean on friends and all the love that's been given you sometimes collects. All the compassion that's been shown to you over the years hasn't been worn away by all the judgement and it actually collects. Suddenly you are face to face with your eye for an eye, and like a hippie, your heart sticks a daisy in the barrel of that rifle and you forgive.

You forgive and you become as big and open as anything ever was. You forgive and you feel so solid and so strong when you say, "You don't scare me anymore, even though I still have nightmares. The worst thing you could ever do to me you've already done, and you know what, I'm here, and my life is beautiful. We're good."

Which makes me think of the Pope, who kindly suggested recently that being good to each other is the ultimate safely net and all the great revolutionaries such as Jesus, who showed us through how they lived that the way to freedom is through kindness. They forgave the people who abused them, and then kicked some ass, and had compassion to spare.

Every smile matters, it turns out. Every time you hold open a door for someone, or stop to pet a dog, all those times you smile at the person who got assigned the seat next to you in the totally sold out airplane, it all collects, all the judgment and meanness in the world can't wear it out, and it makes warriors out of victims.

Effort and Ease

On my continued quest to remain sort of focused on one theme, or whatever, guiding principle this semester, I have been thinking about this-Who would I want to say thanks to, like hey, you contributed this thing to my life I found really useful, just wanted to give you props.
So I am jogging this morning on the river trail (awesome) because I chose to go there because I am doing intervals  on Wednesdays (not awesome) so I figure I would have a treat and actually drive (not awesome) somewhere nice to run (awesome). Well the thing is on this particular section of the trail (and I will so totally blame YOU Clarkston, Washington!) there are not only a lot of squirrels, but these fuckers are demanding. It's like running a gauntlet of nasty vermin fuzzy tailed pan handlers. There is a misguided underground movement over there (I have spied the members, and they were not wearing even synchronized t shirts or badges of any sort-totally dressed as civilians) of People Who Feed Squirrels. Maybe someone once told them that squirrels were cute and they believed it. It starts with this and ends up with a nation of millions dressed in matching pajamas or whatever. Watch. The point is I freaking hate squirrels and I do not appreciate them approaching me with the expectation that I will toss them food, or spare change, or whatever. They are rats with fuzzy tails who would just as soon eat their way through the walls of your house to use your clothing as nesting materials as they procreate in your crawlspace and eat your food at will. They have no regard for your hard earned money or personal space. They are evil conniving parasites.
Anyway, because of this, I realized that there are some people who I really would not want to spend time with (hate) who I would include on my shout out list.

Do as I do?

I like the preachers who make me feel like they're in it with me. Not the ones who are like priests, i feel like they are looking down on me and it makes me feel like shit and that I am never going to get anywhere or be good or redeemed in any way because I am shit, essentially. The preachers who connect the Bible to their struggles, failures and successes, they encourage me, give me hope. I get the feeling like I have a task to work on when the sermons over, and that task is entirely doable.
So I like a preacher that's like a good teacher, or is like the teacher I strive to be. Let's cut the shenanigans my people, as a teacher I have more knowledge in my bucket, more training on how to seek and evaluate knowledge, but I go through the same processes you do to learn. So let's help each other out, I say. Let's recognize that we are in it together.
So I am back on the blog as I am so lucky to have a new crop of students with this assignment every semester and it forces me to try again to get on track, to do as I do and not as I say. I set the timer for ten minutes this morning, burning to get to the computer and type away, even though I have a frantic amount of stuff to do and if I don't get it done, I will appear to my students and colleagues as "disorganized" and "scatterbrained." Whateves, I say to that, if you can't take a step back and see the gestalt of my organizational scheme, and recognize that my seeming lack of attention is actually a hyper-attention, well to you I say whateves.
So I start again, I think this semester I am going to focus on a single topic: Notes to those who I want to thank before I die. So maybe that will lead to some cool stories and maybe I will change my topic if I get a flow that takes me elsewhere.
With that I have 22 seconds left and I have to make copies and whatnot. But the goal of my scribbling, or an added goal of my scribbling in my notebook will be this topic.