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I’ve long said that growing old—nay–growing up means falling into mind numbing routines that singe out any and all creativity in ones life. I’ve found my way out of so many routines that I failed to recognize the fallacy of my words. It isn’t the routine that makes us old or even the adherence to the routine. Instead age—nay—life is a psychological construct that we as individuals need to chase our own moments of joy within.

I’ve heard the suggestion that death is like falling asleep. You give into it and recognize that everything is going to be okay. Routine is the same. Fighting it will only raise your stress and gray your hair. So let the routine happen and flower within that routine. It isn’t quite a magic bullet (they don’t exist unless you count hard work as a magic bullet) but it is a mental framework that may serve to reduce the stress of a given situation. I apply it to writing all the time. Sometimes I won’t be able to do the thing I want. I need to shelve it and come back to it when the situation allows. Fighting reality doesn’t work.

Some Thoughts:

1. My son’s preschool is a nice and happy environment, but the boy has forgotten everything about reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic he knew. He knew a lot. Now he doesn’t even know letter sounds. Looks like there is a great deal of re-teaching we need to start doing immediately. 

I’m writing this in a MS Word doc on a mac—two things that are compatible by financial necessity—only to hopefully upload it later to the net where it will be cut and pasted into an HTML page that is currently inoperable. My hosting and domain company, IXwebhosting, was unable to inform me of the pending expiration of my domain. So, it expired and I was forced to login to the host and repair the damage. It may take a while to clear things up, so you may be reading this post at some later date.

 

I want to say that I am tired. Part of me wants to complain about it, and part of me is really proud of the fatigue. I don’t get tired from doing nothing. I get tired from working my butt off and challenging the boundaries of my mind. All that has been happening, and I am struggling to fight back this avalanche of work and stalled weight loss regime.

 

This too shall pass, said Fitzgerald (as he quoted and paraphrased biblical verse). I’m not at the point of falling into regular spurts of verse, but I do believe I am fumbling towards a happy place. The writing is going slowly but well. I am establishing long term priorities to work with the short term ones. I also have a plan to get to where I want to be as a writer—though the being a better father plan is less developed.

 

Though the year is young, so much has happened to make me feel happy and to challenge me. What better way to close a Thursday night than remembering and reflecting on all that.

The Internet just collapsed. It could be the first shot in the second Korean War, but I doubt it. In fact, CNN is still running repeats of Piers Morgan’s conversation with one of the Reagan kids. I think the interview might be the most telling symbol of American culture I’ve encountered all day. See, Reagan is a representative of a dying breed of American. The old boy GOP is littered with close-minded individuals who wish to push forward their own biblical sense of morality and law as governmental policy.

 

The term we use these days is conservative, but I think even that belies a truth we are unwilling to face. In fact this country was founded by people who wanted to be progressive (for the wealthy at least to remain wealthy) and conservatism was about sticking to the language of that close to the vest political policy. Today’s conservatives are more concerned about defending their own perceptions than anything else. The gay marriage debate is a wonderful example of this. The line most conservatives are towing is. “this ought to be called something other than marriage, because it demeans the name of what we have proclaimed under God.”

It is easy to rip into that argument. Lets begin with marriage being a legal construct. If the laws of the nation are to be secular, we must not make them with ‘what God intended’ in mind. Secularism is a way of determining law in the absence of religion as opposed to a tool to reinforce it.

This post might be more about my expectations than any real shifting of national symbology. That being said, I cringe a bit when I see an inked up dude driving a mini van. These are two things that should exist in opposite spaces. The ink is representative of an oft dark counter-culture born in the shadow of three American wars. The Minivan is a symbol of modern parenthood and meant to be separate from anything ganger-esque.

Yet here they are together. I am left to wonder what this confluence can teach us about the American Soup.

I’ve been thinking about some interesting commercial ideas as a way to jump start my creativity. My favorite so far is the Febreeze Zombies commercial. In this one people are led into a room where they smell nothing but Febreeze and when the blindfolds are removed they discover they are in a space filled with rotting flesh! Yeah, I watch a lot of zombie stuff on TV.

Making up fake commercials in my head is a fun trip, but the other way i’ve been staying creatively active is by designing schoolwork that is both relevant to my students and cool enough to capture their attention. This next unit is all about Hurricanes. While it might not seem like a relevant topic for Arizonan’s it is. We are indirectly affected by Hurricanes as a result of the increased rainfall in surrounding regions. Moreover, the state is struck by a tropical depression or storm every three years.

When I talk to students about writing I ask them how they plan to sell what they want to say to the audience. I ask them what is at stake for the reader. When it comes to hurricanes, this is a tough issue to sell, but once they hear the facts, it will change their outlook.

Some Thoughts:

1. Had the law officials in Texas been murdered by a drug cartel, it would be blasted all over the paper. Because so little information has been revealed about the killers, I can promise it was white shooters and perhaps even a group like the Aryan Nation. See, they don’t fit the salable news story, so the story is going to focus more on how these folks were able to be killed vs. who killed them. Now, once people begin to figure this out the story will shift to angst about the Supremecists and a great deal of marginalization, but until then this is being set up as a mystery when it really is not.

 

I think people like period pieces for the same reason people like reality TV. It is a more acceptable form of social escapism, especially the deeper and more historically accurately you go.

Consider the following critically acclaimed shows: Mad Men and Dowton Abbey. Now consider these less acclaimed counterparts: Honey Boo Boo and <Insert any Kardashian show>. Each of the four exist to tell us about a segment of social life. Some are built around the upper class and the constricting mores and folkways of the upper crust. Some drift the opposite direction, lending themselves to the baser side of life and the trainwreck that is a particular segment of the American population.

Just as alcohol is preferable to cocaine and coke is preferable to meth, so lies the type of shows we watch. Social escapism is the destination, and though the paths to get there are divergent, the destination is the same.

My brain is drained.

I’m watching the sequel to 30 Days of Night. Kiele Sanchez strikes the right tone as Stella Oleson, survivor of the Barrow, Alaska massacre. The show is not, however, creative. It served as another unpleasant reminder of the death of my own creativity. Fortunately I am a Lazarus believer. All I need to do is uncover my own literary Jesus and find a way to rise again. Yep, Easter pun.

The plot centers around Stella, wife of the original star, who has moved to LA to tell of the horrors that happened in Barrow. Nobody believes her. Nobody is willing to accept that Vampires walk the earth. Nobody except a band of Vampire hunters led by a Vamp (No homage to Blade here…). What follows is your standard vampire stuff, with a rag-tag band of humans doing what cannot be done. The black guy dies first, the sassy tough chick turns into a sniveling wretch the instant it gets tough. Like I said, Kiele makes it worthwhile with her ‘tude alone.

So, it did get me thinking about my own creativity and the sad fact that I have been lingering on a set of three short stories that i was really worked up about being successful in and now it feels like I have fallen short of what I wanted. Maybe the trick is to go into it trying to say something and trying to enjoy yourself. That’s what the 30 days folk shoulda done.

Spent the night out with friends, and thusly spent the last ten minus floating in and out of consciousneess. Better Post timorrow.

There is some method to my madness. In all the years of schooling and the handful of classes of training I came to the realization that the classroom environment is all about trust and communication. My job is as much to facilitate this environment as it is to provide meaningful and relevant content to the students who walk into the environment. There needs to be a balance between these two facets of education. WIthout content there can be no learning, but without the core human needs addressed, learning also is thwarted.

What does that space look like? Right now I’m listening to the Sublime Pandora station while my students are putting the finishing touches on a zombie survival plan project. The work is collaborative and integrates all aspects of the writing process. In fact, the posters each group are creating serve as outlines for the presentation they’ll give later today on their survival plans. The goal is to teach the process, but the goal is also to see the groups working together and to analyze how that process works for them. The first paper has similar purpose. They are studying their group members and explaining how everyone can and will work together as a group.

The situation gets more intense as we move forward into more complex group projects and  involved in course content. The balance creates an environment ripe for learning.

Tough writing night. I’ve been dealing with the spectre of deadlines and now I find myself straining to complete a story and write a blogpost. I don’t have the mental energy to do it all this evening, so I’m going to wind up letting someone down. It is a tough deal to write, work, have 3 kids, and try to maintain a relationship–all while being in a neverending struggle to make ends meet. I’m overstressed and I don’t see an end to that in sight.

It doesn’t help matters that I’ve apparently wandered into tough territory with a friend–perhaps to the point where that friendship is now merely a familiar work relationship. I cannot say exactly what I did, but I must’ve done something to break the system there. So, I need to figure out what that is and set it right. Its funny how things ultimately boil down to the confidence to make yourself vulnerable to another human being.