I usually figure out happiness when it's too late

ok, so i figured out exactly what to do to make myself happy this weekend but i figured it out too late. the weekend's over and i have to wake up at an unspeakable hour tomorrow. yet, here i am at a littl epast 9pm and i've figured it all out. laying in bed, my good woman is at work for the next few hours, i am reading michio kaku's so-far-quite-awesome book "physics of the impossible" and i am trying to get ideas on how to make my lesson plan fascinating for my students tomorrow. i am well fed and watered and my cats wander and sleep around me. this is the best it gets. it sounds sad when i write it but i dont mean it that way, it's awesome, really. but i do realize that it is a fleeting moment and that's the irony of knowing its too late when you figure it out. see, happiness is not a static thing, it must be developed or worked towards or even stumbled upon but it cannot be kept willfully.

ok, well, it made more sense when i conceptualized it than when i tried to write it.

Maybe I do like my job

well, friday i was complaining and whining about kids who read on 5th grade levels but are 16, the idiocy of trying to convince a kid to give a shit about a h.s. diploma when he's 17 and got 0.5 credits but i can't give him GED coursework cause TEA won't allow their AISD teachers, i.e. me, to even talk about the damn GED. i was complaining about not really teaching but rather facilitating as my students rampaged through their textbooks, neither paying attention nor accepting guidance. i was complaining too much.

so then i go work as a waiter in the evening as i do sometimes. i see this guy who drives a cab and comes in sort of frequently. he's a real chatterbox normally, tries to be very clever and is well read and intelligent enough to pull it off in a rapid-fire way when i chat him up. today he doesn't look so good though, so i go up to his table and ask why. long story short: his parents were hit by a cop on his way to a call up in PA and his dad died instantly and his mom is wasting away in hospital, hospice says she has a few months. some girl who he thought he had a chance with confirmed that he unfortunately did not, confirming what he phrased as proof that "no one actually cares." what do you say to that shit? anyway, i get him a scoop of ice cream with a candle in it...hey, i'm waiting tables remember, my options are limited. i bring it to the table lit so he can make a wish and maybe be a little positive or something, hell maybe it was so he could bail me out. anyway, no go. the candle sits there, flames beggin to be blown out while he tells me that he can't sleep lately, when he eats everything comes out the other end like a fire hose, and he hopes this birthday coming up will be his last.

the paper this morning informs me that the jobless rate is 9.8% and something like 250,000 jobs were eliminated last month. the extended unemployment benefits that are keeping a lot of folks afloat are set to run out by the end of this year. the COBRA discount passed by congress is also set to run out by the end of this year too.

so, maybe i do like my job.

Maybe I could be a Somali pirate?

Hmm, today was definitely a "Why do you keep talking" day. In fact, they said that...a few times. That, and other wonderfully edifying statements all designed to make me go away. It's a wonder why anyone teaches at all. How many times would you drag a donkey uphill before you just leave him behind? Damn, I started this blog to make myself stay positive, to say things in such a way that I would appreciate the little things that do make the job satisfying. I did have sort of moment of clarity amidst the drunken miasma that was my afternoon class today...I was trying to make a point about Jared Diamond's theory on geographic determinism--I friggin love that book, Guns, Germs, and Steel--and stressing the association between domesticated animals and skilled workers in the society. Anyway, there were several side-conversations goin on: one group was talking in spanish, who knows what they were saying but it seemed to have their attention, another group was having a competition to see who could draw the state of Texas the most times while going over football memories--pre-probation and daily drug use apparently, a couple more had their heads down, obviously lost in thought about Diamond's theory. But, as the thought-smoke cleared and I gathered myself together to finish my point, I looked out into the battlefield and discovered 3 sets of eyes on me, inquisitive and thoughtful eyes! I heard the others less and less, inane chatter fading like the effect of my coffee this late in the day. Those 3 kiddos saved me.

I should've been a lawyer

Yes, I should've been a lawyer. I could have hung my shingle out in front of one of those cool little bungalows off of 1st or Congress, or maybe even one of those hilly neighborhoods between 6th and 12th streets downtown. I could've been a professional, dealing with adults on a daily basis, wowing judges and juries alike with my mental prowess and legal acumen. At the end of my lawyer-day, I'd come home to my lovely wife and recount the day's successes, relishing the victories to come based on the groundwork I'd laid that day; legal precedents discovered and such.

But, instead I am a teacher. I decided I would shape the lives of America's youth into the kind of person we all wanted to be. Of course they would lay before me, eager to be molded, offering their yet unformed personalities up to me as a pilgrim offers bread, willingly, no, literally begging me to impart what I had gleened from all my days on this rock.

The only truth is that I am a teacher. Nothing went as it should've. I wonder aloud at least once a week if I have any idea what I am doing, or if I should continue to do it even one more day. Of course every day I get suggestions from the kids, honest and forthright as they are: "Why do you keep talking to us," they say, or, and I do savor these moments more than I can communicate to them, "You're my favorite teacher, you make school fun." Some days the first kid's right, some days it's the second kid.