Conception of a Failure

I have not blogged in some time. Sometimes emotions are so strong that they are difficult to express. So much has happened since I last blogged.

I did not get a job I was expecting to get. This put me in a bad place emotionally. I conceived of myself as a total failure. I have failed to contribute monetarily to my family. I am a drain on our limited resources. I questioned my worth to my family and my own self-worth.

Then I went to Wyoming.

Ostensibly, I was there to dig a dinosaur. A triceratops, to be exact. And I did that. But I also was there for another reason. I thought I was gaining a temporary reprieve from my problems, from what I perceived to be my failures.

That wasn't necessarily the case.

When we arrived, the country was wide open. At first glance there was no where to hide. No trees. Little vegetation at all. But in truth, there were a lot of little arroyos and washes, dips and canyons. But there was no where to hide from the sky.

I did a bad thing.

From Tuesday to Friday, I shut down all communication with anyone who was not with us at the dig. This was not fair to my wife and kids. I tried to lose myself in the work. Instead, the work inspired me to more deeply consider my position. Under that big sky, in the glaring sun and the punishing wind, I had some realizations.

1)While I had control of my actions that resulted in my current state, I did not have the final say so. I can't say if I was treated fairly or unfairly, but the honest truth was I did the best I could. In the end, the decisions belonged to someone else. That applied to both the non-renewal of my contract and my inability to gain a new position. Put it behind me.

2) All of my emotional energy and efforts the past two years have gone into getting a teaching position in public schools. Public schools did not treat me well as a student, and while I have changed a lot since those days, I am not sure why I expected the secondary educational system to have changed enough to accommodate me as an adult. I hoped to work within the system to make it friendlier for students such as I had been. There is always resistance to change.

3) While I had been mostly happy as a teacher, the last two years have been an emotional hell. It's not worth it. If someone offered me a teaching job tomorrow, I would take it, but after having expended so much effort, I think it is time to look in other directions.

4) I can be happy doing other things. It is time to explore those avenues. I met two gentlemen in Wyoming who have achieved their happiness outside the system. One gentleman hunts fossils and plays poker for a living. The other is a ski instructor and an ESPN camerman in the winter for college sports in Montana and hunts fossils in the summer. They aren't just making a living. They are living. While I have a family to think about, my wife has an income that will keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. I have some interests I can pursue that will make me happy: assisting in exploring the geology of our karst region. Teaching as an adjunct at the college level. Writing. And other opportunities may present themselves. I must remain open to them. I have been focused so hard on the idea that I have failed a teacher that I have failed as a human being.

5) I can be a better husband and father. My emotional state has had me very wrapped up in myself. I can extend myself more. I have an opportunity to spend more time with my kids, to do more for my wife. I can't tie my self-worth to situations I have little control over. But I can be a better father and husband.

That One Line

I was reading Infinite Jest today. This was a book suggested to me by a friend. I have heard it said that if you want to look hip, trendy, and intellectual, this book is a must to be seen reading. Unfortunately, I have a Kindle. And I was alone. So no one actually saw me reading it. That means, of course, that I have to blog about reading it to get my pseudo-intellectual street cred.

At this point, I should mention I have been reading this book, off and on, for five months and change. My Kindle doesn't show page numbers, but assures me I'm only 10 % into it. It's dense. Difficult to get into. But I made a break-through today and started to enjoy it. And then I hit the line.

Before I reveal the line, let me explain where I stand on what I feel good writing is. Good writers don't waste words. Every sentence, every detail, everything in a novel should either a) advance the action or b) reveal something about a character or a situation. I think I have that idea courtesy of Kurt Vonnegut. I'm almost sure of it. But I do believe it.

And now, the line: "The door was much newer than the wood surrounding it."

Out of context, it doesn't look like much. In context, this line is sheer genius. The scene: a group of young men are discussing the staff and the actions taken by the staff at an institution of advanced training. They are in a room in a building in which several groups are having the same type of discussion. They speak of how they (the students) are being manipulated.

The line stuck out of the surrounding prose like a sore thumb. At least it did for me. It stopped me cold. Why? I didn't know. I applied my ferocious reading and literary analysis skills to determining the purpose of the line. I mean, I've got a couple of degrees saying I should be able to read this and know what it means.

But I didn't.

I tried to believe for a while that what was meant was that the surrounding and upholding structure of the system in which the young men were participants had been around for a while (the wood), and that the difficulties and obstacles they were facing (the door) was a more recent development. That worked for a while. But as I sat reflecting more deeply, I wasn't sure.

Maybe the door represented the boys themselves, barring their own entrance (exit?) into the (out of the?) inevitability of greater understanding.

Maybe I should say now that I haven't been challenging myself as much as I should lately. I haven't been reading complex texts. I don't have a peer group to bounce ideas off of, or in turn try to have a deeper understanding myself.  I've been teaching sixth graders for the last couple of months.

So the line haunts me. And it will continue to do so. And that is good writing.

Spring Day, Overcast

Brown oak leaves underfoot, last year's sodden

reminders that green will end someday. But
not today

while the creek, silent in summer, chortles
happily to itself, full of spring vigor
far below

the limestone bluff edge where
I stand, chert nodules and fractals
peeking through

springy new undergrowth, broke down
limbs, leaf litter and dark soil.  I came
for morels

too early, too chill yet. A day of sun
may bring them out. Early poke sallet and
mayapple

sprouts fool me, draw me to admire
meek plants: trillium, maidenhair fern,
spring beauty,

johnny jump-up and more whose names
I knew once but have forgotten. Alone
I don't need

names. Names mean nothing without
voices and other ears. I love the silence
I bring here.

Cognitive Dissonance Is Why You Are Better Than Me

It started with Benjamin Franklin. More specifically, the Ben Franklin effect. I stumbled upon an article describing his theory of social interaction. He posited that we don't do favors for people we like, but that we like people we do favors for. The obverse side is that we are not mean to people we dislike, but we dislike people because we are mean to them. After a little more research into this phenomenon, I am not sure I buy in completely, but I do believe that there is certainly something to be said for the idea.

The basic idea is that we alter our perceptions of people based on our interactions with them. If we do something nice for someone, we tend to like them more. This is caused by a resolution of another phenomenon I eventually found called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when we do something that interferes with a principle or belief we hold. If we believe that we are not suckers, and then we do a favor for someone we normally wouldn't, then cognitive dissonance is created. Then the magic happens.

We resolve our cognitive dissonance by altering an idea or perception. We may hold onto our initial belief (I am not a sucker), so something has to give. What gives is our attitude concerning the person for whom we did the favor. We decide that we like the person. That makes us not a sucker. We did a favor for someone we like. And the opposite is true. When we are mean to someone, we don't want to think of ourselves as mean people. So the person or people we are being mean to must have done something to deserve it.

Some people will utilize the Ben Franklin effect for gain. Benjamin Franklin certainly did. This does not have to be a bad thing. However, the dark side of the Ben Franklin effect can cause war atrocities.

But cognitive dissonance affects different people in different ways. Some of the best managers I have seen have had the ability to resolve cognitive dissonance in such a way that they were able to maintain a healthy self-image while making the hard decisions. The decision to fire people, demote people, to ask people to do things they don't want to do.

I once worked at a company with a group of people who were so able to resolve their cognitive dissonance that they could push other people to extremities and still go home and feel good about themselves. While this may have made for a very successful company, it made for a questionable morality in the workplace. I was amazed how well these people could justify their actions. Many of them engaged in adulterous affairs. One individual in upper management was well-known as a philanderer, but he was a regular church-goer. I can only imagine how he justified the conflicting behaviors.

I can only imagine because I can't ever see myself doing it. I was a terrible manager. I agonized over the hard decisions. I was in a constant state of stress. If I could have made better resolutions to my cognitive dissonance, I would have been more successful. I am too full of doubts to ever convincingly and effectively resolve my cognitive dissonances.

Or am I just justifying my failures by resolving my cognitive dissonance in a way that still allows me to feel good about myself?

This Might Be September (I'm 45)

We always compare our lives to things, and things to our lives. Metaphors. Riddles. Remember this one? What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? That's what the Sphinx asked Perseus.

Today, I compare my life to a year. The seasons, the months. Common enough metaphor. But right now I'm actually comparing my life to a year. And that creates a new level of perception.

The year started in early spring. Everyone who has ever given it serious thought knows that the year doesn't really start in January. A year begun in January is artificial, a misconception of measurement of a year imposed by rational thought and an obsessive need to delineate practically. The year doesn't really begin until spring.

That being said:

This isn't April. April is a dim memory of newness and danger, so far back to be barely remembered as only a time of joy and all inherent unpleasantness of newness forgotten.

This is not May. This isn't the first greenery showing signs of growth. This isn't crocuses peeking through the last snow. This isn't the bud of leaves or Robert Frost's gold. May is long past.

This isn't June. Spoon, moon, June. This isn't the season of early love, of sap coursing strongly in the tree, of outrageous growth and new developments. June is a beautiful time, but there is also pain there, then, at that time. The first love, the first heartbreak, containing both the wondrous beauty of a June storm, and also the destructive power.

This is not July, hot and dangerous. When the hot days create a dangerous languor that erupts into foolishness in the nights, careless risks and crazy ideas brought to perilous fruition. The joy of stupidity blossoms darkly in the soft warm July nights.

This is not August. August, the month when the heat has sucked the juices almost dry, when growth has stopped and the first hint comes that any changes coming may not be improvements.

This is probably September. There is a coolness, almost refreshing, and if there is no new growth, then there is a temporary reprieve. The rains come, but they are different rains, not the rains of spring that bring growth, but the rains that soothe, the rains that replenish in different ways, the rains that prepare for a harsher season. This might be September, when the thought of winter becomes reality, when the coolness settles in and brings goosebumps in a not unpleasant way.

There is also the chance, though, that this is October. The imaginary line may have been crossed to the time when the leaves are not yet crisp but no longer green, when they begin to come to earth and there is no turning back, when energies are gathered in different ways, when the green has gone and other means of surviving show themselves as very real in different colors and with a different light.

This is not yet November. November is coming, but is not yet here. November, when the crunch of leaves
underfoot drowns out the silence left behind by a void of something missing, something gone that was intangible but will be sorely missed. The full impact of November hasn't been felt yet, and as with all things not yet experienced, cannot be fully described.

Nor is this December. The time of quiet reflection in front of a warm but too distant fire. This is not the time of the intrinsic calidity known in July and August long gone, replaced by heat from an external source, not quite the same. A heat that doesn't push to action but to inaction and reflection.

This is not January or February, when all is still. This isn't March. March is so far off and so strange that the changes to come can't even be comprehended.

This might be September.

If It's Messy, Eat it Over the Sink

There is a novel by Tom Robbins that I enjoy.  There are actually several. Actually, all of them. He has a wonderfully ribald (some would consider it obscene) and insightful way of viewing the world that he relates in beautifully playful prose. He's not everybody's cup of tea, but at one point in my life I devoured everything he wrote with great relish and always found myself wishing he would write more.

But I'm not just writing about a great author today. I'm going to write about the way great authors write things that find their way into everyday life, that are so true that we find them intruding in ways we could never have expected while we were reading their works in the first place.

Today is a snow today. No school for me, no school for the kids. CPAs, on the other hand, do not get snow days. Especially not during tax season. My wife is a CPA. Oh, I suppose if it snowed a couple of feet and wild yeti were wandering the highways in search of meals my wife might consider not going into work. But that hasn't happened yet.

I got up early this morning, before my wife. I came downstairs and caught up my Words With Friends and read Facebook statuses and played a game and figured out who had said what in a couple of my favorite forums. Then I realized I could be wonderful and fix my wife breakfast. Of course, by that time she was out of the shower and on her way downstairs. And she wasn't going to wait for traffic to make her morning drive just that more interesting. So she left. And I ended up making myself breakfast.

I fried two eggs hard, some ham, some cheese, toasted two slices of bread and sliced a tomato. Excellent breakfast sandwich. But messy. And that made me think of a character in a Tom Robbins novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. The character was something of a spoof on the wise Asian, the mentor, the advisor. But in Mr. Robbins wonderfully clever way, he was both a spoof and he wasn't. People thought he was crazy, but some people thought him wise, but he did outrageous things that made you wonder, and the best advice he offered the heroine in the novel was, "If it's messy, eat it over the sink."

When I read the novel at nineteen or twenty, I didn't get it. I thought Mr. Robbins was making a clever statement on the nature of advice given to people. It's generally useless, or so obvious that most people overlook it.

But this morning at 6:30 as I was eating my breakfast sandwich with the tomato juice running down between my fingers and the mayonnaise being squeezed out the sides and the bread slipping off one side and the ham off the other, I got it.

I realized that what he meant (or maybe just what I took from it, which is the same thing in the end) was that sometimes we encounter things in life that are worthwhile, that are good, that we need in our lives (like fried egg sandwiches with tomatoes). But the attainment of these things, the true enjoyment to be had from them, will not be easy. There might be consequences, there may be accompanying unpleasantness (tomato juice, mayonnaise). So all we can do is prepare ourselves as best we can (eat it over the sink) and go ahead and enjoy them anyway.

To take it a step further, maybe we even learn to enjoy the messy aspect. Maybe, if our minds and hearts are well-prepared, we accept the deliciousness of the sandwich and even enjoy the mess we make of ourselves while we eat it. We learn to enjoy the whole of the experience. We should learn to enjoy it all.

And that leads me to think that we as a society have worked so hard to divorce the two aspects of enjoyment that we have forgotten how to really enjoy things. Instead of just eating it over the sink, we invent a new kind of bread. Or we leave off the tomatoes. And then we forget how truly good something is.

So the next time I'm thinking about going camping and even before we begin I start dreading the clean-up and the putting away that must be done when we get home, I'll just eat it over the sink. So many experiences we might pass up, so many enjoyable things in life that we avoid because of an accompanying difficulty. I'm just going to eat it over the sink.

Finding Something to Say

Amazingly, I have nothing I really want to say this week. I'm finding it difficult to select a topic from the few that I have been considering, not because they are so fascinating, but because I can't generate enthusiasm sufficient to even make them interesting to me.

So I'm indulging myself in one of the oldest writer's tricks: when you have nothing to say, say it anyway. I always tried to get students to do this when they told me they couldn't think of anything to write.

"Just start writing," I'd say.

"I don't have anything to say," they'd say.

"So write that. Then write about why you don't have anything to say, or what is going on that is distracting you from writing, or just begin to write about your topic and how difficult it is to write anything on it. And when you reach that point, start writing about why it's hard to write about that topic." I think this may have even worked once or twice.

So I'm trying it.

I started to write about how I feel  I can't write about certain things I think or some beliefs I have. This is true. I can't. I'm looking for a job right now. This blog is public. I could possibly write something that may offend someone, or negatively influence my chances to get a position.

There are topics that must be avoided. I suppose this would be a good time to point out that all writing must take a potential audience into consideration. Audience.

But once I state that there are certain things I can't say, then I can't say much more about that. I have to demonstrate an ability to censor myself. This can be important in all social settings, and in all careers, but is crucial in teaching. So next topic.

I could revisit posts in the past about weather, and working. My younger brother and I worked down at the farm yesterday shoring up a sagging fence. I found that enjoyable. It was a beautiful day. We shored up a fence. But I didn't gain an epiphany from the experience.

My children and I have been running twice. Jackson is participating in Soul to Sole (or maybe it's Sole to Soul), so we had a program to keep over his spring break. Audra, my daughter, runs with us, although somewhat reluctantly. But I'm proud of how well she runs. She easily outpaced Jackson and I. But that hasn't really captured my imagination enough to allow me to run with the topic.

So I'll just jump from topic to topic, I guess. A compendium of experiences and not much deep thought.

I went to dinner with my family and my grandmother for her 96th birthday this past Saturday. She fell coming out of the restaurant. Tripped over a curb. Aside from some abrasions, though, she's okay. That's kind of amazing. She's amazing.

So much to write about, but so little ability on my part to invest experience with meaning. And this is something I really need to do. This makes my life worthwhile: the ability to reflect. I can feel the difference in myself when I am able to create meaning from experience. I'm happier. When I'm not reflecting, I'm not living. I'm just existing.

So this is my entry for this week. I hope by next week I'm back to living. I think exercise will help. I hope. I'm going to work on it. I will find something I want to say again.