New Year's Blabbering: Have One More

     The end of one year beginning of the next and the magical hope that this shiny new 365 days will be better than the ones before. Of course the first of those golden new moments is in the coldest harshest months where most complain about the cold.  (Not me though, never bothered me much and I still get snow days.)

      But human nature compels us to strive for perfection...or at least better than yesterday. Honestly that's what makes life so awesome. We have great capicity for screwing up, and the amazing ability to grow from that. And I totally made mistakes in 2014...but did a lot of cool stuff too.

     I also failed in my 2014 resolutions. I could blame life, it has a habit of getting in the way. I could blame my own laziness or listless ways. Could blame work. Could blame a lot of things. That never gets you anywhere, besides I figured it out: I made the wrong resolutions. Most of them were about changing things all at once, that never works. It's like changing your hair color from black to golden blonde. You could do it with one bottle of developer but you end up with a rat's nest or straw.

    So my resolution this year is simple: One more.

One more cookie.
One more slice.
One more push-up.
One more mile.
One more kiss.
One more hug.
One more dragon.
One more level.
One more minute.
One more snooze.
One more laugh.
One more push.

One more word.

Just one more....that's all I plan to do this year. May your 2015 bring you one more too.

Least Wonderful Time of the Year

There are few words that strike fear into the hearts of teachers turning them into gibbering shells of their former selves. "Curriculum rewriting," "grant money," and "Parent-Teacher night" rank up there, but the worst words are "Back to School."

More wretched words have never been spoken.

For many of us it's a remind that though we've been away from our students for a few months--2 in my case this year--we've still been working. Taking classes, rewriting the aforementioned curriculum, learning new and innovative ways to expand our students minds as they summarily ignore us, these are what most of us do over "summer break." 

And we deserve a break, I mean a serious break. I know this happens everywhere, but imagine being told your company found a groundbreaking new way to do business, like totally revolutionary. You're skeptical, but eventually buy in, bring others around, and lead the way to the future, only to be told that yeah even though you've almost totally implemented everything the results aren't what people expected so the company's going in a new direction. One you're excepted to buy into immediately, but it'll work this time. Or maybe the next, or the time after. By the fourth or fifth switch, you'd be a little unenthusiastic. 

That's teaching. Then you get told your performance depends on your product--the students--and how well they score on a test to determine your worth. And that there's no money to get the parts you need to fix the problem. Embrace the technology all the students use but also make sure they don't use it in the room. And even if you manage to somehow produce the most perfect results anyone's ever seen, you're going to be told to repeat it again or it didn't count. And everyone outside your job will hate you at one point or another. 

Yet, year after year we come back. We brush off the old, embrace the new all the time waiting for it to be replaces, and picking up the new guys left in the trenches shell shocked from the first round. We use humor, sarcasm, and a ton of caffeine, but we come back stronger each time. We do what we need to so those products we produce can think, feel, and be rational adults some day. 

I remember summer vacation ending as kid and you never get over that feeling. First day jitters, will the new kids like me, can I get all the work done, what if the lunch in the cafeteria sucks--most people leave this behind after high school. Others make a career out of it. 

So remember the next time you're in Target's Back to School section, not all of the screaming and crying you hear is from the kids. Just offer that poor teacher a coffee and dry erase marker then let them know it'll be all right. 

“The only certainties in life are death and taxes, and one of those is negotiable.”

Death sucks. There’s no two ways around it. If it were up to me, I just won’t do it. My relationship with death has been interesting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the idea of dying that terrifies me. I’ve honestly played in cemeteries since I was 6, ghosts and my family go way back. So I get the idea of death, I understand it but that’s not what bothers me.




We played tag, but probably would've built a fort if we didn't think the nuns would get us.

It’s the idea that I stop. Everything that makes me, me ceases in this place. I don’t get to see what comes next. It’s like buying a book only to find out you’re missing the last two chapters. Now I don’t plan on going easy, I will rage against the dying of the light, but I also understand that as long as someone we’ve connected with survives, so does a part of us. There’s comfort in that. But with the passing of yet another person from my childhood, I’m forced once more to stop and examine these ideas.

I’ve heard everything from the atheist camp who reminds me that I’ll only end up fertilizer and possibly fish food to the Catholic ideal of Heaven except I don’t get to see my favorite pets. So what to believe?

I remember being exposed to part of Ode: Intimations of Immortality in high school. Now poetry is subjective, especially to the mind of a teenager, but part if it always stuck with me:

Is something that doth live,	135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—	140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—	//
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,	155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day

I know the poem jumps, but these are the lines that caught my attention. Now he’s a Romantic poet (that’s Romantic with a capital R, not romantic. There is a difference.) and mixing that with my recent discovery of Transcendentalism in Ms. Rhoback’s class these changed my view of the afterlife.

So here’s my take on it all: fiber optic wands. That’s the way I see life.

That's right, life's better with stars and glitter!

I’ve always been a firm believer in the idea that as we pass through each other’s lives we leave a mark, no matter how small. I think I got the idea from my grandfather. We used to throw rocks into the river sending plumes of “smoke” into the water and ripples across the surface. (Really clumps of dirt and debris exploding from the tufts of grass growing in the river, but he let me imagine whatever I wanted. He was awesome like that.)



Those ripples were brief and that always made me sad when I lost track of them. Poppy—that’s what we called him—used to remind me that was part of life, you get to make new ripples. But that doesn’t mean the old ones were truly gone. Once you’ve seen something it’s there forever in your head.



Ripples are still cool!

Again, remember I was like 6 when he imparted this wisdom to me, so I know I’m paraphrasing, but the idea stuck with me. Instead of ripples, I began to see it as a strand of tangled lights. Each person is their own center of one of these cluster, you are the light in your own world. Meeting other, we ping into their cluster and brighten it. If they move on it doesn’t matter, you can still follow the trail of their light. (Much easier now in this digital age.) But when one of those lights goes out, the whole wand is dimmed. It just doesn’t look as bright.



That’s what happens when someone we know dies. The world is less brilliant. Even if they were an acquaintance, a colleague, a neighbor, there’s one less piece that you’re connected to in this world. This continues until like pulling the strand from a fiber optic wand, only the core is left. And eventually you know that’s going to burn out too.



They stay with us, like lights in the night.

However, you can’t forget about the coolest part of these wands—the trail of light they leave behind. Waving them in the dark you can see threads of color waving back and forth. It’s that trail that important. That’s what’s left behind, as long as we can see the trail, no matter how faint,  it’s still there. The light, the person, isn’t truly gone.

Over the years I’ve lost friends and family in many ways: car accidents that we’re their fault, suicides, cancer, illness, and even old age. Many were lights so far out and little thought of that their blinking out was a minor incident, a flickering in the corner of my eye then gone.

Others were needles of ice cutting into bone. I’ve been lucky that those people were kind enough to send signs that lessened the dimming, though made it no less painful. But, if I’m right, they’re not really gone. They find their way back from time to time. A name that makes me smile. Creating a character whose personality seems familiar. The face of a nephew. Lessons they taught. As long as I remember them, their light still flickers from time to time.

So tonight I raise a cup of coffee to these, my friends who’ve passed to whatever comes next. Though your lights have darkened, the trails and marks you’ve left behind remain. I humbly hope that one day I affect someone as much as all of you. May you wands never burn out.