you ever have that feeling...

...when you spend two and a half hours cooking a band new recipe like the red bean stew (which looks very promising), lovingly prep all the food, finish, serve, dish up, have your four year old take a bite only to say, "Daddy I don't like this," take a few bites yourself, and realized that your kid is right, and the dinner just ain't that good?

Yeah, me too.

time off

This week in class, some of my students were talking before class about how much they wish they could sleep in all day instead of having to work. One of them asked me if I agreed, and I told him the idea of spending all day in bed frankly scared me.

He looked puzzled, so I explained that with generating lesson plans for four new classes, grading, my band, my solo album, my therapy, my depression, and my family, I always seem to be massively behind. A full day in bed would just mean I wouldn't be able to sleep for a week if I wanted to get close to getting caught up. Moreover, this knowledge would mean I wouldn't be able to enjoy the day in bed anyway.

I think I might be a workaholic trapped in a lazy man's body.

friends and dreams

I've been thinking about distant friends lately. On my best days, I try keep the Harry Potter quote in mind: the ones we love never really leave us. Most of the time, believing this is fairly difficult, becoming more difficult every time another friend takes a job in another state,moves on, leaves me behind. But still I try, in spite of the houses turning from places where my friends live to the shadows of where they used to be.

The worst moments sneak up on you. The other day, my daughter was playing, and she picked up a boo one of our friends gave her. It was said friend's book as a child, and that she gave the book to my daughter was originally very touching. Since then, said friend has decided I'm the root of all that's wrong or something like that, and she has made it a point to act as if I don't exist. I usually put on a brave front and play along in the game of mutual disdain, but there are times--such as when I saw the dedication in the front of the book from an aunt to said friend as a child--where I can't help but dwell on what is lost. Then I remembered that the person in question won't have anything to do with me. Then I don't know what to think

Still, though, we always have dreams, and hopefully that is somewhere where everything can work out. Last night, I dreamt of running into a few scattered friends at a party. The one conversation I recalled upon awakening is of a friend showing me all the new items she had invented. Now, this person claims to be utterly uncreative. Moreover, she's not really a nuts & bolts person. Yet my dream friend had invented and manufactured any number of hand tools. I don't remember most of them with any specificity, but the last tool was some type of rivet gun which implanted decorative bolts and such directly into one's bones. After showing me the tool, she turned around and showed me the silver star studs affixed to the back of her skull. Now, I really don't think my friend will ever become an inventor, but if she did? I could see her dreaming up this project.

It's a shame, though, the good ones only happen in dreams.

mental occupation

I have, for reasons I'm not going to explore here, found myself on campus during the Monday of Spring Break. Of course, it's deserted, and I can't do half of what I need to do...because that's just the way life is.

So of course, I need to occupy my time. A colleague of mine started the year by putting inspirational quotes on his door. He promised to add a new one each week. So far, though, this has not happened. So I decided to compile some quotes and add them to his door for them. I hope he likes today's addition:

reassurance

I spent Tuesday in mental pain. But even though my brain doesn't work properly, I knew that I couldn't dwell in the mental pain. So yesterday and today, I did my best to push down the horrible twist in my gut and get to work.

I am happy to report that after two full days of research, I now have evidence to prove I am not actually the world's most suck-ass teacher. And, as a result, I feel relatively normal again.

Now to prepare myself for the forthcoming battle.

support

After all the trials this week, I'm happy that I have a family to support me. But they're my family, so the support is...different.

Earlier tonight, my daughter said, "I love you more than anything."

"Aw, I love you more than anything too."

"I even love you more than stinky fish!"

So I got that going for me, I guess.

ideals

After the hell of a birthday I had Tuesday, I've spent Wednesday with my kid...which helps a whole lot. I've spent most of my mental energy on trying to hold myself together, on mustering my strength, on funneling my rage/depression into researching my case and arming myself for a massive battle with the powers that be at my job. You know, fun stuff. Mostly, though, I've been looking for positives, for things that help, for any sliver of worth in myself or in the world.

While I was cooking dinner and waiting for a pot of soup to come to the boil, I picked up my library copy of the Harvey Pekar collection On the Fly. I've loved Pekar for quite some time. He brings humanity to everyone he depicts. While the soup simmered, I took the book with me to the couch. My daughter snuggled up to me, and I plowed though the rest of the stories. I went back to the introduction (previously skipped), which I noticed was written by author/television personality Anthony Bourdain. Near the end of the introduction, Bourdain says,

Harvey Pekar owned not just Cleveland but all those places in the American Heartland where people wake up every day, go to work, do the best they can--in spite of the vast and overwhelming forces that conspire to disappoint them--and try as best as possible to do right by the people around them, to attain that most difficult of "ideals": to be "good" people.

That is all I really think I'm trying to do...and I can't tell you how much reading this helped.

birthday

Yesterday was my birthday. Up until I got to work, it was going swell. Then it went wrong. I mean horribly wrong, cataclysmic level of awful. Black fog descending, light fading, depression monster honing this pointy claws. Bleak, hopelessness, pointlessness. I'm not gonna write here about the details, but trust me...there was a reason. This wasn't just a random fit.

So, to all the people who wished me happy birthday yesterday: thank-you ever so much. It was wonderful beyond belief to hear from you and was one of the few things which made me feel that I had any value at all as a human being. I can't tell you how much I needed to hear from you...and I'm sorry I won't have the chance to thank each of you individually and personally.