Month: November 2016

The Weekly Re-Motivator: Say Yes

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The case could be made that “yes” is the most powerful word in the world.

This is a thing that took me too long to learn in my life. Shortly after college and deep in the places where having a skeptical (okay, fine, cynical) outlook can take you, I knew about this “yes” thing, but I wasn’t interested in it. “No” was a lot easier. Only two letters, after all. One consonant, one vowel; there’s a beautiful balance there. And it had the power to ward off all kinds of uncomfortable situations.

“Is today the day you start writing that novel?” No.

“How about going for a run?” No.

“Maybe call up an old friend, or think about enrolling in a class, or even just step out of the house and do something different today?” Nope. I’m good.

No keeps the world in check. Keeps things level, even, and easy.

But yes is inherently unbalanced. Two consonants and a vowel, none of no’s lovely symmetry. Not only is it unbalanced, it’s unbalancing. “Yes” shatters the status quo. “Yes” breaks the mold. “Yes” floods your comfort zone with pepper spray and forces you to get the hell out of there.

“Working on that novel today?” Yes.

“Gonna do some research on publishers, too?” Yes.

“How about exercising a little? Reading a book instead of watching TV all day? Try something new out at work?” Yes, yes, yes.

“Maybe elect an orange dude with tiny hands and a rampant narcissism to run the most important democracy in the free world?” Apparently, yes.

(Okay, I know I said I wouldn’t. Couldn’t help it. Just slipped out. But my point stands: we are shattering the status quo.)

Point is, “no” lets you stay where you are. It lets you grow roots into the floor and get comfortable. “Yes” keeps you moving. Not always forward — if only life were so obliging — but always onward.

I teach drama, and one of the things I spend a lot of time on is improv. For the uninitiated, improv is that crazy thing actors do where they go in without a script, take on suggestions from the audience, and attempt to roll with it. Sometimes the scenes crash and burn, sometimes they soar. But always, the scenes are interesting. Even a scene that crashes has interesting tidbits lurking in the rubble. Anyway, the cardinal rule of improv is: “say yes.” Your partner brings to you a strange suggestion. “Let’s go see what’s in that cave.” That’s an opportunity. For you, because you get to embark on an adventure that you didn’t even have to come up with. For the audience, because now they want to know what’s in the cave. If you say “yes,” we all get to go on the adventure. If you say “no,” not only do we not get to go on the adventure, but we have to come up with a new idea. Not to mention, you piss off your scene partner, which is never a good idea. Actors are jerks.

So, let this little spiel fall into the pile of things I would have said to a younger version of myself. Say yes. Go on the adventure. Try the thing that scares you.

You know. Except for the whole voting for the orange guy thing. It’s okay to say “no” every once in a while.

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

Sick Day

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The kids are sick. So I’m home sick with them.

And, almost as if on cue, the monstrous cough I’d been fighting for weeks — and thought I had the better of — has resurfaced. I’m sure it’s unrelated. Couldn’t be my stress over the state of the country or anything like that.

Eh, we’re not going there.

It’s weird. Teaching is one of the few professions where it’s almost more stressful to take a sick day than it is to just suck it up and go to work: upon your return, you’re almost certain to have behavioral issues to sort out, extra work to grade, a day to make up in your lesson pacing. Not to mention the sense — foolish as you know it is — that things are surely going to sharknado without you there.

Add to that I’m in my first year in my new job. I’m definitely in the not wanting to screw anything up boat. So taking a last-minute day off makes me feel a bit like I’m letting people down.

So around 10 last night, when my kid woke up with some pretty horrific, uh, bodily functions, and it became clear I was gonna have to take the day, I started stressing out. Got him sorted out, stopped him crying, and got him back into bed. Ran downstairs to chuck his clothes in the laundry (for the second time in four hours). Then I went to work. Fired up the laptop to e-mail supervisors. Whacked together some activities to e-mail to the sub. Started worrying about what was going to happen while I wasn’t at work. Struggled going to sleep.

Then I realized my priorities were all fargo’d. My kid is sick — in discomfort and upset in addition to oozing from his orifices (orifici?) — and I’m getting my knickers in a twist over my job, over my students — many of whom will be only too happy for me to miss a day!

And with that, I let it go, and I slept like a baby.

Frankly, the day off couldn’t come at a better time. I got to hang around the heezy, watch some movies with the kids (both of them somehow really dig the new Ghostbusters, which is fine by me), read ’em some books, snuggle them on the couch. All of which is a very welcome respite from where my mind has been for the past week.

Didn’t actually get much done that was productive or helpful around the house. Only managed to type this up while the kids were napping. (Here, the savvy reader might interject: couldn’t you have done some housework instead? Some dishes, a little vacuuming, a much-needed dusting? To which I respond: this was a sick day, dammit. That would be missing the point.)

But that’s fine. All of that is just fine. Despite the gummy gunk collecting in my lungs, I am breathing easier than I have in a while.

All the same, let’s hope sprout #2 doesn’t come down with the same thing sprout #1 had. You can only do so much laundry in a day.

 

The Weekly Re-Motivator: Turning Away

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So this week has been … well, it’s been something, hasn’t it? One of the weirdest and perhaps most depressing weeks in recent memory.

But I can’t wallow in the pain, the uncertainty, the massive, all-consuming doubt that the imminent Trump presidency carries with it. Maybe it’s my unbridled optimism. Maybe it’s the fact that I have faith (how? where did this faith come from? I hate everything, after all) that, though it will certainly be bad, it won’t be that bad. Maybe it’s that I can’t stand being in a pain- and griping- and complaining-spiral.

Trump’s presidency will either be a total cock-up, or it won’t. And I know people are protesting in the streets, and I know the petitions are swirling and people are social-media-sharing that there are still things we can do to stop it, but … sorry, I don’t have that much faith. The electoral college is not going to negate itself just because the country has heartburn. Trump isn’t going to resign because he sees the protests and all the #notmypresident-ing. (By the way, you won’t catch me saying such ridiculousness. For better or worse, Trump is our president. That doesn’t mean I endorse him, but it does mean we get to hold his feet to the fire. We have to be good skeptics, as I said the morning after, and that means giving him a chance — even a short one — to not be a total scumbag as the leader of our great nation.)

We have to get on with our lives.

And yeah, I know, I speak this from a place of privilege. I know that I have the benefit of being allowed to get on with my life, as a middle-class white dude. And a part of me is more than frustrated with myself on that account. You can’t just move on like that, I hear myself insisting. Others can’t move on; that’s why this is so important.

But he’s only one man, and our country is bigger than one man.

I just … I can’t stay here, in this state of mind where the election of the orange nitwit is front of mind every day, for too many hours in the day. I’ve lost too much productivity and too much mental energy down that black hole (and a black hole it is; it sure as hell doesn’t give anything back for everything I’ve poured into it over the past several months).

He’s the president-elect, now, and in January, he’ll be the president proper. I think that sucks. I think it’s an embarrassment. I think we (and by “we” I mean basically the entire USA, even those of us who voted against him — because we couldn’t stop it) have made ourselves something of a joke on the world stage.

But I’ve got books to write. I’ve got students to teach. I’ve got kids to raise up into something resembling decent human beings. And miles and miles to run.

I’ll keep wearing my safety pin for solidarity, as long as that’s a thing. I’ll stay informed and vote in the 2018 elections, and I sure as hell urge everybody out there to do the same. And I’ll certainly be keeping tabs on our new president as he creeps toward office.

But — and I realize I’ve said this before, but now that the election is over, it feels more final — I’m not going to be posting about it as much around here. It’s tiresome to me, and I’m sure it’s tiresome to my readers. This is supposed to be a blarg about writing and running and parenting and other lighthearted sharknado like that, for fargo’s sake.

I’m not going to be thinking about it all the time. I’m not going to waste my mental energy worrying about a thing that’s out of my control.

I’m going to co-opt a bit of religious wisdom (without the religion) in the form of the Serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.

You don’t even have to believe in god to see the wisdom in that. Any good meditationalist (is that even a word?) will tell you that serenity comes from within.

For me, at least, it’s time to turn away from Trump and the noxious cloud that surrounds everything about him. It’s time to turn inward.

It’s time to get back to work.

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

Trump’s Election Confirms: God Exists

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A theory:

Conventional writing advice states that an author should, generally, step on the throats of his protagonists. Occasionally , you shift your weight and allow the poor bastards to catch a little air, but mostly, you keep them down until they’re almost dead … and then you stomp on them some more.

One could argue, then, that this campaign season has been an extended size 13 to the windpipe. It abated, for the briefest of moments, as the election drew near and it looked like Clinton would win.

And then the boot came down for a crushing blow, and what the hell do we do now?

So: God exists, and he’s an evil fiction writer.

Hopefully he’s set us up for some sort of triumphant third act.

But I kind of doubt it.

This Shouldn’t Happen

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Just a short addendum, and then I’m going to shut down the part of my brain that thinks about these things (or try to, at any rate).

I had students in my class today in tears over the results of yesterday’s elections. Young people (girls, with some major identity issues to begin with) who are terrified about the future of the country. Petrified that they’ll lose their rights, or that friends will lose their rights. Sickened that the nation has essentially endorsed a man who … well. Who represents some of the worst that American males have on offer.

Now, these are teenage girls, I’ll grant. It isn’t like hyperbole and overemotionality aren’t the standard operating procedure. I wouldn’t have anticipated a reaction like that, but it’s not hard to understand it, either. Most of them can’t even vote, but that’s hardly insulation against the all-consuming house fire that this campaign season has been. But it’s exceedingly difficult to picture the same reaction swinging in the other direction; that is, young boys (or, okay, girls) crying over a Trump defeat.

And I can peddle platitudes, and I can share my optimism (such as it is) and I can acknowledge their fears (many of which I share). But words kind of feel empty when the future generation is looking at you with tears in their eyes, asking in despair how this could happen.

And the fact is, this shouldn’t happen. A disagreement in ideology is one thing. A healthy thing. Uncertainty about the future is normal in a time like this. But fear — real, visceral fear for the future, or even for their safety — that shouldn’t happen.

Then I come home, and I see protests springing up in major cities across the nation (and it turns out, one is scheduled for my neck of the woods tomorrow). And I think, holy shark. This shouldn’t happen.

Trump came out with a pretty positive message in his acceptance. Clinton came out with a similar message, as did Obama. Move forward. Work together. Heal. Unite. This is all good, but for a lot of people out there, the message clearly rings hollow.

This shouldn’t happen.

…I don’t have any answers tonight. I just know this shouldn’t happen.