Tag gratitude

Sourpuss Sunday

Dusty Leave a comment

Holiday season is too long, which makes it too complicated. My answer? NEW HOLIDAY!

Okay so: the truth is I’m far too deep in NaNoWriMo to pull out of it in order to write a proper blog post. I’d apologize, but I’m not going to say I’m sorry for not writing, when the reason I’m not writing is that I’m writing too much. Instead, I’m going to take this time to do some better, more constructive destressing, by writing something that doesn’t mean too much. Writing just for fun. Which I don’t do nearly enough of.

So this weekend is the big turn. The month of October starts with Bitching Season (Though of course, Bitch-Creep has moved back into September, partly because September has no damn holidays. Labor Day. Bah!), when everyone gets mad at everyone else for either A) obsessing too much about Halloween, B) interrupting Halloween season with creeping Christmas cheer (this is mainly the stores that start stocking Santa before Satan has left the building), or C) buying pumpkin spice lattes and pumpkin spice donuts and pumpkin spice toothpaste. (You think I’m kidding. I’m not.) Not to mention the CONTINUING fight over Indigenous People’s Day, which used to be named after a genocidal slaver and rapist who “discovered” a continent 15,000 years after people migrated there from Asia, by “finding” an island that was already populated. But that all passes as we get closer to Halloween, and the Bitching Season becomes the Witching Season (I really want to point out that’s taking a big W for Halloween, because I enjoy making teenagers cringe), and we all enjoy at least a week or so of spookiness and silliness. Then Halloween ends (Here in the Southwest it turns into the Day of the Dead, but I just feel bad for the people who celebrate Dia de Muertos in the US, because it’s gotta be hard to go from the absurdity of Halloween to a genuine, solemn remembrance of those we have lost. Though respect for the cognitive dissonance required to hold a genuine solemn remembrance of those who have passed — with sugar skulls. [Though also please note that calaveras are an inheritance of the Spanish invasion of the Aztec empire, and thus have a whole lot more history than my joke gives credit for]) and — we don’t know what to do.

Do we start celebrating Christmas? On November 1? Or is that too early? Do we need time to wind down from Halloween? Do we start putting up pictures of turkeys? Almost four weeks before the holiday with the weakest iconography of all?

Seriously. Turkeys? I mean, turkey is delicious, don’t get me wrong — it’s one of the few things I genuinely miss since my wife and I became vegetarians (Though to be precise, we are ovolactopescatarians, so there) — but can we all just admit that making cute images of the things we plan to kill and eat is creepy as fuck? Befriending your cows while naming them “Hamburger” and “Sirloin” is terrible. People talking to giant anthropomorphic M&Ms is terrible, especially when they’re talking about eating M&Ms.

This is terrible:

(But this meme is amazing:)

I think the reasonable compromise is to focus more on the autumnal theme, now that it’s actually cold and the leaves have turned and are falling, now that we don’t have the confusion around Halloween. But I realize that’s not terribly exciting. How many times can you sing “Over the River and Through the Woods?” (You knew that was a Thanksgiving song, right?)

So November is a continually awkward part of the holiday season. Once again, but this time nationally, we try to be serious and solemn for once on Veteran’s Day; but in this country (or maybe it’s just me), anything celebrating the military is just so tangled and fraught and therefore just hard to deal with. Awkward, like the rest of the month.

But then Thanksgiving comes. And the week leading up to it is a madhouse of planning and preparation; then the day itself is halfway between madness and celebration — but I think that’s sort of as it should be. Thanksgiving is a harvest festival: and that means we celebrating having busted our asses for the weeks prior trying to get everything harvested before winter comes. Harvest festivals are supposed to be the final relaxation after a time of incredible hard work, bringing in the crops. Which is part of why it’s weird, because we have moved away from the agricultural society that once celebrated the harvest; we are in a state of constant abundance and even overabundance as a society. Our issue with food is not how hard we have to work for it and how rarely we get a surplus of it: it’s how badly we adulterate it, how foolishly we consume it, and why in the name of all that’s good and holy we still can’t manage to get everyone enough of it. Which means, of course, that we shouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving until we actually manage a victory in one of those fights: we should have Thanksgiving whenever this country passes a law that provides free lunch at school for kids. We should have Thanksgiving whenever we manage to improve SNAP benefits, and feed hungry families. After that difficult work has been accomplished successfully: that’s when we should be giving thanks.

But one thing is for sure: Thanksgiving is not the time for feeling bad about the problems in the world. That is the real gift of the season: it’s time to actually focus on the good things, for once. And yes, that’s hard: the bad things are still around us, and keep happening, and if we are at all aware and sensitive to the suffering of others, it’s so very hard to be happy with and thankful for what we have without also feeling guilty for having what others don’t. But it’s useless to compare lives. We all try to live the best lives we can, and the fact that some of us live happier lives than others is, first, not a safe assumption, considering that anthropologists have shown that hunting, gathering, and foraging is generally a better and happier life; and secondly, usually not our fault. If we actively fuck up others’ lives for our own profit, then yes, we should feel guilty about that. But most of us are not corporate robber barons or exploiters of child labor or the like. So the point is, it’s important to remember that there are good things in our lives. And Thanksgiving, for all the cheesiness of being thankful and whatnot, is a perfect time to remember some of those good things. Family. Food. Celebrations with games and decorations and all that.

And then, of course, we move straight into unbridled consumerism: Black Friday. I don’t think I need to add my screed to the copious outpouring of bile about how terrible this day is conceptually; the truth is, I don’t buy a lot of stuff, and I sometimes like buying stuff: that being the case, sometimes I like buying stuff for cheap. So I usually buy something on Black Friday. And yes, I feel kind of bad about that; I’m aware that makes me a supporter of the consumerist culture that is killing everything. But since Thanksgiving is a time for focusing on the good side of things, and Christmas is the same, I’m going to focus on being happy that I got a new Blu-Ray/DVD player for $60, and so I can stop playing movies on my tired old PS3. (Also, that means I can move my PS3 into my office, along with the old TV we just replaced, and I can actually have my dream gaming setup. Please note that this is the first time I have ever had this — a dedicated gaming TV not in the living room — and I’m fucking 48. Like I said, I don’t buy a lot of stuff. Not gonna feel bad about buying this stuff.)

Suffice it to say that riots on Black Friday, and the excessive spending and consuming, and the commodification of the good parts of the holidays, are all terrible and disgusting and should be opposed.

So after Black Friday, we have the newest attempts to commodify and exploit the consumerist culture during the holiday season: one for a good cause, and one for the worst. Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Small Business Saturday is a lovely idea, and a wonderful cause: I would like to take this opportunity to point out that I am a self-published novelist, and I would love to sell you copies of my books; you can buy them from Lulu.com — which is not a small business, but also is not Amazon — or from Barnes and Noble — again, not an independent bookseller, but certainly not Amazon — or you can contact me directly (Comment here or find me on Facebook or Twitter) and I will sell it to you myself. Also my wife is a brilliant artist who sells her work through Facebook and Instagram.

And then on the other side is Cyber Monday, the brainchild of Jeff Bezos, who felt that one day buying shit was not enough of corporations exploiting American consumers, and so he made up a new shopping day that focused on his business, and intentionally took time away from productive work, because the idea of using Monday was that was the day everyone went back to work and had computer access: at work. To go holiday shopping, instead of working. Look at capitalism at its finest! However: while I detest Bezos and Amazon, I recognize two things: one, there are lots of places — I used to live in one — where shopping access is limited, and Amazon frequently is the only and usually is the cheapest way for people to get things they want and need; and also, while Amazon is grossly exploitative of content creators, still they do furnish something of a marketplace; so I will, once again, look at the bright side: sometimes it’s good to buy things, and buying things online is not inherently bad, so people can do a good thing on Cyber Monday by shopping. I do not believe that the toxicity of the seller transfers entirely to the buyer, unless the buyer is actively propping up the evil done by the seller.

After this whole weekend, spent recovering from the preparations and celebrations of Thanksgiving, and with three days dedicated to shopping — what is supposedly holiday gift shopping, but really is just shopping — as I said, there is a turn. The Christmas radio stations start broadcasting. The decorations start coming out. I put antlers and a red nose on our car. ChristmaHanuKwanzaakkah time is now in full swing. We teachers are counting the days (Fourteen school days!!) until Winter Break. We all start asking — “Wait, what do you mean it’s almost 2023?!?” Christmas cheer, and Christmas melancholy as well, kick it into high gear. After this weekend, the long awkward time is over, and we can all focus: so this, then, is the good time, the next month or so.

But there’s a hole there. Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday — see what’s missing?

It’s today.

So I have a suggestion. Since tomorrow begins the Happy Holiday season in earnest (It started earlier, of course, but tomorrow we all have to see each other again, and the Christmas cheer will be inescapable — and also, for the most part, genuinely nice), we should take one last chance to be in a bad mood. To be crappy, and to complain about anything and everything.

I would like to suggest Sourpuss Sunday.

As with all holidays, the existence of a special day in celebration of a specific idea or situation does not mean we can’t celebrate that thing any or every other day; there are people for whom every day is Veteran’s Day, and people for whom every day is the 4th of July. I do not tell my wife I love her only on Valentine’s Day, and for many people, Earth Day is all year. There is already something of this sort in the Festivus celebrations, which I support wholeheartedly, in the Airing of Grievances. But that comes too close to Christmas for me: I get happier as we get closer to the actual day, as the school season ends and I get to spend all my time pounding eggnog and looking at Christmas decorations. I think now, as part of the farewell to the awkward time, as a last hurrah for the darkness of Halloween, as a bit of relief after the stress of family on Thanksgiving, and well before the stress of family on Christmas: we should have a day when we bitch.

YARN | The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. | Seinfeld (1993) - S09E10 The Strike | Video clips by quotes | 6e01524c | 紗
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So let me start things off, and then invite you all to continue it in your own way.

I’m sick. Not very sick: not too sick to stay home from work, or to avoid obligations; just sick enough, with a cough and a stuffy runny nose, to feel miserable whenever I lay down to sleep, and then again first thing in the morning when I get up. So basically, I’m just sick enough to make every day kind of awful. I hate snot.

I don’t know if I have a cold or the flu or Covid; it’s most likely that I’ve gone from one to another, and maybe through all three, and so has my wife. I HATE that we’ve added Covid to the usual collection of germs that come flying in for the winter: I hate that it makes the already dangerous flu season that much more deadly, and also that it means all the right-wing assholes in this country have to avoid vaccinations and masks and social distancing on principle. Fuck the politicization of disease: it’s a fucking disease, you shitheads. Just go to the damn doctor and do what the damn doctor says.

Speaking of right-wing assholes (And please don’t get me wrong: the operative term there is “assholes.” That is who I’m complaining about. Not people who are conservatives, or Republicans, or people who are generally right of me politically, all the way to the end of the spectrum: just the assholes among them.), FUCK Elon Musk and every single person on Twitter right now. I used to enjoy Twitter. It was fun, and funny. I spent an entire year tweeting out the lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one letter at a time, backwards, so it could be read by scrolling through my timeline. (Yes, I’m serious. Every Tweet I twitted in 2021 was part of that project. I am proud of it. I will always be.) But then, a couple of months ago, they changed the algorithm so that I had to start seeing more right-wing troll accounts in my Twitter feed. I assume it was because they wanted to increase interaction. And even though I knew I was being manipulated, it still worked: because I have a deep-seated need to reply to people who speak lies and falsehoods, and that was basically every single one of the Twitterati on the right. (Again: it’s not about being on the right, it’s about these particular fucktoads, who would be just as obnoxious if they were on the left. Also, I had one of the most annoying exchanges I’ve had in the last month or two with a leftist who failed to understand that I was on her side, and who kept giving me shit until she finally blocked me.) And ever since Elon took it over, the wave of masturbatory celebration, all founded on complete bullshit (“Elon fired everyone at Twitter and it’s working fine! Clearly all those overpaid leftist Twitter execs did nothing!” Right. Until there actually is a problem, and the whole fucking thing collapses because there’s not enough people to fix the problem. But since it’s been going fine for like two weeks, CLEARLY THERE WILL NEVER BE A PROBLEM EVER AND WE ALL SHOULD HIGH FIVE ABOUT IT), is just getting to be too much to take.

I’m also bitter about my inability to let things go. I don’t even like social media, in concept. But here I am, fighting pointlessly to save a platform that I am not enjoying, just because I can’t let things go. Sigh.

I would also like to complain about obligatory family phone calls on the holidays. I love my parents. I like talking to them. But the requirement that, every year, I have to call my dad and tell him what I’m eating, and listen to what he’s eating, well — it’s a little too much. It’s certainly not the worst thing: there are people who have much harder family obligations, and much harder holidays because of family, than me. But really. I’m tired of hearing about how big the turkey is.

And speaking of having the same conversation over and over again, I would like to propose that every single time a student in my classes says “Can we just do nothing today? It’s a half day,” a full day gets added to that student’s school year. I would also like to propose that every time a student says “Can we do nothing today? It’s Friday” that student loses a weekend. And every time a student says “Can we do nothing today? It’s Monday,” I would like to propose that Garfield pop up out of the ground and slap them.

I am so bloody tired of being the only one in the room who wants to do the work, and who has to fight with everyone else just to do what we’re all there to do. So tired of it.

OH AND ALSO

We bought this new TV, right? And it’s very nice. It’s a Smart TV. Which means it has internet capability, and can stream our digital services without the need for our Roku receiver. Cool. Except that requires that I create an account for the TV, which is an LG, and then sign into that account on the TV in order to do things like “install” the Netflix app directly on the Smart TV.

It won’t let me log in.

I spent two hours fucking around with that thing last night. I made an account, registered it, confirmed it with the email address, and then tried to log in on the TV — nothing happened. I tried a dozen times: still nothing. I changed the password, even though I was using the right password: no change. Still wouldn’t log in. It didn’t say “Login failed,” didn’t tell me that the username or password was wrong; just every time I clicked “Log In,” the loading icon appeared, and then disappeared, and I was still not logged in. I tried to use a different method of logging in — using a QR code on my phone, and then logging in through the website that came up — and the phone logged in, but then the TV said “Verifying login information” and didn’t do anything after that. Over and over, trying to log in to the “Smart” TV we bought, so that I could make our streaming more convenient. That’s all.

And let me note: I was logging in using the remote to move a cursor across a keyboard on the screen, to enter all the letters and numbers and special characters in my email address and the password. Said password, of course, had to be at least 8 characters long, including upper and lower case, a numeral and a special character. Right right right right up up click, left left left left left left down click. Over and over.

Still didn’t work.

I JUST WANT TO LOG IN! TO USE YOUR FUCKING SERVICE!

Okay. There.

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That’s better.

Now. How about you?

Responding to Comments

Dusty Leave a comment

I got these two comments on an earlier post on this blog. I intended, when I started this blog, to respond to all comments; therefore, gentlemen, Mr. W.W.W. Gurkancelic Dot-com [Note: I have to write it that way or the browser automatically makes it a hot link, and I am not going to drive this schmuck’s traffic]  and Mr. What does t.b.h. mean out, I will endeavor to give you the same courtesy.

W.W.W. Gurkancelic Dot-com

This will make gossips less credible and hence of less interest to others.
Or, Amy, a supervisor, may hold meetings without co-workers
even though the workers are available and vital to the success of the company.
Gossip magazines revenue s signature, whereas the truth was that
it was a crime that he hadn.
Gossip gives us information on how to better interact with other people.
Online gossip girl 6 évad Control freaks feel that there is only one way to do things and that’s
theirs. Your probably wondering why I created this article.

Well, I am in favor of making gossips less credible and hence – fancy word, there, “hence” – less interesting to others; but I am certainly not going to click on your link to see what exactly will do this. I also don’t think that being incredible will make gossips less interesting. Seems like the less credible the gossip, the more enjoyable people find it. Ever read the Weekly World News?

And I have to say (though it seems like you’re spreading rumors about Supervisor Amy), I think holding a meeting without coworkers sounds genius. I did it earlier this year, and it was wonderful: my coworkers, who also didn’t want to be in the meeting, all stopped by my classroom and said, “Are we having a meeting?” I said, “Do you have anything for the agenda?” They replied in the negative, and I said, “Good meeting.” And away they went. When the supervisor (Mine isn’t named Amy) showed, I said that we had had a quick meeting already, and nobody had any particular concerns. It worked: the supervisor nodded and went away, his unholy thirst for meetings and networking sated, for the moment. (I had to further propitiate the beast with minutes for the “meeting,” which read a lot like the above: Short meeting, no concerns. BACK TO THE MIDDLE MANAGEMENT HELL FROM WHENCE YOU CAME, DEMON!) But it is nice of you to recognize that the workers are vital to the success of the company. Any chance of a raise? What’s that? Something about revenue and a signature? Hey, thanks – is that a – oh. The check’s in the mail, I see. Just a rumor, right? Yeah, that is a crime.

Okay – but now you’re saying that gossip gives us information? Useful information? On how to interact? I have to say, you’re not making that gossip seem less credible, here. Oh – Gossip GIRL gives better information, I got it. Gossip Girl 6? The 6th season? Never watched any of them, honestly; not my kind of thing. I prefer Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or the Simpsons.

Your right about control freaks. (And damn my word program — and browser — for not recognizing that mistake.) But I am not, in fact, wondering why you created this article.

Thanks for the comment.

What does t.b.h. mean out

In saying that, He was referring to the feast of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb as discussed
above. It is salutary to accept one’s losses, but there comes a
time when one must reaffirm what remains and even begin to explore previously untapped potentials.
Meaning of tbh?
Moreover, the modems may not be usable (as often is the case) with other operating systems
or other Windows versions, because the drivers are simply not available.
When you are tired and complain about your job – think
of the unemployed, the disabled, and those who wish they had your job.

So I looked up the Marriage Supper of the Lamb to which you refer, and I have to be honest: it’s a little creepy. But it’s creepy in kind of a spectacular way. Here’s why: it’s a reference to Revelations, which includes a verse saying that Jesus Christ, risen in the End Times, will take a bride. The interpretation I read explained that this was metaphoric, that the bride is not a literal bride, but rather the Church. And those who have been reborn and taken Christ as their savior will become the bride of Christ. Which is weird, because it makes me picture a Moonie-like mass wedding; and it is spectacular, because that is unmistakably and unapologetically gay. Just picture all the beer-bellied bearded suspendered workbooted intolerant redneck Christians you know: the ones who pray, in earnest, for a winning football team; guys who would beat their sons to death if those sons came out; picture them in white dresses and veils, holding bouquets and looking starry-eyed up at the bearded Christ smiling down on them at the altar. That is fab-u-lous.

I agree: it is healthy to accept that which cannot be changed. I am moving that way with Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the nomination, which it is now looking like he really won’t win, and not because of the media, but because of votes. But I am willing and able to reaffirm what remains: Hillary Clinton. No, she is not everything I hoped she would be; like her husband she is beholden to moneyed interests, and I fear will not help us fix out longterm financial problems. But she has managed to push back Bernie Sanders; that means she will not have much trouble with Donald Trump. And that makes me very happy. I also believe there is additional potential there which, if tapped, could help solve some of our other problems, like wage equality. I also think that Barack Obama’s presidency helped to reveal some of the hidden racism that still seethes in this country, bringing it to the surface and, hopefully, helping us thereby to heal; perhaps President Hillary Clinton could do the same with the deep sexism that still infects us.

Oh – and speaking of accepting one’s losses, I think it’s time to throw away that modem. Of course you can’t find drivers for it: who the hell uses modems any more? How many baud you got on that thing, big fella? Get yourself a nice wifi router and a cable connection in your house, and call it good. Come into the modern age.

Ahhh, now you’re speaking my language. I am tired and complaining about my job pretty much every day. My job is hard. It is exhausting, and often frustrating. Of course it makes me tired. It doesn’t help, either, that I worry about doing it well, which sometimes keeps me up at night; last night it was because I got pissed at one of my classes yesterday because one of them walked in and before I could even talk about what we were going to do that day, before I could even start class, he says, “Can we just do nothing today?” That drives me nuts. Because why am I the one who has to come up with the motivation to do work? I get paid either way, and I can find a new job. These frigging kids are the ones who are building their futures – or not. And they want to take the one hour of the day that could be dedicated to improving their English skills, and just sleep, instead? Bite me.

But you’re right. I am employed. It is fortunate, because I came very close to ruining my own career. And I am both lucky and healthy enough to have avoided disability. I should be thankful for what I have, and for what I have the opportunity to do with my remaining time in this life. Well, not thankful, because I don’t think there’s anyone to thank for what I have; because I don’t actually believe in God, nor do I want to marry him. I don’t think beards are attractive. Plus I feel like he’d be preachy. Like if you blew off your cleaning, left dirty dishes in the sink, he wouldn’t say anything, he’d just sigh and shake his head and look sad. I would hate that. So passive-aggressive. So not thankful for my good fortune, but – pleased with it. Sure. I can do that. Hey – thanks. Really. I appreciate the reminder.

And t.b.h. means “to be honest.” Like this: don’t fucking spam my blog again. It’s an asshole move.

Out.

Grateful

Dusty 2 Comments

(Note: this was mostly written Monday.)

Yesterday I was feeling down. All right, I admit it: I was feeling pissy. I have to go back to work today, after a two-week vacation, part of which was spent visiting my father’s family in San Diego. And as an introvert, I do mean “spent:” it costs me energy and will to go a-visitin’, to put on my happy face first thing in the morning (because I was staying with my aunt and uncle, who are lovely people – but unfortunately early risers, at least my uncle, who was up with or before me every morning) and then keep it there all day, even when I am enjoying myself, as I did on this trip. But the days after a trip like that are precious layers of rest in which I can wrap myself, like armor, against the day I have to go back to being around people (No, my wife and pets don’t count: being with them is restful, as I do not ever have to put on an appearance or affect. And I am supremely grateful that that should be so.). And today’s the day, so yesterday was my last day of resting: hence, pissy. My rest-armor still feels thin.

Plus, today isn’t going to be a good day of work. I frequently enjoy my job, more frequently don’t mind it too much, and sometimes can’t stand it: today is going to be one of those last. My current employer takes the first day of the new semester as a chance for professional development, which they do like the corporation they are: all of the employees at the various sites all have to converge at a single school – luckily, it’s mine; half of the schools are in Phoenix, and those poor bastards have to start their morning with a three-hour commute in order to get in on this little hootenanny – and we start with a motivational speech from our CEO, a polished politician who has probably never taught a day in his life; then a team-building exercise generally involving random groups (for the last two I have been grouped with my boss, who’s a nice guy, but – yikes!) and competition and office supplies: we have built wind-driven vehicles out of pencils and paper and aluminum cans; we have had to open sealed envelopes and break apart chains of paper clips using nothing but a single pencil per team member. Then we will have “breakout sessions,” which are individual seminars on teaching methods, none of which I will ever, ever use. Then a “networking lunch,” and yes, it actually says that on the schedule of events; followed by another “breakout session” and then a final group discussion of the importance of what we do, especially what we have done here today, and the granting of awards which I will never win (My data is insufficiently polished.). It is a complete waste of time. Part of me is happy that I don’t have students to deal with – but more of me realizes that dealing with students is actually what I do, and I do it well and it is better that it be done; therefore any day that is spent without students, and also not spent on preparing for students, is wasted time. Today will be wasted time. I suppose it’s possible that I will find something useful in one of these meetings, but in fifteen years of being professionally developed, that has rarely been true; I’m not holding out much hope for today.

And the last thing is this: I’m dreading Tuesday, too – the return of students. Not because I don’t like my students; I do, most of the time, and some of them all of the time. Not because it’s going to be a terribly hard day of teaching: we’ll mostly go over old work and start orienting ourselves for the new semester, which is more big picture stuff, less actual sifting through the ash for things that survived the fire (Because that’s what I do: the searing heat of modern life has destroyed much of the literature I would have taught fifty years ago, made it impossible for young people today to read and appreciate and gain from, along with the understanding of the importance of the skills centered around that literature, namely reading and writing and thinking.); I’m dreading Tuesday because of grades. Two and a half weeks ago, I gave my students final exams, and collected final projects, and then I did the thing I hate most about teaching: I assigned grades. I passed a final judgment on them, categorized and evaluated them – emphasis on the “value,” in our current view of school as a churn that brings the cream to the top and curdles what’s left, a process in which grades are the vital element, the stick that I thrust up and down and swirl around through them, beating them until they convert from liquid to solid and start turning sour. And now I will have to see them again. I know several of them are going to be upset, generally because that 90% slipped down to an 89%, and their letter went from A to B. And they’re going to want to know why. Oh, I’ll be able to tell them; but it will be upsetting for them to know how they failed to achieve their goal of straight As, to know that they couldn’t quite or didn’t quite muster enough wherewithal to accomplish their best result. They will feel defeated and futile. They will also blame me, though they may not say it, and it will strain our working relationship. And as for me, I will be unable to convince them that grades are meaningless, that nobody should pay attention to them ever, least of all the students who get them. I wish I could convince them of that. I do try. But then, because it is my job, I have to make myself a hypocrite, by assigning grades, by placing them into arbitrary categories which have actual consequences in their real lives, and I have to try to do that in a logical manner, as contradictory as that sounds. Then I have to face them with the result, and admit that I am not right when I say that grades don’t matter. Even though I should be.

So yeah, not a good week ahead of me. And it made my mood go black and jagged Sunday afternoon – despite the fact that I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens earlier on Sunday, and it was awesome. But work, and grades, and breakouts that are a lot more like imprisonings.

But then two things happened last night. One was this: Toni and I watched an episode of Inside Man, a show created by and starring Morgan Spurlock, our favorite documentary filmmaker – Supersize Me quite literally changed our lives, and we’ve watched everything he’s done since then – about immigration. And in the show, Spurlock tries to go into the lives of people involved in a particular issue; in this case, he went and picked oranges with the migrant workers, visited their homes, met their families.

I saw people who work ten hours or more a day, hauling 90-pound bags of oranges up and down 20-foot ladders that aren’t really propped on anything, just sort of leaned against a tree’s leafy boughs and then driven down by the picker’s weight until, hopefully, a branch catches and holds it; they dump these bags into enormous tubs which must hold a half a ton of oranges: a tub for which they are paid 95 cents. On a good day they fill ten tubs – which takes ten-plus bags of oranges per tub — and make a little more than minimum wage. A family of six, with two working parents, lived on around $25,000 a year – and that’s without any social services, as they are illegal immigrants and therefore have no access to health care or food stamps or any other government programs that require a social security card, which they can’t get. The father of the family had open-heart surgery last year, and was back in the orange groves six weeks later, because he doesn’t get disability or sick leave or unemployment, and now he had a hospital bill to pay along with feeding his family. Hey: at least they pay taxes.

And I realized: my god, my job is easy. Well, okay – no, it isn’t; it requires a tremendous amount of knowledge and preparation and dedication and patience and energy to do it, and even more to do it well, which I think I do. But it certainly isn’t back-breaking. It won’t cripple me before I’m fifty, as farm labor will. I won’t say I make a decent living, because I don’t think what I’m paid is decent; but it isn’t obscene, which is what I would call farm labor wages in this day and age. I don’t live my life in fear of being discovered, because any discovery by authorities – anything, a traffic stop, an accident, any official report of any kind – would lead to jail and deportation.

It made my crappy Monday seem a whole lot less onerous. Still unpleasant, but no more than that.

The second thing that happened was this: my mother called and told me that my uncle is seriously ill. Maybe dying. And it’s a cliché, but – how can you not think of the good things in your life when you hear that someone else is about to lose everything? Okay: I have a job that drives me crazy, and a vocation on top of that that frequently leaves me feeling frustrated and insignificant; but I’m not dying. I have years and decades ahead of me to solve the problems that face me now. And even if I never solve them, I have a lovely and pleasant life: I have a wife who is my soulmate, who is my apotheosis of beauty and of kindness, and who makes me laugh all the time; I have pets that love me unconditionally; I live in a beautiful city, where the sun shines almost every day, on rocks inscribed with poems. I have all of my senses, and I can hear music and see art and taste coffee and smell perfume and feel my new warm socks on my feet. I have all of this, and I’m mad because – what? Because I’m going to be bored? People who don’t understand what I do will presume to teach me how to do it better? Because I can’t sit at home for several hours, as I’ve been able to do for most of the past two weeks?

So rather than coming on here and ranting about the irritations and frustrations of teaching, and of working for a corporation with corporate-style management, and of the state of education today (And let me break the narrative thread here and say: it’s Tuesday now, since I didn’t get this piece finished yesterday morning, and after a full day of professional development on Data-Driven Instruction, Toni and I watched the next episode of Inside Man: which was about education. So believe me when I say I have some ranting to do.), I would like to say this: I am grateful. I don’t want to say thankful, as most of the things I have that make me happy are not due to another person’s actions, and of course I believe in neither God nor fate; though I will say I am thankful for those people who did influence me: I am thankful to Stephen King and John Steinbeck, Edgar Allan Poe and Piers Anthony, Robert Frost and William Shakespeare and James Baldwin and Virginia Woolf and all the rest, for writing and publishing their work; I am thankful to Rocco MacDougall and Nick Roberts for teaching what their hearts and minds told them to teach; I am thankful to my parents for raising me to be a thinking person and a compassionate person; I am thankful most of all to Toni for asking me if I wanted gum, and for actually coming when I invited her to my vampire-themed LARPing session: most people would not have done so. I am very thankful that she did.

But beyond that, I am, if not thankful, grateful: a word that comes from gratus, the Latin for “pleasing.” I am pleased: pleased with who I am, and where I am, and what I am. The life around me fills me with pleasure, today, and yesterday, and tomorrow. Life is good, and I have it still.

Now let’s get to work.