once again, i woke up at about 2 am. i walked into my children's rooms, hugged each as they were sleeping, and whispered a message into their dreams, something about how much i loved them. i did the same for my wife, although i think she was a bit more conscious when i spoke to her...

this morning, i went to the dentist's office in ala moana. she was a former student of mine in acupuncture. during a cleaning, she asked me about why i went into sped, and how i felt now that i have not been treating people as actively as before. i told her about how i would like to continue treating people, but now that i have a job as a sped teacher, it tends to be hard. each thing, each activity, tends to deconstruct into a thousand other things, such that i tend to get overwhelmed. this was what happened with this whole teaching thing. don't get me wrong. i love teaching, and consider myself a passionate teacher, always trying to improve, so that my students can improve. but there are a lot of things involved in teaching that aren't so easy or fun (as there are in all jobs), and that cannot be neatly bundled up in an 8 or 10 hour work day. that, combined with parenting, which is similarly amorphous and difficult to handle, leads to, well, a loss of something...

in any case, because i am awake at, now, 3 am, i was thinking about what is wrong with me. i do think that i am depressed, and perhaps have been for some time now. but in the background, a part of my mind is always searching for an answer. here are some fragments:

- wife and i saw "the incredible burt wonderstone", which was a movie that left a decidedly bad taste in my spirit... as one reviewer aptly put it, "now you see it, now you wish you hadn't." BUT, one character, an old man in a retirement home, the once beloved magician named halloway, did interest me. it was he who pointed out to the main character, burt wonderstone, that he had lost his love of magic, that he had turned what he loved into the rote and routine. magic was that moment when you saw the wonder in the eyes of a child, and for that moment, anything was possible... i thought about what that moment was for me, in what i do. as an acupuncturist, it was when i could see hope in a patient's eyes, and when there was relief from pain or suffering... as a teacher, it is when i see a child feel inspired and confident in discovering his/her own capabilities. in everything, it is finding purpose in the love i feel for others, a love funneled or focused through a skill set/occupation.

- tonight, we let the kids watch toonami on cartoon network. willow was raptly paying attention to naruto. in the episode, haku, a younger ninja who was in the employ of zabuza, a ruthless killer, told his story to naruto. i honestly never really paid attention to that arc of the storyline, for some reason, so i was half-listening as i passed the room. haku lost both of his parents, and it had something to do with his bloodline limit, a special sort of power that cannot be acquired, as it is "genetic." in any case, haku said that what was the worst thing about his life after that was not that he had lost his parents; it was that he had lost his purpose. he sat bereft of purpose until zabuza, who could perceive the child's hidden power, "rescued" him and gave him a cause to live for... i thought of myself, who oftentimes felt a similar loss of purpose...

- i heard an interview with phillip roth, author of portnoy's complaint and other novels that i have never read. anyway, it was his birthday, and he was talking about how he had officially retired from writing, and what a relief it was, as he could just experience life, and not always think about how he was going to use his experiences to fashion a good story... the interview struck me with the sense of writing as a vocation, not as some frivolous activity.

ANYWAY, i really am thinking about purpose at this moment. i need to return to it, in order to survive.