9/28/2020

 yes, i am accelerating my routines now. i suppose that my work life has fallen into place. every day, i have a plan, and my ea and i execute it efficiently. even the kids (when they come) have fallen into the plan, and have steadily improved under our watch. so i guess with things settled on that front, i'm able to pursue my personal interests with greater fidelity...

i'm really into this guy named adam mizner. he's a taijiquan person. however, he's different in that he's demonstrated fajin under conditions that i would consider to be more "real life." and he's explained the phenomena clearly and simply. that's not to say that he's made it easy. it's clear that, for him, the path is, as he puts it, "bitter." it involves a lot of sitting and standing... a lot of drudge work. meditation and stuff. but i guess since i'm an older coot, i'm okay with it. i feel like i've been told to do that sort of work all my life, but as a younger fool, i'd only done those things half-heartedly. but with my heart settled, and fine with pursuing my desires, i suppose it's a lot easier. there's less resistance now. so i do sitting meditation regularly in my routine, and i also do standing meditation (zhan zhuang).

i did some zhan zhuang this afternoon. i think i'm getting better at it. i just keep telling myself "open and drop." that is, when i encounter or am made aware of tension in my body, i repeatedly just tell it to "open and drop." my shoulders start to burn (throughout the 30 minutes, i'm holding my arms out in front of me), but whereas before i would have a lot of tension that would build over the course of the meditation time (to the point where things would be trembling), now, i'm able to just "notice" the pain and release it. it never quite "releases," but i guess i'm reducing the tensing as much as possible. i also notice tension in my hips and buttocks, and release it as much as i can (i imagine this is following the taijiquan idea of "opening the kwa"). all that tension goes down to my legs and to my feet. it honestly feels as though my feet are being smashed into the ground. i don't know how to really release the tension from my legs, because they are the supports, and it doesn't seem as though the released tension has anywhere to go. but i imagine i'm releasing things there anyway.

yes, yes, i've probably said similar things before. and i've been on other trips or wagons before, riding on hopes for something better. but i don't know, maybe something feels different now. again, there just seems to be less resistance. i think in the past that i felt guilty or something for following my desires. i think i wrestled a lot with feelings of obligation or duty, or the expectations of others. but as i get older, i realize that life is too short, and that i might as well honor this body and this spirit by following the paths i'm interested in... after all, in a few years, i may not be able to do these things. i may be just a decrepit old man. so i'm just going to try to better myself in the mean time.

*****

i have been thinking a lot about my psyche. about how, deep down, i think i do things for the attention of women. even figurative women (muses). i was recalling my life when i was like about four or five years old. back then, i was in the koteki marching band for the tenrikyo religion. i was likely the youngest kid there at the time. there were a few instances where, i recall, i was so tired marching that i kept going in a daze, even when everyone stopped. and i remember struggling with the whole left-right-left thing (because i could never quite remember which side was left and which side was right). anyway, in the early years of my participation in that band, i was always surrounded by these pre-teen to teenage girls. i guess they all thought i was cute or something, and adopted me as their unofficial mascot. i loved the attention, but it seemed contradictory. paradoxical. i think the girls lavished attention on me because i was so young and so inescapably innocent... but i wasn't, and didn't want to be. the odd thing was that, as i grew older, there was this feeling that i wanted to be understood and accepted as an equal, but the thing was, there was this templated relationship with women that always made of me this goody-goody child. i didn't know how to relate to women on a "level playing field." in fact, i always thought the only thing they could love or respect about me was my capacity to always be a "good guy." in a lot of ways, i am still like that, trapped by a pattern of my youth.

this has interfered and interrupted with my capacity to express love (and lust) because the me that could speak of such things and that could even have those sorts of feelings was always buried beneath something that had to maintain this "cute" ineffectual facade. in a lot of ways, that aspect of me- i think- is dead. i can't conceive of it. i couldn't conceive of it, even when things were literally "in my face." i can't summon those feelings within myself... i can't create a believable story of it... somehow, those aspects of myself, if they even still exist, are so weak... they speak through decades of denial and silence.

so that's the paradox. i perform for these female audiences. maybe even now i still do. i have realized that "relating" to real women in the sense of having them pay attention to me in the way i'd want them to- well, it's impossible, and laughable, and disloyal. so i don't really feel that much (which is a good thing, or it would make it impossible for me to function). but i think the pattern still imposes itself upon me. in my weaker moments, i imagine some "angel" that would have seen me and known me, and felt sympathetic to me... similar to those teen girls who once, long ago, saw fit to bestow upon me the blessing of their attentions... unreachable. unattainable.

i used to have fantasies about striking up conversations with attractive women... i mean, women for whom attraction was mutual (like, really? did any ever exist?)... playing the game within conversation and deed. but it never happened...

my relationship with my wife, which really was the first and only real "relationship" i ever had... it was actually more of a friendship that developed into something deeper. and perhaps that was the best way - maybe the only way- that something could have happened. because i likely would never have broken out of the prison of my warped and distorted way of relating. i simply couldn't... i know people in high school who almost despised my way of relating... my penchant for putting women on pedestals and almost worshipping them, while simultaneously negating my own existence... at the time, it was- how should i put it- so emotional, so "right." i guess it sort of goes along with the whole adolescent mentality, the "drama" of it... but it too, i see now, was a trap... always a trap of negating or erasing the self in the face of this irreconcilable gap between myself and the idealized women...

well, enough psycho-babble for one day...

9/27/2020

 it is sunday. i have been rushing through my routines, as usual... nothing really new to report. i went to my father-in-law's house for an errand, and there, i got to see his monstrous garden. when i asked him why his plants were so huge, he didn't really give me an answer. i asked him how he prepared his soil, and he just said that he added nitrogen to it. well, somehow he has successful fertile plants growing... while my plants are slowly drying in the sun. maybe it has to do with the fact that i can't monitor my plants as much nowadays since i am working... i water the plants sometimes only once a day (before i go to work, in the darkness of early morning)... it would be nice if my son watered them later in the day... but he doesn't. and sometimes, lately, i just come home and basically collapse... so, bottom line, no regular watering. this, in the middle of a few days with no rain.

right now, there is news that trump's tax returns have finally been seen by reporters. great. but i feel that his supporters are so bone-headed, that they will continue to support this grifter. a third of our country is, frankly, a lost cause.

*****

hmm... i don't know what else to really talk about.

yesterday, i drove down with my wife to aoki's, just to get some shave ice. we sat on the rainbow bench, and ate our rainbow shave ice. my wife was looking for the day geckos that frequent the trash bins, likely licking up the colorful syrups to augment their vibrant colors... only, yesterday, they weren't really to be seen. it's likely because yesterday was the first day that aoki's opened up in a long time (due to the pandemic). so they haven't caught on to the reopened system yet. funny, though... as we were ordering our shave ice, i did see one of those glittering green geckos crawl up behind the register.

the drive to and from haleiwa was pretty nondescript. you could see places where some assholes had tried to burn the landscape. periodically, along the road to haleiwa, you would see regions that were blackened or browned by a brush fire. there was one grove of coffee trees, protected by a windbreak of norfolk pines (?)... you could see the browned lower branches of a stand of the pines, where a fire had almost broken through to the vulnerable valuable crops beyond...

i saw the water tank, just near the crest of that final hill where you see the blue horizon of the sea stretch out below the land. for some reason, i had this image of that same water tank in years, decades, before... and i imagined a group of young people sneaking up on top of it, on the dusty surface, and having sex beneath the stars... and then, afterwards, restless, this youngish guy (with a hippie beard) grabs a spray can and starts to create art... perhaps in the afterglow (i remember thinking this word specifically) of intimacy, inspired... not in a desperate passionate way, but a quiet reflective mood. and his girlfriend watches silently, pretending to be asleep.

my wife mentioned that the mountains, this close, looked as though they were painted... a verdant green, highlighted by the setting sun. i saw mt. kaala, with its observatory so high up. it's supposed to be the highest point on our island... i had a thought of the second place mountain, just adjacent, and how jealous it was... that it was nameless just because another had assembled a slightly larger pile of rocks about itself.

dream - 9/26/2020

 it's actually only been 9/26 for an hour or two, but...

the dreams were fitful. basically, all i have are a collection of images.

in one, there was this food processor, which basically resembled one of those curved vent pipes on ships... to operate, you basically just shove food down the pipe, and eventually, it gets sucked down somewhere to props that chop it up safely. when i initially passed it, there was this huge cake of homer simpson on it. it had been made by my daughter, apparently, but no one had touched it. i realized it wouldn't drain in its present state, so i started to collapse the cake so that the fragmented pieces would be pulled down the drain. i remember the smell of the cake as i broke it up- maybe, at the time, in the real world, my wife was making butter mochi or something, because i seem to recall the smell as being good (to me). later, i piled on some other discarded food, this stuff, not as appetizing, some sort of cabbage and meat deal... i recall my wife (or my mom) commenting on these "old style" food processors...

funny, but as i was pushing food down and watching it drain, i recall thinking about ron saiki. for some reason, he had been in one of my classes or something, and forwarded this untoward and completely backward view continuing to support the trump administration, when reality had long since verified him to be the complete and utter failure that he is. i recall thinking of other people, including reid (this other classmate of mine from high school, who, upon the election of trump, had basically verified that he'd voted for him)... even this reid was no longer a supporter, converted after a long hard denial of the truth...

there was this one scene where our family was eating at some dark, oak wood restaurant. and donnie yen came up to thank this one guy rickie, who apparently had starred in a kung fu movie long ago with donnie. donnie himself was sitting with his old friend and co-star jet li. people were thinking about how nice the guy was, for always recognizing even old and somewhat obscure associations. he was not someone who forgot the "little people." yet a part of me, perhaps influenced by my recent reading of "old school" by tobias wolff and the protagonist's adolescent feelings of rebellion stirred by ayn rand's "fountainhead", felt that donnie yen was being ingratiating... that true warriors didn't give a shit about the little people... i also think i was dreaming of donnie yen and jet li because, prior to collapsing in sleep, i had been watching that awesome scene from "hero" in which sky and nameless battle in their minds...

...can't recall much else from this fitful dream...

9/25/2020

i'm writing this from work. i have striven to work through my routines in order (i actually tried to alternate "mental stuff" from "physical stuff" to maintain some sort of "balance" in my development)... but life sort of intervenes. particularly my wednesdays, when i put in a full day at my "day job" teaching special education students at an elementary school and then proceed to teach at the acupuncture school that evening. i don't even fully realize how tired i am until i literally start dropping off. yesterday (thursday), i basically came home, went to my parents' house to check on their rattling, dancing washing machine, and then returned, dropping off into a fitful sleep (backgrounded by my wife's viewings of the great british? bake-off and other miscellaneous noises of family life). i didn't get up until about 11 pm, and then, only to grab a bite to eat, before i collapsed upstairs.

...but in any case, i'm still driven to complete my tasks... sort of, i guess, the way my wife wants to close her rings. so i'm doing what i can in the few down times that i'm afforded. i had a no-show for my 11:30-12:30 distance learning session, and another no-show (mom texted and said that they were on the road) from 12:30-1:30. so i used the time to finish up my reading of 3 chapters... i'd read the last short story in otessa moshfegh's book, "homesick..."; then a short story in amy hemphill's collection; and finally, a chapter in tobias wolff's book "old school." all very different writers. although hemphill has a lot of acclaim, i can't truly "get" her stories. they at times feel too abstract- or perhaps "abstract" is the wrong word... i sense that she is too distanced or nuanced (appropriate?), and not direct. there definitely is a place for the oblique attack... to touch on issues indirectly... but i feel so misdirected that i don't see precisely what is the point. yes, people are rarely direct when describing pain, which can be a purposeful or unconscious blind spot... but if the story so obfuscates the pain that we don't know where to place it, or how destructive it has been, then i have a difficult time connecting to or sympathizing with it. that's how i feel, anyway. i think her most effective story, at least for me, was the one about knitting. i believe the woman in that story had had an abortion, and dealt with the trauma of that loss (while sort of living in parallel to another woman who was supported in raising her own child) through obsessive knitting. that one, i felt i got... her most famous story, "in the graveyard where ...", well, again, i just didn't get it. maybe upon subsequent readings or something, i might be able to access more of what the story was getting at. but right now, it stirs no memories or connections with me.

otessa moshfegh... her stories were all about "off" and dysfunctional tangles of lives. there was a sort of ugliness and futility in them that left a sort of bad taste in the mouth. and yet, that did have a particular flavor. and in some senses, the various and sundry ways that people tie their narrative storylines into effective nooses is... well, interesting. i also find her fascinating in her effortless skill in being a chameleon, changing her voice and setting and character completely from one story to another.

i suppose of all the "short story" writers i've read recently, i identify the most with tobias wolff. not only is he male, and writing a memoir of sorts (true?) of his experiences in an all boys' private school... but his narrative structure... i would say, the "flesh" of the prose... is resonant with me. somehow, at times, i feel that the author's job is to convey the solidity of a thing, and to do it with words- apt ones. at times i feel the absence, the "unsaid" of the women writers i've read... well, it can be artful, but i guess because i'm a stupid man, i need to feel that fucking fist hit me square in the jaw... one of the other things i like about "old school" is that it is precisely about writers and writing. it is about young boys aspiring to be writers, and their encounters with the great figures of their time: so far, robert frost and ayn rand (... i know, that latter... the fascination of ayn rand explains a lot of republican sentiments, actually... the "selfish" ideology).

*****

so again, i've used this down time to read. i'm now using some of this down time to write in my blog. i don't know who reads this, or why... but i think of late that this blog affords me an opportunity to compose a sort of "public journal." in a sense, it is me shitting my every day concerns out onto the screen, so i'm "empty" for more muse-like (muse-ish? amuseing?) or inspired thoughts to start to flit into my head. doesn't really work, really. my mind, dare i say it, is largely a repetition of patterned lusts, and patterned denials... patterns, really... and the absurd thing is that no matter how often i see those patterns, i never break away from them. in fact, perhaps life is the constant playing of the same game over and over and over again. you know there's no way to win, not really, but what else is there to do?

i feel lust is like an energy. at the moment, i appreciate it distantly, almost in the abstract. it's fascinating to watch its patterns. but i'm not on fire. and perhaps that's a good thing. perhaps that is the distance afforded by becoming an old man, that you can watch the fire on the mountain, and not discover that your own pants are on fire. you can study the shape of the flames in an almost aesthetic way... even feel the sunburn of it... but ...

---at this point, i was interrupted... a student of mine popped up in the google meet, and it was business as usual. after that meeting, i had a webex meeting about a virtual stem camp that a few teachers in the district are trying to organize and put together. unfortunately, we have very little buy-in, particularly from my own school, which is discouraging... but we still thought through a pretty good program, and this weekend, the intention is to test out our challenge, to see if it is even feasible... for adults.

i came home, and basically passed out... i had a somewhat restless sleep on the living room floor, surrounded by the sounds of life about me (hmm... sounds familiar?). and it is now 1:40. i know the kids are up, upstairs, likely chatting with their friends or playing computer games... i am very little a part of their lives at this stage... just this grumpy stranger who comes home to eat and collapse.

9/20/2020

 it's only been a couple of days. that's because i have really been driving through my routines. at the moment, i feel good about the fact that i have been able to do that, been able to go through a lot of these tasks. then again, maybe i'm obsessing over that because i feel depressed and disappointed... again, rgb died on friday. and it seems that the legacy of that wonderful woman, that diminutive warrior, will all go to shit. the gop and their followers (evangelical christians, nazis, white supremacists, racists, ignoramouses, all...) are truly... i don't know. in my more generous and charitable moments, i label them as misguided. but largely, i feel that they are evil. and in both cases, i know in my bones that they are destroying our country, and destroying our world. and in the face of that, what are we? what am i?

maybe that's why i return to the little things. because i feel helpless in the face of the big ones.

i can be kind and patient with the children in my life. i can be kind and patient with my plants and fish. i can try to be generous with the world around me. i can aspire to the goals i set for myself, whether in spirituality or art. i can do all these things.

but i despair of changing the world. of changing the hearts of this world. i have tried. and i have witnessed first hand how people will cling to evil and deception and hate. people who you would otherwise assume to be good, decent people. they laugh in the face of the daily deluge of hypocrisy and theft and racism and sexism... they still have that insane fire in their eyes, and the cries that issue from their throats are an incoherent babble. they sound like animals... and in other moments, they are quiet and firm in their resolve... comfortable with their complicity with hatred.

i despair of changing the world, because i have found that you cannot change these people. you cannot reason with them. you cannot turn them with love.

*****

what if the trump gets reelected? what if the country goes 4 more years down this path of "greatness"? i suppose... i suppose i must continue to be a good person, even as it becomes unfashionable. i will watch (with sadness) as the hypocrites rise up in their ascendancy, mouthing the bible while repeating the darkest moments of history, completely ignorant... or completely complicit.

... but i will forget about the idiots. they only stir me to despair and rage.

i will instead look only upon the children, and my family, and my friends... and always to the outcast. we must always look actively for the people who are downtrodden and left out. we must always be their advocate, when they have no voice. we must always be their friend, when they are alone. looking upon these people... this brings me to my higher self. this leads me to be the person i know i can be.

it is far better to focus on this, then to feel an unfulfillable rage.

*****

i understand now why my robotics students complain when their group has chosen a leader who is taking things in the wrong direction. it's not simply a feeling that their own ideas are being dismissed. it is a despair that the group is going to a dead end, and there's no recourse- nothing they can do about it. because i, as their teacher, refuse to intervene. "work it out," i say. "that's democracy."

... i suppose, upon reflection, that it would be best to have groups splinter... if they cannot reconcile their differences... have smaller groups attempt their own ideas.

there is little that is more frustrating than a tree in a box.

9/18/2020

 hello, yes, it's been another week. as i mentioned earlier, my ea and i have fallen into a sort of comfortable routine. i think we're doing a good job. if there's any failing, it's due to poor attendance by some of my students. otherwise, in the time that we have, we're doing all that we can. i think, at the same time, that the students that do come regularly are feeling comfortable with us, and feeling a sort of security in the routines that we establish. i like that feeling, when everything "works."

however... in a few weeks, quarter 1 comes to an end, and the superintendent has basically mandated that schools will go into hybrid mode... which means that more students will be coming onto campus shortly. our little idyllic outdoor classroom will have to move indoors. not a bad thing, really, but it is much less safe. i will have to make radical adjustments to the classroom; move shelves and such to promote more ventilation through the room. i know the other teachers, who have just started to get used to doing distance teaching, will have to adjust yet again to another schedule and another format...

*****

i wonder if i'm really a writer. i don't really have stories so much as static concepts. i'm not comfortable with the play of conversation, or the processes of plot. or, perhaps, there's a tension between the "flow" of conversation and plot, and the static ideas i have in my head. sometimes, oftentimes, i get sort of carried away in conveying a conversation or a plot, and am led astray from where i actually wanted to go with the story. maybe it's a sign that there's a fault in the "static" concept i am trying to convey. maybe there's a problem in how i approach writing, that is, with some sort of preconceived notion of where i'm trying to get to. maybe i'm supposed to just place myself plumb in the middle of some quandary, and then (with my characters) write my way out of it...

*****

i think there's a side of me that is sort of mechanized. what i mean is, it likes systems. it likes routines. it likes to just check the boxes. it likes everything sort of contained... not exactly minimal effort, but just enough effort to pretend accomplishment. i don't overextend. because in this mindset, there is definitely a point where the system breaks if you try too hard at any one thing. 

and then there's a side of me- maybe rarer nowadays, especially as i get older- that likes to break things.

art is a compromise, or battle, (i'm not sure which) between those two aspects.

*****

i feel pretty empty nowadays. i am mainly my work. or rather, i'm mainly just surviving from day to day. there are things left undone (always things left undone), but if there's any wisdom i have, it's that you have to make time for other things. you have to make time for yourself. for other aspects of yourself. because if you forget about yourself, then you will impoverish yourself, and then you won't be happy (in even a minimal way), and will return to yourself like an unfriendly stranger. you need to keep in touch. keep in touch with all aspects of your life.

*****

ruth bader ginsberg died today. i'm torn between celebrating and honoring her courageous life, mourning her loss, feeling visceral anger towards the gop and its supporters for their fundamental hypocrisy, and worrying for rbg's legacy (and, for that matter, the survival of our great democratic experiment).

*****

i wonder what it is in me that longs for new relationships. i also wonder what it is in me that makes the imagination of new relationships completely impossible and implausible...

9/12/2020

 yes, it's been another tiring week. i think my ea and i have fallen into a good routine, where we address student objectives rapidly. and in the morning and after school, i'm able to (mostly) meet with my distance learners, and progress with them. life hasn't been much more than this, actually. i still return home exhausted. i have managed to take care of the plants more. i water them in the evenings (sometimes also in the mornings before going to work, when it is still very dark). i also turn the two compost piles i've created. the first, generated more than a month ago, is looking very good. it is all dark, almost one consistency... although they say that it's not truly compost until you can't recognize what's in it. currently, you can still make out bits of leaves and hair (yes, you read that right- for this pile, i utilized a bunch of hair from the barber shop that i go to... hair, pound for pound, contains more nitrogen than most sources, including manure). the second pile is more recent, and is made from a lot of leaves. in fact, i think i was trying to reverse the experiment of the first pile. the first pile was done in a ratio of 2 parts "green" (nitrogenous) waste to 1 part "brown" (carbon) waste. this second pile reverses that ratio. i'd just like to see which one produces better compost, faster...

i should also mention that, when the occasion is appropriate, i also do pee on the compost piles. urine is also a ready source of nitrogen, and (unlike feces) is relatively clean and bacteria free.

i also have a vermicompost (worm) bin. for a while, it's been stinking up really bad, mainly because i haven't been maintaining it, and i haven't been allowing it to breathe. most things, even in the decomposition process, require a lot of oxygen. denying oxygen (anaerobic processes) usually lead to fermentation and putrescence... a build up of a lot of toxic substances. toxic, meaning, not conducive to life. so any way, what i have been doing is tilting the vermicompost bin on its side to drain off the excess liquid (too much liquid can be fatal for the worms, and also chokes off the oxygen). i then "turn" the contents of the vermicompost bin, in a manner similar to the way i turn the compost piles... this eliminates compaction and brings more oxygen to all parts of the bin. now, the bin seems a bit less smelly, and the worms seem more animated and happy...

*****

i have been watching more taijiquan videos of late. for a while i despaired of doing taijiquan. i mean, i saw videos of mma fighters trying to "debunk" traditional martial arts styles from china, basically by setting up matches and then proceeding to kick the asses of so-called masters... well, after seeing some of that, i realized, or thought i realized, that some of these traditional styles are not functional in real world fighting situations... which basically meant that they had no point, really, outside from looking really fancy. taijiquan, which never had much of a reputation as being an effective martial art anyway, seemed pretty pointless from that standpoint... maybe a moving yoga or something, for elderly people like me... but little else.

anyway, i have recently been watching videos of more modern masters of taijiquan, who are able to embody some of the high-sounding principles and techniques of the art. one was pretty convincing, and demonstrated how he was able to neutralize almost any attack, whether it was a strike, kick, or grappling move. it had to do with what is called fajin, or the emission of power... this master demonstrated that fajin had nothing to do with physics or structure, as many previous practitioners had expressed. rather, true fajin was on another level entirely, and could be communicated purely by touch.

i know it sounds fake. but i've read some of the classics, and i've seen old masters demonstrate similar techniques. and so, now, i'm willing to try to do taijiquan again, but in earnest. i'm not going to focus on forms (which are actually not important, in the sense of imparting useable techniques...). rather, i'm going to focus on the internal elements, particularly song (relax) and ding (suspend). i'm returning to the practice of zhan zhuang (pole standing), which has always been somewhat mysterious to me. when i used to do it, my body would spontaneously start vibrating and twisting... i thought it was maybe due to muscle fatigue. but now, i'm beginning to think that it has something to do with the release of pent up tension in the body. through regular zhan zhuang, i'm hoping to relax internally. this is the first step to building up the qi that makes internal martial arts possible...

yes, maybe it's a lot of hokey baloney stuff. but what have i got to lose? i'm no spring chicken. i can't do boxing or muay thai any better than someone half my age. i'd more likely injure myself. why not do something harmless like this?

*****

oh, i'm excited about doing this writing workshop with this guy named jason fong. he's a writer for some shows (not sure which). but he holds these free workshops. i watched the video of the process in those workshops, and it seems like a lot of fun. basically, about four or five people meet together, write together, and then "read" their scripts. then they get immediate feedback... i think maybe the camaraderie would make the writing process come alive. at least, that's the hope. i think writing can become very solipsistic and depressing and uncertain when it is always done alone.

9/6/2020

 i realize i haven't written in this blog for ages. work started in earnest, and i kind of got overwhelmed with it all. just to let you know, i have been teaching half of my students face to face, and the other half i have been treating distance. initially, i had made a plan to teach everyone synchronously (meaning all at once). i think i had wanted to try this because i was used to teaching my acupoints class synchronously, with some students immediately before me, and other students over the computer. but my situation at the public school is an entirely different animal. at the public school, i am a special education teacher for students across three grade levels, and each student has a very different (individualized) plan. so, upon reflection, it is next to impossible to teach all of these students synchronously, because there is not "one message," so to speak, that i am trying to deliver.

so my plans evolved very rapidly over time. i determined that it would be better to just focus on the in person students during the time that they were there. and that would allow me to focus on the distance learners in one-on-one, one hour sessions. it would stretch my day very long (i basically start from 6:30, and run non stop until 2:30), but it would allow me to really focus on each and every student. i also opted to teach students on an individual basis, instead of trying to group them. the students are all very different, and they all require, or rather do best in, one-on-one situations. i chunk instruction into tiny, five minute segments, and my ea and i just rotate through the entire group of students rapidly. so far, that has worked out well.

...in any case, that's what's been going down at work. i have been returning from school pretty burnt out and exhausted, and haven't focused on anything. in fact, on most days, i would return and just veg out and go to sleep. and then i would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning to begin the next cycle...

*****

there are different ways of feeling. at times, i feel functional. i feel like a weapon or a tool. my focus is on the task at hand. and it feels good in a sense, but it automatically means that i am numb to myself.

then, there is the mentality of building the self. that's where all of my little routines come in. there is an image of the self, or of the life related to the self, that i feel invested in protecting and building up.

i'm sure there are other ways of feeling, but at the moment, i oscillate between those two.

it takes me time to shift gears. well, let me amend that, i am able to shift into first gear pretty quickly, although i am generally reluctant to. but to shift into the second gear... it feels as though i am rebuilding myself and my life from the ground up, and it is a work in remembering and reconstructing.

*****

it is hot nowadays. my plants are okay, but some are drying up. in fact, with my work schedule, i haven't been as diligent in watering the plants, and i kind of rely upon my son to take care of it. however, he sometimes doesn't do it, and i return in the afternoon to see the plants all wilted...

*****

oh well, i know it's sort of boring, but i haven't got much else to talk about.