25 RANDOM THINGS

1. When I began thinking about writing a blog in December, I made it a goal to write 12 posts (one for each month) on or before the 1st of each month – I even allotted ten minute time slots on Saturdays and Sundays, so that I’d have a whole eighty minutes in which to write each post – this month I didn’t use the allotted time – I was either too tired, apathetic, or busy to do it – consequently, I didn’t write the post I’d planned to write – I did however write a list of 25 random things for Facebook – since some of the things need to be amended before I present it to the mixed crowd that makes up my group of friends on Facebook and since almost no one reads these posts and since I’m rapidly running out of time in February to post this, I’ve decided that this month’s post will be the 25 random things – this feels a bit like cheating to me, so my punishment will be that I still must complete all ten posts from the Top Ten List this year

2. I’ve almost completely discarded the mechanical rules of Standard English Usage (mostly punctuation) in my electronic correspondence with my friends – this may seem ironic since I am an English teacher by profession, but I rather think that it is the very fact that I spend so many of my waking hours trying to get unwilling adolescents to comply with these very rules that I so willing discard them when given the chance – it’s somehow very satisfying to just write without consideration for the rules – that, and the fact that I’m usually just too lazy to reach for the period or shift buttons

3. Mr. Harbour said that a wise man once said that "nobody likes a narcissist but himself." This would explain why I barely have enough friends on Facebook to send this to. I love Mr. Harbour and I too miss our times together at the all-night, smoke-filled café – some of the fondest memories of my life – but I think that I speak for narcissists everywhere when I say that we choose our friends carefully (as I did with my dear friend Mr. Harbour) for their patience and . . . their . . . umm . . . their patience – I guess it’s not so much that we choose our friends, but rather the people that remain after they’ve come to know us – the people that don’t hide when they see us or cross the street to avoid us, some of those people become our friends – I say some because the other problem with narcissists is that we are not very fond of most people – most people are tedious at best and tend toward arduous – this of course does not include any of you – you, my friends, are the few people that I enjoy that also enjoy me – there are, by the way, a number of people (really cool people) whom I enjoy who do not enjoy me – to them, I am tedious – and that’s fair – after all, most of us are – of the over six billion people, I suspect that there are fewer than a thousand or so that I would enjoy spending more than a few minutes with – it’s just the way it is; no use feeling bad about it

4. I try never to take anything personally – nothing other people do is about me – people are crazy and they do stupid things – I have no control over any of this – consequently, I choose not to care about it – I choose to believe that it’s not about me – this is why I never take anything personally – if people choose not to like or respect me, they are obviously confused (maybe they thought I was someone else) or idiots (you can’t argue with idiots; they’re crazy – it’s sad) – their ridiculous behavior is out of my control; no point in taking it personally – do you take it personally when dogs bark as you walk down the street? Or when they pee on your trees? Of course not – they’re dogs – who gives a shit what dogs do? That’s how I feel about everything – I take everything as a compliment unless there is clear evidence to the contrary – if there is clear evidence that someone bears me some malice, I assume he is an idiot; but as with the dog on the street, I do keep one eye on him cause some of those bastards bite

5. the problem with discipline is that it’s so damn intrusive – you can’t have cookies right now cause you’re on a diet – you have to go run now, cause it’s time to exercise – my psyche bristles at such commands, and immediately demands that I recline all day eating cookies and not running – it’s like I have an insurgency in my psyche sabotaging all my disciplined plans – thus, I must come up with crazy ways to undermine the sabotage – for instance, the only way that I’ve found that I can make myself run (and not eat cookies) is to change clothes and go immediately when I arrive home from school – if I hesitate for even a moment, the terrorists have won – if I take too long to stretch, the terrorists have won – when I finish the run, I must immediately grade one folder of work or the terrorists have won – my days after school seem to be made up of psychic battles between the parts of my psyche that wants to accomplish things and the evil parts that want to overthrow the present regime

6. The only thing we have to fear is stupid people doing stupid things. Stupid individuals are bad enough (especially when one of them is me) – but stupid people in groups are the most dangerous of all – occasionally, one of my students will say that even though Hitler was bad, he was a genius – NO HITLER WAS NOT A GENIUS!!!!! He may have been an effective orator – guess what so is Farrakhan (is Farrakhan a genius?) – apart from that, Hitler was an idiot and everyone who followed him was a fucking idiot and everyone who knew what he was doing, but turned a blind eye was a pathetic, cowardly idiot – the world is full of idiots – individual idiots (sometimes it’s me) and idiots in groups (sometime it’s us) – Sadly, it’s probably us as often as it’s them.

7. there is a voice in my head that tells me that I am a complete failure – that I am a fraud and that sometime soon (any moment now) I will be discovered for the fraud that I am and it will be revealed to all – I’ve come to call it “the accusatory voice” and I think it predates THE EGOMAN – it’s always there (even when THE EGOMAN seems to be on vacation) – and it took me a long time to come up with strategies that effectively combat this voice – one strategy is to agree immediately and even verbally say, “I suck or I’m so stupid” – I say these things throughout the day it might seem foolish (like negative self-talk), but it’s not – what it does it turn off the repetitive (you suck, you suck, you suck, you suck, you suck, you suck, etc.) accusation going on in my head – I don’t know why it works – it just does – say it once and forget about it – another thing that I do to combat “the accusatory voice” is that whenever I do make some sort of mistake or error – whenever I actually do something stupid, I share it with everyone until I feel better – I try to do it under the guise of humor, but it doesn’t really make any difference – it’s the sharing that’s important – if I don’t share the mistake, then “the accusatory voice” has ammunition with which to attack me – after I’ve shared, I can respond that I agree that I am stupid and that everybody already knows about that – these and other strategies effectively quiet “the accusatory voice” to white noise in the back of my psyche chanting “you suck, you suck, you suck, you suck, you suck, you suck” as THE EGOMAN chants “you’re so great – you’re so great – you’re so great – you’re so great) – I very rarely pay either of them any attention anymore

8. I think that the theory of evolution offers an adequate explanation of life on earth

9. there is a voice in my head that tells me that I am great, that everything I do is amazing, and that in about six months I’ll be practically perfect in every way – I realize that this is all utter nonsense, but I’m so fond of this voice that I’ve named it THE EGOMAN – I’d always thought that everyone had this voice, but my wife, Maria, assures me that I am unique in this regard – and while she is almost always right about everything, I think that she might be mistaken on this occasion because I think that our four year old daughter may also possess this voice – the other day she was sitting on my lap and I noticed that she was looking at me strangely – “what’s that look mean?” I asked – “it means (and she paused to think for a moment) it means I think I’m better than you.” – when she said this, THE EGOMAN inside me jumped for joy – of course we had a talk about how no one is better than anyone else, but there is a part of me (the narcissistic EGOMAN part) that was very pleased by that answer – it occurred to me as I wrote this that perhaps all four year olds have an EGOMAN and that for whatever reason I failed to discard him at the appropriate time

10. Nearly everything I say (write) is probably mistaken – most of it is just plain wrong – half of it is intentional fabrication – and lots of it is just silly – as I’ve said repeatedly before: I don’t know what’s wrong with me – by the way, when you notice that I am wrong, you should tell me – it’s your moral obligation and I will do my best not to grunt too loudly as I trample on your pearls – actually, I will do my best NOT to trample on your pearls at all – I love other people’s pearls – Oink!

11. I love the show, Lost – it’s really the only thing I watch on television with any kind of regularity (which is sort of funny since it isn’t on most of the year) – I love dystopia stories and I love stories that set up the fictional answering of the BIG QUESTIONS (Who am I? Why am I here? How did I get here? What am I supposed to be doing? Etc.) – these questions aren’t easily (possibly) answerable in real life, so it’s always pleasant (for me) to have fictional characters struggling to answer them in their fictional worlds – also, sometimes in fiction the characters find answers and that’s always gratifying – in Lost, every answer leads to ten more questions – that seems about right

12. Everything is about me – even the things that aren’t about me are about me – call me self-absorbed – call me a pompous ass – call me whatever you like – it makes little difference to me because none of that has anything to do with me – I’m me and you’re you and that’s all there is to it – you can (and should) think what you like – my point is that sometimes people say, “it’s not about me” and I have to wonder, “who the hell could it possibly be about, if it’s not about me?” – or if you prefer, , “who the hell could it possibly be about, if it’s not about you?” – sometimes people will say that it’s about God – okay, I’ll grant them that, but what about me? Do I have any rights or responsibilities? If it’s not about me, then I’m off the hook – If it’s not about me, then I don’t have to worry about it (cause it’s not about me and I don’t worry about things that aren’t about me) – for instance, there are atrocities going on right now all over the world, but I don’t even know about most of them – I don’t even want to know about them b/c there’s nothing I can do about them – consequently, I choose to believe that they’re not about me – on the other hand, there are people that I love (I love them as myself) everything that does or doesn’t happen to them affects me – I want the very best for them and I will do whatever I can to make those best things happen – I take their lives personally b/c their lives are a part of my life – inasmuch as I take ownership in anything, it’s about me – I know this may not be what people mean – I actually don’t know what people mean when they say, “it’s not about me” – I think what they are saying is that it sounds selfish to say that something is about them and they don’t want to be or sound selfish – I don’t care what I sound like, for me to say that it’s not about me is selfish because it means that I’ve divorced myself from the issue – for me to say that it’s not about me is the same as me saying that I couldn’t care less and that I do not intend to give it another moment’s thought

13. I’m a nicotine junky – I love cigarettes and smoke them at every available opportunity – it’s a good thing that I’m only addicted to nicotine and not something really serious like heroine or crack b/c if I were I’d definitely be a crackwhore – obviously I’m not saying that I’d have sex with you for a cigarette, but on the other hand – how many cigarettes are we talking about?

14. I say the words “lemur” and “Albania” nearly every day

15. Despite what you may have heard, I do NOT believe in leprechauns – I do, however, believe in all sorts of other crazy shit; e.g., the immaculate conception and divinity of Christ, global warming, the possibility of general world peace, etc., but NOT leprechauns – this is not to say that if I happened upon a diminutive Irishman in a green suit I wouldn’t grab the little blagger and make him take me to his pot of gold because I would

16. I believe that God created the universe and everything in it

17. I was prompted to do this by two close friends whom I haven’t seen in what seems like decades (I really miss them both a great deal) – their lists felt profound, insightful and even occasionally moving – it’s a little bit daunting to follow lists like that and I almost didn’t even bother – but then it occurred to me that this is not a competition and that writing a bunch of random nonsense about myself is something that with which I have some experience – in the past 420 days I’ve written over 430 ten minute emails to friends which all consisted of little more than a bunch of random nonsense about myself – so even if this list ends up lacking depth and insight, I hope to make up for whatever is lacking in those areas with volume and silliness


18. I have become my wife’s de facto EGOMAN – everyone needs an EGOMAN – someone to tell you that you’re great when things aren’t working the way you’d like and you feel like shit – the crazy part is that while almost all the things the EGOMAN tells me are ridiculous fabrications and hyperbole, all the things that I say to Maria are true – she is beautiful – she is fun and exciting to spend time with – she is smart and creative – she does make our lives brighter with her presence – she is a great mommy and partner – she’s completely amazing – she takes care of our four and six year old daughters as well as a couple of other little girls during the day; she works outside the home; she’s almost completed her master’s degree; she takes on leadership roles at church; she does all the household stuff (money, shopping, cleaning – everything) – I couldn’t do half of what she typically does in a day regardless of how much time I had because I would just quit – she is so organized and efficient it makes my head swim – it’s absurd to me that this would not all seem as clear to her as it is to me, but it’s okay; I like telling her how great she is – it’s something else that I can add to the relationship that so often seems to me to be rather lopsided

19. While it may be true, as the Earl of Chesterfield wrote to his son, that “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well,” it must be at least as true that whatever is worth doing at all, is better done poorly than not at all – this has become a sort of mantra for me (anything worth doing is better done poorly than not at all – or if you prefer the shortened version: anything is better than nothing) – I say it to myself constantly throughout the day – I suffer from a tendency toward perfection – not the useful form of perfectionism that allows some great people to achieve higher and higher levels of excellence – far from it, my particular brand of perfectionism causes me to tend to get lost in the most useless analysis of minutia making it almost impossible to complete anything – it’s the sort of perfectionism that once a flaw is discovered, it takes every bit of will that I can muster to avoid scrapping the whole thing – it’s the kind of perfectionism that causes me to freeze at the beginning of an endeavor for fear of making a mistake and ruining the whole thing – over the years (as with dealing with the accusatory voice) I’ve come up with a number of strategies to combat this stupid tendency, but the best one of all has been to intentionally accepting poor performance at the outset – to say to myself and anyone else who is willing to listen that it’s going to suck, but we have to start somewhere – next time we’ll try to make it suck a little bit less

20. I have a tendency to over-explain everything

21. I was born in Omaha, Nebraska on September 27, 1970 – I was adopted at birth and within a week, I was living with my parents – I know almost nothing about my biological parents – I have no idea what effects (if any) this has had on my personality

22. I shave my head b/c I don’t like to comb my hair

23. I am a bibliophile – I love books – I love reading them – I love owning them – I love writing in them and dog-earing their pages – I love putting them on the shelf and taking them down – I love learning new things, experiencing new thoughts, engaging in a silent debate between myself and the text – I love a good plot – I love living little bits of other lives – I not only love all these things, I love the actual, sensual physicality of the books themselves – I love owning them and having them on my shelves – I love holding and manipulating them – I love how I can hold a paperback in one hand as I eat, write, drink or smoke with the other – I love how big old books lie open on the table so that I can read them w/o touching them at all – I even love the way they smell – I love the crisp, inky aroma of the new ones and the rich musky odor of the old - I love the smoothness/roughness of each page as I turn it – I love everything about them – most of all, I love how they’ve broadened my mind and have made me a more tolerant, thoughtful, and compassionate person


24. never underestimate the value of going through the motions – this is one of those times (they come and go) when I do not feel like writing – I think that, perhaps, these are the most important times for me to write – just as it is important for me to exercise when I do not feel like exercising or grading when I do not feel like grading or spending time with my family even when I don’t feel like it, etc. – it’s all part of the discipline – I make the schedule and I put in the time – it’s what makes it possible for me to enjoy things other times – I don’t know if that made any sense – let me rephrase – if I waited till I felt like doing things, I would almost never do anything – by doing what I have a desire to do, when I’ve scheduled it, I make it possible for me to want to do it at the scheduled time at least sometimes (as opposed to never) – when I used to wait until I felt like it to write these emails, I almost never wrote any (maybe a few every few months) – since I seldom wrote, my writing didn’t improve – by writing when I’ve scheduled myself to write, whether I want to or not, I find that I want to write more often and my writing has improved

25. Nearly all of my waking hours are spent in a frenzied rush – I wake and get ready as fast as I can and am out the door as fast as I can (typically between 6 and 6:30) – I race to work as fast as I can, typically arriving at school about two hours before my first class begins – during that time, I race to get as much planning, preparation, and grading done as I possibly can (the more I do before school the less I have to do after) – in the mornings I teach three classes at a junior high (8th and 9th) after which I have exactly one hour to load up and make the 30 minute drive across town to one of the high schools where I teach 10th and 12th grade English – classes end at 4:00, after which I race home and try to productively divide my time between my family, work and myself – on Saturdays it’s the same drill (7-4) only at Wal-Mart’s Tire and Lube Express – working there is therapeutic b/c it’s very busy [I change tires and oil all day as fast as I can (and my average times are minutes faster than all of my coworkers) and then I go home] – it’s cathartic b/c it’s the opposite of what I do every other day: I don’t have to think; I don’t have to be nice; and I’m not responsible for anyone other than myself – on Sundays I sleep a little later, go to church, clean and organize the study, take a nap, go to Bible study, try to get ready for Monday and then it all begins again – I suspect that this sort of routine is not abnormal – I suspect that all of you have as much or more happening in your waking hours – in as much as this is the case, I think we all must be out of our fucking minds