I liked your spin on my penguin take because it’s accurate. The penguin isn’t looking for meaning. Penguins find meaning in purpose. Like Hooper said about the shark in Jaws, “all he does, is eat, sleep, and make little sharks.” Maybe that’s enough. The meaning is the purpose. Sure, it’s just survival and prolonging the species and as humans we need more than that. But I’ve always admire Frankl and he saw purposeful work as critical to finding meaning. I just worry we’ve lost the ability to define purposeful. For most of us, we find it when we have children. It becomes obvious. But what about the rest? Especially the young. They keep looking for meaning in a handheld device that feeds them a skewed definition of purpose. Eat whatever you want. Take this medication. Have this life altering surgery and you’ll feel happy. Somehow they need to tune it out.
Maybe the meaning of purpose is finding a purpose with meaning.
Write for 5 minutes...well ok. It’s a Wednesday. Middle of the standard workweek, although many people don’t work a standard week. It’s always amazing to me how many “average” Americans forget about all the evening, Sat/Sun workers out there who make their life easier. Retail, so they can get their retail therapy. Food workers so they can buy something quick, instead of cooking with the family. Salons, to get their hair and nails done. Ugh. The arrogance of some of these “average” Americans is so annoying. Yet, so many of these same people will tell you how incredibly busy they are so they....
Five minutes. Time for a smoke. Not a bad effort for a first fuck after a dry spell, or for a mutually understood, perfunctory matrimonial lay. Acceptable. Take 5 is a thing in movies featuring movie sets, and a required, regular OSHA activity. This is about nothing, I guess like Antarctic life consciousnesses. Being. The desert is the closest I've been to the Arctic or its opposite. A flight from Chile to Melbourne once grazed it, but I was in the middle middle seat... And it was dark and cloudy and we were rather high... But I saw it on the back of the seat. Deserts are vast and clean and indifference, r
Last night for me included a rarity: a vivid nightmare.
In it my family and I live in a quiet and crowded suburb in somewhere, America, near a military base - not much different from our real home. You can see a runway from our porch, and planes are landing in preparation for an airshow. Three try to land simultaneously, and collide in a fireball that cascades down the runway. A wildfire starts in the scrub brush framing the base, and it begins a slow march into the nearby homes. An evacuation begins. I run upstairs and tell my wife to get our wedding album and our eleven year-old son, but she starts frantically packing everything else. Then I wake up.
If you're a psychologist and a member here: have fun.
So, I have given myself five minutes. And 30 seconds. I woke up this morning feeling curiously sleepy and foggy brained, a little irritated because I’ve been sober for a week and thought by now I’d be feeling perkier. But I hopped out of bed smartish at 7 o’clock because I had promised to turn up at a tree planting this morning to help out. Not strictly trees although there are some, but lots of fruit bushes and other appropriately hedge like things. It was grey but mild and rain was forecast and duly arrived, the Irish sort, soft, not really rain at all but for some strange reason it makes one somehow wetter than proper rain. But there’s a good crowd of us, about 20 all told, and it’s amazing to me how much we can do even in the few hours we had available this morning - about 1000 m of hedge, holes dug, stakes hammered in, tiny little trees, their roots covered with cow muck, each laid in their little hole and tamped down. And then the protective plastic sleeve fitted around each of them. Afterwards at 12 o’clock we all went off to the barn to meditate together and then we had lunch. And now I’m going to go and see my urologist to discover whether my prostate is misbehaving. I’m not sure what I will do if he says that it is-I have had a full life, 70 years of children and wives, adventures and near death experiences. All good and quite enough if that’s all I’ve got.
Today, I filled my schedule with doctors and the dentist. So, you know, fun will be had by all. I hate going to the doctor, to be honest; even though it’s good for me. I hate shuffling from place to place to get stuff looked at. It makes me crazy.
However, I know I am doing this for the betterment of myself. I get annoyed when they weigh you and say, “Lose weight!” Which is something I always strive to do; as I workout 3-4x a week. They never account for muscle when they weigh you and I do weightlift frequently. Why is this not accounted for in your BMI? It doesn’t differentiate; maybe, because we do not have that technology yet.
Oh well, medicine just can’t deal with all the factors of the human body, I suppose. I am not discouraged one bit. I enjoy the gym and go often. It’s good for me overall and I know that I have made progress.
Today has just been a day and these appointments always make me feel like shit.
My class is beginning Hamlet tomorrow. Another year attempting to resurrecting the dead to an increasingly indifferent cast of characters, trying to impart meaning and universality derived from existential themes. Because I am a licensed nerd, I love this shit.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow (I know, wrong play) we beat on, boats against the current (I know, wrong author), witnessing the fall of Rome (I know, wrong subject.)
I began today with a preview to test the waters. I asked students if revenge is ever acceptable. In a cancel culture world, it isn’t lost on them that the answer to this, like so many "thinking questions," depends on what political side upon which the revenge will be taken.
Teachers are weathermen, only we predict the storms of dumbification. We've seen it coming on the radar like that Horrorcane. We've pulled out all the stops: teaching critical thinking, creating "student centric environments" to "compete with immersive tech culture." We've attended stupid amounts of time in professional development where we are told that we must create a class more exciting than anything in a device?
Yeah. I saw kids at a Marvel movie on their phones.
I'm not working on a Hollywood budget with a cast and crew of thousands. But I'll do my best tonight to make tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow) a blockbuster.
We indulge in Chinese food on a cold February night. My grandmother, baba, as I call her, gives never ending thanks for the warm meal and company. I feel like I'm the one who should be thanking her. She is a shining light in my life, one who gives me hope for aging.
The I love yous always flow so endlessly. The conversation sways from her childhood, to my dad's childhood, to my recent vacation and showing her photos. We love reminiscing on my childhood the most though. I would spend weekends over at their home. The trips to dinner, always with a trip to the doughnut shop or Baskin Robins afterwords. The joys of our memories bring smiles and misty eyes. "He was such a good man with a giving heart..." my baba says about my grandfather. He passed a few years ago. We both long for our family members that we have lost along the way, over her 86 years and my measly 25.
The night ends with the ceremonial reading of the fortune cookies, when my baba saw we didn't open them just yet! "You will be successful in your career." Mine said. We smiled as we read them, both so thankful for these two hours together.
My blessings seem to always be overflowing when I am around my grandmother, I'm so grateful for our time together.
I liked your spin on my penguin take because it’s accurate. The penguin isn’t looking for meaning. Penguins find meaning in purpose. Like Hooper said about the shark in Jaws, “all he does, is eat, sleep, and make little sharks.” Maybe that’s enough. The meaning is the purpose. Sure, it’s just survival and prolonging the species and as humans we need more than that. But I’ve always admire Frankl and he saw purposeful work as critical to finding meaning. I just worry we’ve lost the ability to define purposeful. For most of us, we find it when we have children. It becomes obvious. But what about the rest? Especially the young. They keep looking for meaning in a handheld device that feeds them a skewed definition of purpose. Eat whatever you want. Take this medication. Have this life altering surgery and you’ll feel happy. Somehow they need to tune it out.
Maybe the meaning of purpose is finding a purpose with meaning.
Write for 5 minutes...well ok. It’s a Wednesday. Middle of the standard workweek, although many people don’t work a standard week. It’s always amazing to me how many “average” Americans forget about all the evening, Sat/Sun workers out there who make their life easier. Retail, so they can get their retail therapy. Food workers so they can buy something quick, instead of cooking with the family. Salons, to get their hair and nails done. Ugh. The arrogance of some of these “average” Americans is so annoying. Yet, so many of these same people will tell you how incredibly busy they are so they....
Five minutes. Time for a smoke. Not a bad effort for a first fuck after a dry spell, or for a mutually understood, perfunctory matrimonial lay. Acceptable. Take 5 is a thing in movies featuring movie sets, and a required, regular OSHA activity. This is about nothing, I guess like Antarctic life consciousnesses. Being. The desert is the closest I've been to the Arctic or its opposite. A flight from Chile to Melbourne once grazed it, but I was in the middle middle seat... And it was dark and cloudy and we were rather high... But I saw it on the back of the seat. Deserts are vast and clean and indifference, r
Last night for me included a rarity: a vivid nightmare.
In it my family and I live in a quiet and crowded suburb in somewhere, America, near a military base - not much different from our real home. You can see a runway from our porch, and planes are landing in preparation for an airshow. Three try to land simultaneously, and collide in a fireball that cascades down the runway. A wildfire starts in the scrub brush framing the base, and it begins a slow march into the nearby homes. An evacuation begins. I run upstairs and tell my wife to get our wedding album and our eleven year-old son, but she starts frantically packing everything else. Then I wake up.
If you're a psychologist and a member here: have fun.
So, I have given myself five minutes. And 30 seconds. I woke up this morning feeling curiously sleepy and foggy brained, a little irritated because I’ve been sober for a week and thought by now I’d be feeling perkier. But I hopped out of bed smartish at 7 o’clock because I had promised to turn up at a tree planting this morning to help out. Not strictly trees although there are some, but lots of fruit bushes and other appropriately hedge like things. It was grey but mild and rain was forecast and duly arrived, the Irish sort, soft, not really rain at all but for some strange reason it makes one somehow wetter than proper rain. But there’s a good crowd of us, about 20 all told, and it’s amazing to me how much we can do even in the few hours we had available this morning - about 1000 m of hedge, holes dug, stakes hammered in, tiny little trees, their roots covered with cow muck, each laid in their little hole and tamped down. And then the protective plastic sleeve fitted around each of them. Afterwards at 12 o’clock we all went off to the barn to meditate together and then we had lunch. And now I’m going to go and see my urologist to discover whether my prostate is misbehaving. I’m not sure what I will do if he says that it is-I have had a full life, 70 years of children and wives, adventures and near death experiences. All good and quite enough if that’s all I’ve got.
Today, I filled my schedule with doctors and the dentist. So, you know, fun will be had by all. I hate going to the doctor, to be honest; even though it’s good for me. I hate shuffling from place to place to get stuff looked at. It makes me crazy.
However, I know I am doing this for the betterment of myself. I get annoyed when they weigh you and say, “Lose weight!” Which is something I always strive to do; as I workout 3-4x a week. They never account for muscle when they weigh you and I do weightlift frequently. Why is this not accounted for in your BMI? It doesn’t differentiate; maybe, because we do not have that technology yet.
Oh well, medicine just can’t deal with all the factors of the human body, I suppose. I am not discouraged one bit. I enjoy the gym and go often. It’s good for me overall and I know that I have made progress.
Today has just been a day and these appointments always make me feel like shit.
My class is beginning Hamlet tomorrow. Another year attempting to resurrecting the dead to an increasingly indifferent cast of characters, trying to impart meaning and universality derived from existential themes. Because I am a licensed nerd, I love this shit.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow (I know, wrong play) we beat on, boats against the current (I know, wrong author), witnessing the fall of Rome (I know, wrong subject.)
I began today with a preview to test the waters. I asked students if revenge is ever acceptable. In a cancel culture world, it isn’t lost on them that the answer to this, like so many "thinking questions," depends on what political side upon which the revenge will be taken.
Teachers are weathermen, only we predict the storms of dumbification. We've seen it coming on the radar like that Horrorcane. We've pulled out all the stops: teaching critical thinking, creating "student centric environments" to "compete with immersive tech culture." We've attended stupid amounts of time in professional development where we are told that we must create a class more exciting than anything in a device?
Yeah. I saw kids at a Marvel movie on their phones.
I'm not working on a Hollywood budget with a cast and crew of thousands. But I'll do my best tonight to make tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow) a blockbuster.
Kung pow chicken
Brown rice
Chow mien
Green beans and pork
Conversations with my grandmother.
We indulge in Chinese food on a cold February night. My grandmother, baba, as I call her, gives never ending thanks for the warm meal and company. I feel like I'm the one who should be thanking her. She is a shining light in my life, one who gives me hope for aging.
The I love yous always flow so endlessly. The conversation sways from her childhood, to my dad's childhood, to my recent vacation and showing her photos. We love reminiscing on my childhood the most though. I would spend weekends over at their home. The trips to dinner, always with a trip to the doughnut shop or Baskin Robins afterwords. The joys of our memories bring smiles and misty eyes. "He was such a good man with a giving heart..." my baba says about my grandfather. He passed a few years ago. We both long for our family members that we have lost along the way, over her 86 years and my measly 25.
The night ends with the ceremonial reading of the fortune cookies, when my baba saw we didn't open them just yet! "You will be successful in your career." Mine said. We smiled as we read them, both so thankful for these two hours together.
My blessings seem to always be overflowing when I am around my grandmother, I'm so grateful for our time together.