Daily thoughts

David Raphael Herz: March 25, 2019

I came straight here today. This is an achievement. Yesterday, I got to this page, and I couldn't find what I'd written on Friday and would have liked to follow up on. So, instead of writing, I ended up looking for that, and never actually found it.

I've also spent inordinate amounts of time just trying to get thekfar.com styled up, which is just another one of my pages that is unlikely to ever earn me a dollar. What's more, I'm just using an idiot BootSwatch theme, and I can't seem to do even the basics. So I want to go deep there, but I have so many other things that are so much more important, coding should be one of my clear red lines.

I cut my hair Thursday. I was a bit generous with myself, going only to a number three. I almost styled this a cut most severe. People wish me the Hebrew "Renewal" blessing. I suppose it's a shorthand for may you be blessed with the newness of what you have. It's said also on clothing, cars, houses, etc.

So I was walking along in a ditch next to a road the other day. Apparently I walked in the wrong direction looking for the shortcut. It was night, and it was dark, and for some reason I was afraid of snakes. I have a friend who ended up in a hospital for a month once because of a snake bite. I don't think I would have contemplated that such a thing is really a risk here if I hadn't heard his story, even though I knew that the Palestinian Viper is one of the more venomous snakes.

So I found it a bit odd in the face of some of the thoughts I have, or that I entertain them at all.

There's obviously some part of me that clings to life, and sees a world of possibility, but I think other parts shout louder most of the time. And I don't know if it's those other parts that have me running away, or if it's the first that has me moving toward a worthwhile adventure.

I got to experience my reasonableness again yesterday. Shelly called and wanted a room captain, and I was like "but Sharleen and I need to be in different places, and we only have one car." It was only talking to Sharleen later that I got how weenie that is. That's not a leader who says something and then figures it out. It's someone who doesn't want unreasonably to be put out, and that's just not who I want to be.

It's not like I can't take a bus, I just don't really want to figure it out. And I could just buy a car by then as well.

But right now, and for a few days already, I've really had it in mind that I want to get a certain light fixture up, the one for the dining room actually, I don't know why. And there was a light fixture I saw that I liked for the living room as well, and it's probably not enough, even with two; so now I'm thinking we should have put some pots in.

And then I remind myself that it's not my house, and I just shouldn't care. And every time it wants to suck more money, I'm getting more and more annoyed. I don't like to think of what I would have had to do if MDDH hadn't broken up. Perhaps I would have declared the possibility of adventure and let that guide the way.

Anyway, my mind is still being drawn to that fixture, and also to how I'm going to distinguish the past simple to my eighth graders, which will probably take priority, so I suppose today I will come up with ten ideas for ways I could make money:

• Censored. Sometimes it's better that certain ideas don't be shared.
• Censored. And there's another.
• Be the trustee on large estates.
• Act as a trustee in bankruptcy.
• Be a turn around guy for troubled companies.
• Find failing companies that have a hidden asset that they don't recognize, and take a stake for monetizing it.
• Help companies talk to their prospects to turn them into customers.
• Create a buzz around Ami. Find a way to make his store downright sexy. Use an e-mail or other digital list to help bring in the customers.
  
  • Find the electronic needs in Passover, maybe new fixtures as you do your spring/Passover cleaning.
  • Same for Sukkhot.
  • Garden lights and summer outdoor adventure goods.
  • Free cup of Joe for his electrician friends and neighbors.
  • A preferred providers referral and review list.
  • Hints for saving and enjoying your home more.
  • A smart home for your next upgrade.
• Provide legal services.
• Provide legal marketing services.
• Provide other marketing services.
• Help people manage people.
• Help young people find their voice.
• Help old people find their voice.
• Help big organizations find efficiency.
• Bring conversations of renewal, growth and adventure to successful organizations.
• Invest wisely; spend little.
• Coaching.
• Teaching.
• Preaching.

I notice coaching and teaching occur in the world of fall-back positions. I am an awesome coach. I don't know why I resist it. Maybe I see it as an integral part of something else.

I guess in teaching I know at some level I make a difference. I just feel like I am failing more people than I'm actually touching.

So I'm glad I gave myself the time this morning. I'm even thinking I could find a picture to go with this post. Or I could find my past simple exercise.

I'm thinking of changing the name of this blog, disguise it just a little bit. It's just too personal, and it really doesn't go that far at all.

I think the next things I need to say no to, or at least limit, are NetFlix and YouTube. It's not that I spend hours binge-watching. I find most of the content less than compelling, and it's often as an aside to other things. But most of it doesn't carry me very far forward in the direction I want to go.

But some of it is just plain fun. I don't know why, but I've been somewhat hypnotized by this nice little series on YouTube of a guy rebuilding a late sixties/early seventies Jaguar engine.

The truth is I've learned very little that could possibly be of any use to me, but there's a love and a patience and a doing things right that just comes through. I think the guy's name is Owens, and he works with his dad, or at least has inherited his interest from his dad, who shows up occasionally, but is mostly retired.

Julia has handed me the list of stuff the inspectorate expects my students to know; so I think my mission from here out is to scrap the books and go for the requested knowledge. It sets us up for a nice challenge to beat the system. My idea here is to set up a straw man to knock him down by way of gaining English knowledge.

That way it's us against the big bad system, which sucks in terms of how it's build to achieve its goals, but has a good set of goals.

I hate Shabbat sometimes. I was visited by all sorts of good ideas, and they have all left me, and here I am on Sunday morning wondering what I should write.

But I haven't given myself enough time again, as I've allowed myself a few minutes distraction, but the writing is always more fun, but also takes more out of me.

So in the way of exhausting mental exercises, todays list of ten ideas is topics to see from the other side:

• Abortion
• Drug Regulation
• Gun Laws
• Insurance
• Immigration
• Religion
• Ideology
• Institutionalization: School, Mental Hospitals, Prisons
• Marriage
• Hate/the Dark Side
• Ignorance

Lani took something out, it was a food bowt to be cleaned out by the animals. He mentioned that Oma made him do this. But it was a good mention. It was an “I relate this to my Good time with Oma” kind of mention.

Playing Canasta, Costco runs, shopping, gardening, painting and countless other household projects, my silly rose bush and the pleasure it gives my mom, the dishes that she wouldn't let sit in the sink, those are all things that can at any moment remind me of my mother with a smile.

The thing is she always does stuff with us. It's exhausting sometimes when she wants another game, but it's always fun to play.

I realize I just don't have these moments with my dad, or maybe they are just tainted. Who I bring to most of what I do is probably more in spite of him than because.

I suppose he did take pride in a job well done, but I don't recall him ever sharing that with me. I just don't think he knew what to do with micro-humans as Lani likes to call them. Maybe he was waiting for them to grow up, but they didn't necessarily show up like he wanted, and without having powerfully built the foundation, it was harder to continue.

And maybe that's why it was easier for me with him most of the time than it was for my sisters. We actually did do things together. We had some routines, even if it was only a handful of seasons.

But I don't know if I'd characterize most of our time together as fun. It makes me sad. I wanted to say maybe he just never got that comfortable inside his skin bag, but maybe I'm just projecting my own experience.

Now I have students asking me if I'll be back next year. And if I say yes, it feels like the end of my campaign road, but it's a steady job.

It feels like a next best, a default that keeps me from going for something bigger. And I don't mean to make small the making of a difference in one person's life or in those of a whole class or school even. And this is especially the case where I am. I have a group of kids who could really use a powerful listening around them.

And I have a vision of something bigger, minutely probable, scary, and far away from where I am now. So which is it?

Ten ways I could rock the world as a candidate:

• I could create a new conversation calling the parties to the center.
• I could create a new center party.
• I could talk to people and help them determine their own bold new futures.
• I could give people perspective, the ability to see the world through the eyes of the person across the aisle.
• I could help people forge a new synthesis between chaos and order, creativity and routine, such that they see different qualities in others as an opportunity.
• I could shed a light on what already works.
• I could shed a light on the obscene and absurd in such a manner that people choose to fix that which just does not work.
• I could give people a sense of their own agency.
• I could help make growing up fun again.
• I could live into my education manifesto.
• I could foster conversation between people who don't usually talk.
• I could bring play and a sense of good will back to our national conversation.

So I realized something I like about teaching last night, or maybe really early this morning, especially with the crowd I'm working with. I can count on them to be honest.

There's an adult I have in my orbit at the moment. Yesterday, I saw that he's mostly a smiling fuck-you. He appears sweet. He's always nice. But he makes promises to get me off his back, and in the end, just does whatever he wants, or takes insufficient actions in accord with his promise. That way, he can say he did something, but he doesn't have a result.

And the screwy thing is that the promises to me are inside a promise to himself.

So, I have a student who makes farting noises in class, some who mock me, who wrestle each other, won't look up from their phone, go to sleep, about whom I rejoice when they let me teach the few willing to learn.

I find it incredibly hard to like them sometimes. It's almost as hard to love them sometimes, but I'm used to that. I think I related yesterday my father's response to the question why he made it so difficult to love him.

Many have been hurt. Many are displaced in some way. Why should they let me in? Given their experience to date, they probably have good grounds to expect the rug to be pulled out from under them, to be disappointed or hurt in some way.

And someone always had my back, even if that wasn't always my experience. So maybe I can guess or imagine, but I certainly can't know how it is to be where they are.

And I also get the gap between where they are and where I think they are sometimes, and it's bigger than I thought, which I experienced yesterday, but now I know I have to take a few more steps back to get them on the right path moving forward.

And with my stronger students, I did Janos Plinsky's Fable, and I had one that said, “Please, More.” and that just made my day; so it's time to find more.

I'm skipping the list. If I don't, I'll never post this.

Too late to bed and too late to rise, and I feel behind the eight ball again.

And I find it hard to believe myself. And I was apparently on fire last night, and I was just doing what I do.

So the theme last night was that you don't have any right not to be a bold leader. You show up. You take responsibility. You arrange your life so that you do this, and so that it works for you.

Mom is going home today. It's great fun to have her here. It also takes a lot of energy. She doesn't stop. She's always doing something, and always has something for the people around her to do.

Now, my time is limited. I've two hours to row and take care of whatever else needs to be taken care of today before I head off with mom to take her to Tel Aviv. Her flight is tonight - Shabbat - so I'm dropping her with Sharon this afternoon. It kind of sucks. I would have liked to see her off.

And that reminded me that we should check her in; so off I go to do that now.