Remember the Oatmeal

I love when people quote hilarious and profound things that I've said. Not because I'm vain. But because I usually forget what I say immediately after I say it, so those words would be lost for all time if it wasn't for that dear friend dutifully holding onto and caring for those words.

It's like I left a pet hampster at a friend's for the weekend, but then forgot to pick up for ten years. How kind of them to hold onto the quote and keep it alive for so long.

They usually entertain me mightily. Perhaps this is because of my ability to almost instantly forget what I've just said (or where I've hidden my cup of tea, or keys, or pants). This is a fairly typical example of a deep conversation with me:

(Scene: exterior. A dirty lake that used to be a reservoir with patches of trees and poison ivy, two people ambling along the dirt path, talking animatedly and gesticulating.)

Me:..so free will is both real and unreal, depending on your... um... (makes confusing hand gesture)

Other, Taller Person: perspective?

Me: yes, sure. Not the exact word I'm looking for, but you get the point. kind of...wheather you're looking at the time dimension as a dimension like leanght, seeing all of it, or in it.
....
Um, what was I talking about

OTP: Free will?

Me: Oh! Yes, right! As I was saying, it's not really a paradox...


One of the reasons I turned to journaly to make sense of my own thoughts is I can always go back and re-read what I've just written, when I blank out like that. In any case, this is probubly why I so often amuse myself when writing or creating things. I'm surprised by the things that pop out of my mouth as much as the next person. And I perhaps enjoy them even more so since I share my own sense of humor.

Frankly, I think my friends make me look more intelligent/funny than I am: I don't have a good filter for which parts of my writing/speach/creations are brilliant and funny and which are only amusing to me. Example: when I was around 13 I made a home video with a friend (on a VHS camcorder no less. I bet most of you don't even remember what those look like. Here:

They were wonderfully awful: if I wanted to re-take a scene I had to rewind the tape in the camcorder, play it to see where it was, and then it would start recording over that somewhere around 7 seconds from that point, somewhat at random. Also, if I held it on my shoulder for more than a minute my tiny arms would start shaking and burning and the camera would start to fall. So there were almost no re-takes, and no more than a minute of scene prep. I think. As I said, my memory is spotty.)

Ahem. Where was I? (Re-reads post.) Ah yes, So, in this video, there were scenes such as a the camera pointing down at the asphalt of a dark parking lot, while I hummed and "da-da-dumm"-ed a very, very poor interpretation of some tense, anticipatory movie music, then crescendoed with a "da naaaaaaa!" and quickly panned up to my friend, silhouetted and accidentally out of focus in a streetlight. Or me, sitting under the kitchen counter, daintily sipping some tea with pinky extended, then, a dawning look of horror/madness/ecstasy on my face as I said, "it's... it...tastes like....meat... Meat! MEAAAAAAAT! CUP OF MEAAAAAAAT! AAAAAAAAAAA!" (I think at this point I was clawing at my own face as I grinned insanely.) Somewhere in there was a blurry close up of the paper bit at the end of the tea bag string that read "Cup O Meat." There was much more. I wish I remembered it. I don't think there was any real plot to speak of than an outsider could discern.

Anyways, after my friend and I were done, we watched it and laughed and laughed and laughed until we were crying and our stomachs hurt and we were afraid we were going to die via asphyxiation. And then we watched it again, with similar results. I'm not sure how many times we watched it, before I made my parents sit through it with us, but I I distinctly remember, through my own aching abs and streaming eyes, how odd I thought it was that my parents were not even smiling. Though their perplexed expression just made me laugh more, it was a distinct experience of realizing that perhaps my sense of humor was not shared with the rest of the world.

This is not an age thing. If I could find that VHS tape (Oh how sad I was that it somehow got lost.) I would watch it right now and laugh hysterically all over again. I laughed just remembering it.

Anyhoo, the point is, with all the things I say, I wouldn't be saying it if I wasn't interested, only a very small percentage of what I say is of interest to other people, so I need "normal people's" help, picking out the (seemingly random, to me) interesting bits for public consumption. I don't take credit for these wonderful things that come out of my mouth. I don't know where they come from, I cannot create them at will, I just sometimes happen to be the person they pop out of.

I'm sure that for every one remembered nugget of gold there are probably a thousand forgotten nuggets of rabbit leavings.

In any case, while walking with a friend this weekend, who apparently is also a reader of this blog, they gave me a quote of mine they remembered from years ago. Perhaps it is more their quote than mine, since it only exists now because of them.

I was apparently sitting in the dining hall of my undergrad college, with a bowl of oatmeal in front of me. My head bent, looking contemplatively at it, I remarked to no one in particular,

"My life right now is kind of like this oatmeal:... bland... but good for me."

In other news, in an informal poll of my readership during aforementioned walk, I discovered that approximately 20% of my readership (read: the friend I was on a walk with) is interested in any updates on my quest to (finally) get a Nadi leaf reading. There are updates, so I'll make that a post at some point. I take solace in the fact that at someone besides me is also is tormented by the continually postponed conclusion to this ill-fated quest.

Also: I'm thinking that I will try making Saturdays my posting day, since I only did Tuesday since it was a less busy day, but now it's a work day. Though next week the entire weekend is another school class.


Study skills corner with Isaac: today (and the rest of this semester) I'm working on the skill of triage. That is: which 10% of my assigned work is the most important, because that's all I have time to do. I literally have at least 85% of the workload I had last semester, except last Semester I had three additional days each week to do it, and I only managed to get the hang of that by the end of the semester. I am quite excited about this opportunity to learn the art of prioritization in the crucible of this semester, in addition to the fine art of graceful mediocracy, as I learn how to teach.

It all goes back again and again to that Baghavad Gita quote about giving God responsibility for the results. This pressure and feeling of inadequacy is a great reminder to do that, because as soon as I stop offering the results to a higher power, I start feeling anxious and bad. Skinnerian spiritual conditioning at it's best ;-)





Goodnight all. Stay frosty (or toasty, as the mood strikes you.)
Love,
I


P.S. You know how I love titles, and there were several I wanted to give to this post, but my aesthetics required that "Remember the Oatmeal" be surrounded only by Zen-like negative space. However, for my own satisfaction, here are the other titles I wished to use, perhaps in some kind of Frankensteinian amalgam:

"Now, on VHS: the greatest movie ever made"

and

"The Sin Box: not as fun as it sounds"

What's up? Crumpet physiognomy.

So, two things I've realized, since my last post:

1) I may be getting a little bit too serious and introspective for this blog. My intention was to create something that made my friends smile and kept them up to date on my goings-on, and perhaps, if I was skillful enough, simulated the experience of sitting with me sipping peppermint tea, eating sugar cookies, and chatting pleasantly.

However, I also use writing to think things out, and I'm regularly informed by my writing buddy that my internal 'figuring things out' monolog is a bit boring. So if the rest of you actually want more of that, you'll have to speak up: otherwise I'll try to focus on concrete details, funny tidbits, and uplifting musings.

This consideration brings me back to my college days, when I decided to be totally truthful. So when people asked me, "Hey Isaac, how ya doin'?" or "what's up?" I would reply with the truth, which was often,

"Pretty sucky, actually."
They would then look concerned and ask
"Are you ok? What's wrong?"
And I would have to explain,
"No, no, it's fine, this is par for the course."

Usually they would continue to check up on me, or ask if there was anything they could do to help. I'd have to explain that I often just felt pretty bad, and didn't really know why, or what to do to change it. It created a pretty long conversation out of a simple pleasantry that wasn't even supposed to get a real reply, and seemed to be worrying people, so I eventually stopped.

People aren't used to other people expressing how they're feeling. What would you do if someone replied to your "how are you doing?" with "Well, I'm kind of lonely and feel ashamed of the fact that I've been binge-watching 'Avatar: the Last Airbender,' but I am trying to distract myself from that by hanging around other people, which stops working pretty much immediately once I'm alone again. So, pretty average. How are you?"

Most people would assume that person was edging towards clinical depression and trying to call out for help. Even though it's not that unusual of an experience. Maybe the cheerful way I said it seemed unbalanced. I  don't know.

I was also suprised by people's reactions because, when I asked, "how are you doing?" I did genuinly want to get a monologue like that. I like knowing what's stirring in my friend's innermost hearts. When I don't want to know, or don't have time to listen to something long, I will simply say, "hello." Or, "nice to see you." But if I ask "how are you doing," know that I will indeed accept and appreciate a tmi response. ("tmi" stands for "too much information" for those of you not raised on instant messenger.)

Bottom line is I'll try and not make people worry for my sanity and mental health unless there's good cause to worry. Though I myself am often amused these days when I have so much to do that I'd need Hermione's time turner to get it all done. (And oh how I would love to get one of those even if I could only use it for more time studying and sleeping)

And to keep you from worrying: though back in undergrad school life was maybe 90% suck to 10% awesome, the ratio has reversed at this point. Though as I stretch myself to do things I'm not good at in front of other people, some of that awesome is tinted with a thin translucent yellow coating of anxiety.

Or maybe that's just the "flux" software I have on my computer that auto-dimms and tints the screen orange to keep it from inhibiting my melatonin secretion at night. (It works! Give it a try if you have trouble sleeping at night. The software is free.)

Anyways. Man, how do these posts get so long? Back words, back I say! Yah! It feels like trying to hold back lions with a chair and a whip.

2) (remember there was a 1) all the way up there?) For some unknown reason I got like ten times as many views on my last post as on previous posts. I can only assume this is because facebook sucked up a random picture from my blog and posted it along with the link. And it was an awesome picture I had lovingly handcrafted in a photo editing program. (Yes, that's actually my face.) The picture is up on the sidebar of my blog and has been for ages. But obviously you people like pictures, so I suppose I should try to include more of those.

Here a photo I did last summer (I'm a bit backlogged, you may have noticed.) at the request of one reader who asked, "but where are the crumpets?". And at my own curiosity at what crumpets actually were and tasted like. (At some point I'll try to post the video where I try and fail to capture on video my experiments with the butter absorption abilities of the little vacuoles that constitute a crumpet.)

Crumpet Pro Tip: they are like foul cardboard rubbed in baking soda when raw and fluffy delicious sponges for butter when toasted. (A bit like how waffles are genetically engineered pancakes made for maple syrup delivery.)

Caring, Redacted

I've figured out the secret to accurately estimating how long projects will take me. The key is being extremely cynical about my own capabilities while simultaneously not giving a flip if my work is crud.

There is a great power behind not giving a flip. Great, but dark. It's like the dark side of the force. Power, but at what cost?

For example, when I was in acting conservatory in New York, I really didn't care about being a great actor. I was there for the discipline, and learning the skill of story-telling for my writing. And, seemingly because I didn't care one flying fruitcake whether I was great or garbage, I took all kinds of risks, was honest, silly, vulnerable, took criticism well, and, to my bemusement, did really well.

At one point, after hearing numerous people tell me I was good at acting, I thought to myself, "hum. well, maybe I could be an actor. I guess I should work harder on that and see about making that happen."

In other words, I started caring.

The next thing I put up was, apparently, rubbish. And because I cared so much about it and put in so much work, the fact that it was rubbish, hurt deeply. It flashed me back viscerally to all the times in my life when similar things had happened. The girls I'd had huge crushes on and been paralyzed into a mute bunny rabbit looking at oncoming headlights whenever I was in their presence. And the bitter self-castigation that followed my freeze-ups. My burning desires to win at sports, and even hotter burning of frustration (or perhaps that was the lactic acid) as I crouched, gasping for air, unable to keep up with the other kids running, or even understand the rules of the game properly. Just a chubby, nerdy shy kid who was no good at sports.

I tucked my tail between my legs, gave up my aspersions of acting, and after feeling sorry for myself for a while, went back to being good at acting (because I went back to not caring.)

It was fascinating, and seemed kind of cruel, how all my peers so desperately wanted to be actors, and that very desire tripped them up. I wished I could give them my ease and carefree-ness. And I thought to myself, that I should remember how this worked. If I couldn't give that carefree-ness to them, perhaps I could at least give it to myself, next time I found myself caring too much.

Fast-forward to me, learning to teach the weekend character development classes. I had never seriously thought about being a teacher, and the intuition to teach was just that, an intuition. I had no stakes in it coming off successfully or not. I was just interested in following where the universe was pointing me. I went to a weekend workshop, and as my final project created a pretty excellent mini-lesson, well informed by the lessons I'd learned that weekend and in my acting conservatory.

Fast-forward again: I'd begun teaching a few lessons. At first, it was going great. I was doing similar things to the workshop and the kids were loving it. But soon, something had gone off I wasn't having as much fun, I was getting worried before classes, and what I was doing was getting less engaging, rather than more, even as I struggled harder and harder to make it better.

I had started caring.

Perhaps this is not a correct conclusion to draw, but it feels like, in my life, caring too much is poison to me. It made me a stuttering, paralized puddle in the face of crushes. It made me an impotent furious failure at sports.

Acting without caring too much: fun and eloquent
Starting to care: really bad and the depressed about the badness.

Writing without caring: hilarious and easy.
Writing with caring: pulling teeth and about as interesting to read.

Teaching without caring: entertaining and illuminating
Teaching with caring: boring and stressful.

I've known for a long time that the universe strongly frowned upon me ever rushing. Almost without fail, as soon as I would start to rush, within seconds I would ram my knee into the bottom of a table or shut my finger in a door. Or, if I really needed to rush (such as when I was running late for a plane flight or needed to move out of my dorm room by sunset) I would get progressively more irritable, until I was growling to myself in a constant stream about things as mundane as a box not fitting into my car properly or how I kept accidentally swearing. It felt like a cat who was being petted in the wrong direction.

I've wondered for a while if there was perhaps another rule for me about not being allowed to care too much. I was suspicious of this rule because it was formed in my emo phase and sounded like an overly dramatic teenager wearing all black and dripping with angst and facial oil. That seems like an untrustworthy source.

And the idea that I should stop caring about things seemed anti-life. If I stopped caring about things, wouldn't I stop trying?

During my puppy-dog-crush/infatuation during elementary and middle school, I prayed for the ability to stop caring. I cursed my inability to pry my rigid fingers away from the desperate longing to have my crush like me back. Though at the same time a smug, defiant part of me prided itself on its steadfastness.

Partway through college, I finally managed to stop caring about my crushes so much. It was at first a great relief, but eventually, I realized I did want to care again, and as I tried to reawaken that level of caring, I found that, in smothering that caring aspect that was causing me so much pain, I had seemingly smothered my ability to care in general.

Maybe it wasn't my fault. Maybe this is just what happens as we grow into adults. The hyper-accentuated feelings and emotions of adolescence begin to mellow with the coming of adulthood.

But this seemed different. I had lost my passion, and though some of it came back, it was nowhere near the desperate level it had been previously. Was that a good or a bad thing? It was both. I used to swing from up to down in extremes, and now it was less high and less low, and since mostly it had been low, it was an improvement. But I had kind of muffled my own desire, and so I was very out of touch with what I wanted. It took years to get strongly back in touch with that. And now that I'm finally there, I see the same old problem with caring surfacing again.

I need to learn how to simultaneously care deeply about the things that are important to me, and totally not care at all, so I don't trip myself up and make myself miserable.

I don't even know what that means. Perhaps it would be better to look at what I did in the past when I was successful and what state of mind I was in when I did it.

Two things come to mind: improv dance, and my classes with a particularly magical poetry teacher. What did they share in common?

-I loved the process
-I considered the whole thing play
-I was not at all worried about doing a good or bad job, failing or succeeding
-And so if I had an interesting thought that seemed like a good/fun idea, I acted on it.
-I got to share my joy at creating with other people, and see what they'd created.
-There was someone guiding us and prompting us who I trusted to be very qualified.

OK, can I synthesize the essential constituents and find a way to produce it for myself?

Seems like the main points are:
-Do something you love, share it with others, and see what they've done
-Play without inhibition
(ok, those are concrete actions I can practice.)

-Don't worry even the teenyest bit about success or failure
(that's a mind state I guess I can work on. It seems dangerous, won't that make me fail? But it seems that my experience indicates it actually grants me much-heightened success.)

-Have a guide you trust
(this sounds like a somewhat difficult action, but perhaps it could be a mind state? It was mainly I put the worry about if I was doing things right or going in the right direction, onto someone else.)

OK, I want to boil this down to a zen-like haiku that I can write on a coin and keep in my pocket. (Metaphorically. I don't have any engraving tools)

Do what you love, share it with others
Seek inspiration
Play without inhibition
There is no failure (perhaps, "whatever is, is right"? or just "Trust the infallibility of God/the Universe"?) OH, how about, "Whatever happens, is perfect." No, even more, "Whatever is, is perfect." YES.

Rewriting...
OK. My personalized Haiku is ready. I also included some words to remind me of personal private experiences that elicit states that those words indicate. I'm keeping those secret, because secrets have power. Tell your painful secrets and keep your joyful ones ;)

-Do what you Love, share it                                                        (secrets secrets secrets)
-Seek inspiration                                                                          (secrets secrets secrets)
-Play without inhibition                                                               (secrets secrets secrets)
-Fruits: all God's business. Action: all your business                  (more secrets)
-Whatever is, is Perfect                                                                (The SUNSET.)


I think the redacted section looks like a space ship.
Goodnight. Tomorrow is back to school! And the day after that is a substitute teacher. That will be interesting. Time to try putting this experiment to the test.

Wwwwaaaaaaarrrrrrggggg!

Too much todo combinedwith feelinginadequatetothe task.

Graduate school hasn't even started back up yet. This is just my internship. Total overwhelm. I think I'm not communicating this well to my supporting teacher. I feel kind of sheepish about it. Like I shouldn't be overwhelmed. Like other people would be ok.

I'm aware that this is probably not true. That this is a case of me being hyper self-critical.

I think I need to take a deep breath and allow myself to be really bad at this for now. Nothing more can be expected.

I don't have "homework" yet, but I have LOTS of stuff that I have to do because of life, the internship, taxes etc. And I have MOUNTAINS of self-assigned homework. The stuff I think I need to do to improve myself in all the areas I find myself lacking. I want to do it all at once.

I think once again, I need to take a deep breath and allow myself to be bad, for a while.

I feel more disciplined than ever before, and it's doing nothing make me feel more comfortable. If anything, it creates even more work for me, because I know I'm capable of that additional work, and so I must do it. Moral imperative.

I must sleep now.

It's Tuesday, did you bring your jacket?

Actual text (I'm always getting the quotes from memory slightly off.)

"Tuesdays coming, did you bring your coat?"
"I live in a giant bucket."

(quote from a weird nonsense cartoon)


In completely unrelated but actually coherent news, today was my first day of my teaching internship at a school. 4th Grade. I feel totally overwhelmed by the amount of skill and knowledge I'm lacking. I suppose it's a good sign that I'm aware of this? Maybe it's Socratic? Knowing that I know nothing?

But it's very unsettling, to be teaching and feel like I really don't have a good grasp on how to do it well. I suppose that is how almost all jobs start out. Heck, that's how my first semester of school was. And now I'm starting something else totally new, just as I was getting comfortable with the school routine. I think this is supposed to train me to be comfortable and balanced and confident about being perpetually uncomfortable and unbalanced and new to what I'm doing. I don't think Antioch planned the curriculum that way, but I'm sure the Universe did.


I'm just going to get it out there and say it. I am determined and committed to becoming a master teacher. I knew I wanted to master something, but I was having a hard time settling on something. I wanted to do something really worthwhile, and something really suited to me. And I've decided on teaching. Not that I feel it's really suited to me now, as I'm feeling very much like a duck at a human party, but I think that matters very little. Mastery is not something you're born with. It's got some degree of aptitude, but mostly it's just persistent effort, well directed. Sure, with some people their upbringing gave them a significant leg up in certain skills, but I don't think that happened with me, unless you count being silent and sitting in front of glowing screens for long periods of time. (ah my wasted youth). Or sitting reading for long periods of time (a bit better, in retrospect) or sitting in meditation for long periods of time (also better than the screens, but then again what isn't?)

In any case, social accountability. You people know this commitment now, so I will be embarrassed if I attempt to renege on it. you must wave your fingers admonishingly if I do so. The thought that this will happen, will keep me going when I'm feeling incompetent or scared or low on hope.

But I don't think I will. I have in fact decided not to, and I rarely decide things firmly one way or the other, because when I do, I really try to stick with it. I feel strongly about that.

In any case, to be more specific, teaching character. I'd say spirituality too, but in public schools I'll stick with approaching it from the perspective of character, unless invited to do more. But I'll keep teaching the spiritual side in other avenues, as I can. And of course in schools I'll be teaching the other useful knowledge that's standard fair and necessary for getting a good job etc. That is important too. Necessary. But not primary. I want to do a really good job with that as well, if I'm doing normal teaching. But my passion is the other stuff. Self-confidence, compassion, right action.

Welp, past time for bed. How do these posts start with the intention of being a few sentences and become this?!

Gotta get up at 5 and leave the house by 6:30. It's the first day and I already need a break. Hoo boy.

Once more into the Breach!



-IO