Pursuing Calefaction

I realize I’m dropping plates only after I’ve dropped them. This is getting very old, very fast. I forgot some important paperwork that is due tomorrow; I am barely keeping pace with my lesson plans, and I don’t know how to fix this broken cycle I’m in. I don’t want to get fired. I just [...]

We’re in full swing now. My weekends are frantic catch-up sessions (usually spoiled by my brain shutting down, leading to panic on Sundays), and the weekdays are just rolling from period to period, struggling to stay one step ahead of my students. The number of things I must do piles up higher and higher, but [...]

I am all too aware that my consciousness is a small craft in a sea of chemicals. Sometimes the neurotransmitter tide swells, and waves wash over me, inundating this poor vessel. Other times the squalls clear, leaving dopamine-blue skies and smooth sailing. (I should go look up Horace and his ode to the ship of [...]

There is a Scylla in my brain, that grabs my executive function and wrests it away from me every time I catch a glimpse of the way forward. Writhing tentacles whip around in there, gripping my motivations. Sometimes it will dangle them in front of me, taunting me with what I already know. I have [...]

So, time to come back to things uttered in the fever pitch of self-improvement. As Chesterton says, it is the patient who is to be cured of an illness, but a man requires impatience to cure himself of his faults. (Sins, he says, but I have also no patience for that metaphysical shorthand.) To reiterate, [...]

It is a couple days before 2013 begins, and I don’t go in to school until the 2nd, but my vacation is over. It has been restful, explicitly doing nothing, though being sick has made that somewhat mandatory. And now I must do all the preparation work that I have put off while doing nothing. [...]

So, I passed the PRAXIS. With flying colors! As if I ought to have had any doubt at all. So that means I am on the path to becoming a bonified, full time teacher-man, with all the professional development that entails. I survived until the winter break, though my immune system just about gave up [...]

I am trying to write more, to flesh out the universe in which my fictive thoughts dwell so often. So here’s a card to help push me over the boundary from dilettante to workman. (Shamelessly stolen from this site.)

Vengeance
Oncoming Storm
Maelstrom
Go
High

Blood
Meaning of Life
Poison
The Good Life
Underwater

Agony
Sunset
Wild Card
Touch
Earth

Render Unto Caesar
Petal
Win
Unique
Daily Bread

Flat Earth
Sea
Clarity
Rain
at the airport

First goal: One row by [...]

Yesterday I took the most difficult multiple choice test of my life. Even when the answer is guaranteed to be sitting in front of you, a well-constructed multiple choice test will provide other extremely plausible-seeming answers for the individual who does not know the answer, or is unsure. Suffice it to say, the writers of [...]

So, it turns out that lightning struck while I was busy feeling great about my progress in the MAT program. I applied for a Latin teaching position at a local high school, thinking it would turn out to be great interview practice, but I impressed the assistant principal well enough that he moved heaven and [...]