Karate Kick your Face off

And that's pretty much all this post is about.

I have serious RBF. See below:

Also, rat-tail. 

This was a selfie. Obviously I hate the mirror. 

Taking engagement photos. Blurry, but it's still clear what my face is saying.

This was a cheerful day, I promise.

Okay, maybe not. Too many to be a fluke.

Until you see me laugh, this is what you'll most likely get from me. And you probably just think I hate you. And not just you, but everything about you. Clothes, face, voice, personality. Because that's what my face says. And it says it hard.

But what lies underneath that cold, unforgiving exterior is a really funny, fun, laughter-filled, mostly cheerful person. The person that loves to laugh, and laugh loudly, is who I feel like most of the time. Even when I look like I'm about to karate kick someone's face off, I'm usually thinking of something that made me laugh recently, or plotting how to make everyone else laugh. 

Which leads me to believe that if you've never laughed with me, then you don't know me. All you know is that I am quiet (plotting jokes in my head), disinterested (trying to remember what was so funny the other day that made me {almost} pee my pants), and cold (people make me uncomfortable, okay?). 

But as you can see, parenthetically, I'm actually just trying to find a way to make you laugh and not sweat so much because I'm slightly uncomfortable. 

You may now officially change your mind about who you think I am. I am funny! I am nice! I love to laugh!  Here is some proof:

See! Laughing!

Smiling!

Chasing Geese!

That seems really sad that this post was just to make you think I'm not a stone cold Bey-oncé, but I guess that's all it is. Cool. 

Why No One Tells the Truth About Anything

A conversation a while ago sparked another viscernifestation of mine. This one is brilliant. The discussion started talking about an incident that occurs often in my life and I'm sure in the lives of many other people: you have a discussion with someone, they ask you a question either simple or complicated, and you lie. You deemphasize, downplay, and flat out lie when you answer.
I started wondering why people do that. I thought about myself and the questions I answer with lies. Questions like:

How are you liking teaching?

How do you like where you're living?

How are you?

And lies like this: 

Oh, it's great. 

It's a good place. 

Good, how are you?

Okay, sometimes those are the truth, but a lot of the time they are not. As I was talking through this with some people close to me, I wanted to figure out why we tell those lies. Why did I start answering questions like that? Where was that habit rooted? 

I realized that most recently it came from the reactions I would get from people as I was giving honest answers to those questions. 

I told the truth and then started noticing a pattern in the reactions I was getting from people. They were surprised (read: uncomfortably shocked) that I didn't LOVE teaching and that I wasn't raving about how prepared I felt and how easy it came to me. Every time I said something other than "GREAT!" about where I lived or how I was, those I was talking to become visibly uncomfortable. Often pining to change the subject. 

I suppose subconsciously I decided that people didn't want to hear how teaching was really going. Or what I actually felt like that day. I don't know what they wanted but they didn't want to be uncomfortable so I started changing my answers to the short ones seen above. 

And it worked! No one was ever uncomfortable again! Kidding. But people stopped giving me that look that says, "pleasestoptalkingpleasestoptalkingpleasestoptalking."

You know the look. 

Instead they nodded politely, as if pleased with how content we both were lying to each other. So here is some not lying for you.

Sometimes I really don't like my job and I really don't want to go to work. 

Sometimes I get frustrated with my house and that it doesn't have what I think I need. 

And sometimes I'm sad/mad/irate/frustrated/annoyed. 

But so is everyone else, and so are you, and you should just stop making that uncomfortable face and say something nice to people who tell you the truth. 

God must feel like a teacher.

"What do you do?"

"I teach high school."

"Oh, wow, how's that?"

"..."

If I put together a top ten list of most common conversations I've had in my life, this would be number one. And it would be exactly the same, exactly the way I wrote it, every single time. 

Teaching is hard to explain to someone who doesn't teach. I say that in the present, as in, you must be currently teaching in order to understand teaching. I believe that former teachers, remember a lot about their teaching experience, but I also think it's a bit like birthing a baby. Most of the pain is forgotten/covered up with the cuteness of the baby and/or modern medicine (or in the teaching case: anti-depressants). 

Being a teacher means you are partially responsible for what 200+ other human beings do while they're under your jurisdiction. The measurement of your work is hardly ever based on something you worked on by yourself and then presented to someone else. You are measured by how well other human beings can do what you've taught them to do. Which means your success and satisfaction in your job is based on what these 200+ other human beings do on a daily basis. I say this because if all I did all day was plan glorious lessons and then hand them to someone else to teach and then went home, I think I would feel pretty satisfied with my work about 88% of the time. However, that is not what I do. Therefore, my self-satisfaction rate is at about 19% on the daily.

I struggle each day to cope with the fact that I don't have total control of what my students choose to do, yet I, as well as others, still base my job performance and my satisfaction with my career on what those students choose to do. Which I shouldn't, right? I should know that I put in my best effort for the day and that's all I can really control. To that I say: ah ha ha ha...ha...HA! It's harder than you think. When they don't turn things in on time. When they don't do their in-class work. When they choose to SnapChat instead of study. When they don't care for their grade for 8 weeks and then beg for mercy 3 days before the end of the term.

I understand that students have circumstances that don't allow them to do things on time or that schoolwork really isn't what they should be worried about. I have those students, I know them and I sympathize that. And a majority of my students are not the ones I'll talk about next. I'm talking about the ones who just "don't." There are no other words that would describe those students better. They don't. They don't care, they don't want to, they don't work, they don't try, they simply don't. Regardless of the reason why they don't, they still don't. Now, how can I be okay with what I do when they just plain don't? Should I say don't again? Don't.

Well, let me tell you how. I had a vision a few days ago. Okay not really a vision it was more like a discernment. Maybe manifestation sounds better? Let's call it all three. In my viscernifestation I learned something.

You've been Walter Mitty-ed!

The first time we saw this movie I left the theater feeling like I had just experienced something incredible. The only problem was that I couldn't figure out quite what that something was. Obviously I'd experienced the movie itself, but the movie made me have some other experience that I couldn't identify or describe. I think I'll say the word experience one more time just to push you over the edge. Experience.

Taylor Swift Is Singing My Life 10 Years Ago.

I know I'm tagging in late, but hear me out.

At first I was mad at Taylor for not letting me listen to her latest album with my Spotify subscription. Then I thought to myself, if I wrote an incredible book (which I will someday), then I would like people to enjoy it for the worthy price of $16.99 ($14.99 paperback) and not $9.99 a month, along with busloads of other songs, eh...books, that feel like they are FO FREEEE!

So after that train came veering safely around the corners of my mind, I decided to forgive Taylor for wanting a fair monetary representation of all of her hard work. I get you, Tay. Which is to say, I bought the album.

For the first few listens I went straight to the hits: Blank Space, Shake It Off. That lasted a couple days. And then I hit the deep tracks.