Tired of hedging idealism with fear...

We had a first day back to school, today...an inservice for teachers...and an afternoon to work on grades...

A million new pieces of bureaucratic minutia made its way past me, today, totally overwhelming me...

And I'm thinking...

Has everyone just totally lost track of the really serious thinking and learning that should be the largest focus of schools?...

I don't mind doing less important paperwork...

But the idea that it would overwhelm our more important purposes of more serious teaching and learning in schools is just too much for me...

In so many ways...what has changed in my outlook this time around in schools...is both a grounded realism about the importance of schools and education to real life outside of schools...

And this persistent fear of being treated arbitrarily if I aspire to excell beyond the more minimal expectations of others because of a more small-minded outlook by folks like my graduate advisor, my bosses at CLO, and my bosses at Zarco (who has since apologized to me, by the way)...

My idealism to do good in the world...has been totally hedged by a fear of whether I can pay my rent...

And I just can't live that way...it's such a pathetic existence...and it leads me down the painfully stupid life that so many adults settle for of having their best years be behind them...and always waxing nostalgic for them...

I have no interest in that bullshit...my best years are ahead of me...and no more hedging that to keep a job...it doesn't matter how badly I get treated...I will always, eventually, awake from that very bad dream...

For the very same reason that I can't settle for anything else than total, real, passionate love in along-term relationship...

Because if I don't always aspire better...I will always live with the pretty sad little compromise of my best years being behind me...

And I just have no interest in that...

No matter how many assholes I face along the way...

Why in the fuck would I live my life trying not to piss off some dumbass with the wrong priorities in order to express and engage in better priorities?...

I mean, really?...

And why the fuck would we all defend this poor little compromise of a life, rather than letting go of the fear?...why would we all defend trying to scare everyone else through this life?...and why in the fuck would I give into that fear when the dumbasses who have tried to inspire it in me have no other good reason to do so except because they wanted to get their way?...

I'm not living my life that way...

I don't care how much shit I've got to sling through to set a higher standard...I sling through the shit...and I'll let people follow...

I've got to get to bed...

And I will not rest until I'm working more completely out of my idealism...loving, a significant relationship as much as with friends and family, out of that idealism...and living fully out of that idealism...

Because goddamn if life as is isn't this big fuckin' dissappointment as long as I don't...

Life is disappointing when your living out of your idealism...but at least there's hope...because you're working on making things better...

I've got to get to sleep...have a great day, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben