Why'd I do all of this?...

I've finally hit an obstacle I can't get around...

My beef with the IEP process, right now...

Is that it is set up to be fairly perfunctory and meaningless...

Money drives the process...don't get the IEP's done on deadline...then you lose money...whether that serves the kid or the family, at all...

I was trying to inject something more purposeful in the process...

And two great things that have come out of that kind of seriousness brought to the process...is that two of my parents who do not normally show up for IEP meetings have committed and one has definitely shown up for the meeting...no matter how much people told me that they wouldn't show...or that I shouldn't pick up a mother of one of my students, as I did for my last meeting...

There are monetary penalties attached to veering from the way the process is set up...and it makes much of my time now, amidst the process, more perfunctory and meaningless...

Meaning...

I have very little ability, at this point -- until I find something different -- to spend some of the time I work on this really time-consuming process...doing it in a way...

...that I...nor anyone else...

...really cares too much about...

It's been the trap I've been trying to avoid since I left school...

To stop caring...or to care so much less...as so many people in life, do...

And now I've got no way around it...at least for a portion of this process (the actual meetings I will still treat purposely and substantively)...

But this part of the process...I'll have to treat perfunctoraly...because there really is no way around it...that makes any sense at all...

And...today...it helped me come to terms with the very sad fact...

That the reason I left school the way I did...

The reason that I went through all of the financial burdens that it created for me...

The reason I went through all the hell I went through for 3 years after school...

Was because I cared more about this shit, than most people do...

The school work...the policy work...the theoretical work...all of it...

I just wanted to get away to think and to do the best work, possible, without having the artificiality of university life undermining my efforts...

But I'm coming to terms with the fact that most people...

Just don't give much of a shit...

At least compared to how much I've cared...

And I just foolishly lept from a Ph.D. program...

Which would have guaranteed me more money...

Which would have guaranteed me a much easier time finding a professor's position...

Which would have guaranteed me a better connection to a fairly prestigious program...

Which would have avoided all of these bad feelings that now exist between my professors and me...which look pretty irreconcilable, at this point...

I could avoided all of that...

If I just would have cared less about what I was doing...

And now...after all this time...

Now I've hit a point in my job...

Where I have to care less...whether I like it or not...because the law demands that I care less...no matter if it supports students or limits students more or less or not...

Noone really cares, really...that's kind of the point...

What they care about...

Is meeting the deadline...

Purposely...or not...

I'm such an idiot...

I care more about my job...

I care more about my ex-girlfriend...

I care more about my friends...

I care more about my professors...

I care more about the future...

I care more about people, generally...

Than almost anyone else that I come in contact with...

And the sad, stupid, tragic irony of the whole thing...

Is that noone really gives a shit, really...certainly not about me or anything I've done...

In fact, a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to either undermine what turns out to be my probably pretty foolish decision to leave school...just because noone really gives a shit...except my advisor...who was pretty pissed about the whole ordeal, apparently...

And I'm fucked, financially, at so many different levels I can hardly count them all, over the whole thing...

And literally not one person gives a shit...

Both about anything that I've been so passionate about...

Or about me...and about why I might take my work that seriously...

I'm such a fuckin' moron...

I should just learn to think conventionally...and look out for myself...and not give too much a shit about anyone else...

Like most people do...

It's just that I feel kind of empty inside when I do that...like I feel right now...realizing what a fuckin' sucker I feel like, right now...

The kids don't care...

The teachers don't care...

My professors don't care...

And none of my friends or family really care...

The way I do...down deep...even when I'm not feeling it in the immediate moment...like right now...

I should have just gotten into insurance and banking...

And not really given much of a shit...

And learn to look out for myself, better...

And had I done that...

Brandi might not have sped away like she did...

And I might not feel so goddamn lonely without someone to care about anything in this godforsaken world like I do...

I feel like a goddamn fool, is what I feel like...

Which has to be refreshing to an awful lot of folks...who could have told you that I was a goddamn fool a long time ago...

It's so discouraging to find that almost noone really cares about whether they have the best ideas or not...

And only about whether they get their own way...

But that does seem to be the world that we live in...

I've got an IEP to finish up...

I've got this foolish fucked up life I've made for myself to consider...

Have a good night, everyone...

Love,
Ben

Why so much of a culture's problems are left up to its thinkers and writers and critics...

I think I understand why so many of a culture's problems are left up to its great authors...

Because so few people really care about them...
I mean really care...like thoughtfully resolving those problems really matters...

Most people don't care, much of the time, I'm learning...not really...

And some people care enough to do their best...for now...without a lot of thought about the future...

Most people care enough about problems to reinforce their own prejudices...and most smart people care enough to develop sophisticated arguments...to reinforce their own prejudices...

Very, very, very few people...care enough about the world...to operate from the higher intellectual standard...of discomfirming their own prejudices and ideas...rather than confirming...the highest intellectual standard...

A standard that very, very, very few people...take really seriously, at all...

Because most people...even the ones who care the most...

Do not, generally, care enough...to face a problem square on...at its fundamentals...and deal with it...honestly...

Most of the time...people solve problems...for now...

I wish I could think like that, most of the time...

My life would be more boring...and lacking in passion...or love...

But it would be a lot easier...

And fuck if I'm going to keep doing this on my own...if I'm going to be the only one doing this...

After having 3 district administrators make clear to me just how much more important bureaucratic detail was to teaching, since it was bureaucratic detail and not teaching that makes the big bucks from the fed...

And then classrooms full of kids and teachers...none of whom really care about thinking or learning or education in the deepest sense...

I'm just left kind of wondering why I should care so goddamn much...

Probably is not good reason...

Not at the pay I make...

And with the hassle I've absorbed into my life for that higher kind of purpose...

None of my professors really valued it, that much...

Which is why so many people turn to the lazy thinking that is involved with trying to force your way to results...

Because...it's easy to come to that conclusion...

When you don't really care...because you haven't really thought about it...

Because it doesn't involve a lot of thought...

And that's the beauty of it for people who don't care very much about thinking and don't really care that much, in the big picture...

Is that no thinking...is just so much goddamn easier...

Than thinking...

Still...

It would be nice to chat with someone who really does care...

It would make the experience a whole lot less tedious to go through...

And would mean that I would have at least one other person in this world...

Whose commitment to it that I really respect...

That's why there's so few really great authors and thinkers who really get to the bottom of a culture's problems...

Because most people...are just living their lives...caught up in the thick of those problems...

Without really thinking very seriously, at all...

About how to resolve them...

It's taken more than 300 years of secular thought to get the bulk of the world committed to a world of freedom and equity and intelligence...

I guess 100 years, give or take, to get people to take the merits of a question seriously...with a clear commitment to constructive resolution...and not always trying to prove that they are right...because it's just easier than thinking more seriously...is not so bad, with that perspective...

I'm just growing weary of facing my limitations at inspiring others to take the intellectual merits of important matters seriously...

Maybe I can find a smart girl to bitch and laugh about the stubborn fact of recalcitrant human stupidity...

And none of it will seem the total lunacy that it seems to me, today...

I have a couple of IEP's (Individual Education Plan) to work on (why do we do these things, again...I have no fuckin' clue, at this point...and that is the one hundred percent truth...because it definitely isn't because people use them to take the education of kids seriously, that is for damn sure...because they so overwhelm that latter more important goal so often...at least, in my experience, at this point)...

Is my life forever doomed to making way for the stubborn foolishness of the bulk of humanity?...

Today is a day that feels like that, I must say...

Have a better day than me, everyone...

Love,
Ben

Do you ever feel like you're running uphill against the apathy of others?...

That's how I feel today...

The apathy of politicians...

The apathy of administrators...

The apathy of teachers...

The apathy of students...

Anything to get out of responsibility rather than to actually take it, I'm learning...

What an incredible example we have to offer our children...

Love,
Ben