I've got paperwork I'm working on, right now...bureaucratic nonsense that inspires me not at all...
I'm pretty sure, now, that I couldn't live my life doing anything but something like teaching or writing something substantial or something that inspires me in some way...
Something I really care about...
Because I'm just so utterly bored and uninspired by anything of such little substance of the stuff I'm working on, right now...
It's so crazy...the stuff I'm doing I think actually serves a secondary but important purpose of ensuring financial underwriting for this job and the special education department in the District, generally...
But I've kind of figured that out more over time than I was really told up front...and I'm just not someone who is motivated by tangible rewards hardly at all, really...
I'm much more interested in a sense of purpose and in a life that moves me...and money is just so secondary among priorities that I might have that it just doesn't motivate me at all, really...
I don't know why I'm so much more internally motivated than most people...I suppose because I just know better...that nothing else will ever make me genuinely happy...other than a relationship with a woman who feels similarly...and having a family where I can hopefully inculcate similar values...
Also...I got spoiled...
I had a life of idealism and intense romance very early in life...right after college...that no reward would ever be able to match in a million years:):):)...
I'm being feeling kind of blah all weekend after I got back from the forensics tournament (which was a blast, by the way...totally reaffirmed for me why I loved competing for 7 years)...
And the reason is because I've got this certification issue hanging over my head...that I've been working on, steadily...
But, which, at some level...deep in my gut...just kind of flies in the face of so much of why I do the work I do...
I definitely am committed to this work in a way that is very rare, I think...I sincerely love/like these kids in a way that none of my colleagues do, I don't think...largely because the kids I work with are so damned hard to like and love, they're so damned obnoxious...
But I think about them like they were my own kids...and I love them despite their laziness and stupidity, much of the time:):)...
I suppose that should inspire me to work all the harder on this paperwork...and, at some level, it does...
It's just kind of frustrating to have this paperwork take up so much of my time...when it serves no substantive purpose for my job...and when it takes away time from doing the work I love to do...or even compelling me to take classes which I sincerely love to do for their own sake, completely independent of whether they are required or not...
And it just gives me an icky feeling I have to work through every time...of being compelled to do something that I value doing for its own sake, in the first place...
And the irony is that if it weren't for me loving this work and loving education and school, generally, independent of the requirements...
I wouldn't do it at all...
I'd go find something else that I could love like this...
The irony is that if my district level boss had said, "You know, Ben...we need you to take care of this certification issue because it guarantees funding for our program...and we need funding for our program to hire teachers and to buy all kinds of stuff that are useful for classrooms"...
I probably would have said, "Sure, no problem...that sounds like a great reason to get this stuff done...I'm right on it"...
But she didn't...and because I had to divine it from the endless emails I received on the matter...and because she just said, "Resolve the certification issues or lose your job"...
I went from angry and depressed...to not really giving much of a shit...
To finally putting together the pieces on this one so that I feel a stronger degree of responsibility on this one (though I've felt a strong degree of responsibility on it, the entire time...I've just felt an employee's sense of responsibility to his boss, rather than the responsibility of someone who has to accomplish something because others depend on him)...
I just realized that what makes me such an ideal match with a life of public service is that I'm completely uncorruptible...there's just no way that I could be bought off...because I just don't value money that way...I'm completely clear it doesn't buy you happiness...and I have two rich parents to confirm that as a matter of concrete reality as much as a matter of faith:):)...
And I'm just not motivated by the stuff, at all...in fact, I feel something of an aversion to it because I'm just not interested in having it compromise my integrity on anything I really do care about...
I'm sure I'll earn enough money in my life...
But a life centered around making money just seems like the most sad, bankrupt, dull existence to me that I couldn't imagine living that way:):)...
And I suppose that's why I see the world so differently that so many people...
Because I'm just not externally motivated...by money or by laws or by whatever...as so many people are...
I'm completely motivated by a love for my work and my life in way that very few are, I suppose...which does me a pretty lucky person, when I think about it:):)...
But which also makes me pretty uninspired by putting too much effort into anything that's centered around money...
But I suppose we all have to make money to pay our bills...and schools are no different:):):)...
I don't want to take that for granted...
That I have a life I love...and that I get to do something I love...and that paying the bills is just a part of that life:):):)...
Part of the reason I left grad school was because I was growing concerned that, in a very similar way, our program was just too centered around money...
But if someone would have explained it to me this way...I think I would have had a different reaction...and I might have stuck around longer...that and not having people press me all the time...which drives me crazy...since I am someone who is in such clear good faith around getting the job done if I understand it's purpose...which is clear to anyone who has bothered to find out or the get to know me, at all, I think...
Because I don't understand the purpose behind something...I'm so unmotivated by coercion that it just does so little good for the person trying to coerce me...I'm just not scared like most people are...
And I just have no interest in living my life like that...
I'll either live a life I love...
Or I'll spend my life looking for that life...
Either way...there's no way anyone could intimidate or force me to live my life by their terms...
Because I just won't...
I'd move on, first:):):)...
Which is what I've been contemplating all weekend...
But which won't be necessary, I hope...because I'm finally putting together why I have to do this bullshit, all the time:):):)...
Reason...purpose...understanding...
It's by far, without a doubt, and without any real competitor a better motivator than coercion...it's just that too many fools in the world can't get clear about that...and they deal with the consequences of that foolishness in the meantime:):):)...and will until they do get clear:):):)...
Have a good week, everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
