Taking responsibility for my mistakes of integrity

I've been facing some really difficult truths about my failures and failures of integrity over the last 5 years and, really, the last 18 years. I am a smart kid who has been unreliable about turning in work and avoided finishing it and turning it in on time. I have avoided work when I felt overwhelmed with work, when it seemed boring or inconsequential, and for all kinds of reasons that have left me unreliable to others. I've had some serious matters of integrity that I have fallen short on in the last 10 years or so that I have failed to take full responsibility for and their consequences in my life.

I lost a relationship and then a friendship that really mattered to me enormously. I left a graduate program and lost my place in that program and that department. I lost my first teaching job over this. And now I am facing up more fully to my responsibility in all of this.

Losing the relationship was the most painful and difficult. And I owe apologies to Brandi, to my professors, to my administrators at my last teaching job, and to everyone that I have let down during this period and whom I have talked badly of while I avoided facing my responsibility. I have worked very hard to face up to my failures and to be more reliable and bring more integrity to my work and my life. But I have fallen short in some very serious ways, at times, that I am responsible for and that I am working to account for.

It is very painful to face that the failures you have experienced in your life are your own. I hope and have faith that it is cleansing as well.

I'm really disappointed with myself, tonight. And if I could go back to that 15, 16, 17, 18 year old kid as he started down this road of making excuses for why he wasn't reliable in getting work turned in, I would tell him, "Stop. Leave the excuses elsewhere. Just face up and learn the lessons."

I've always feared that I was inferior to others or that I had an inferior upbringing or inferior background for being successful in school and in life. There is probably truth to all of that, in retrospect. That's a hard thing to face. That, as much as it is hard to admit, I probably do come from inferior stock, in many ways. But my expectations are high, no matter where I come from. And all I can do is take responsibility for it and keep working to build more integrity into my life.

At some point, I had to face up to the fact that in the lives of most people, in free societies, at least, we usually get what we deserve, is the truth. Or at least we get what we earn. I've just been defensive about facing that fact and making amends.

I have a father of a student I am responsible for who is not really letting his son be responsible for his own behavior. The kid is acting terribly and dad just can't let him take responsibility for it and is always trying to get his son off the hook. It looks foolish to me. And, now, I completely understand what that feels like from the other side of that. How hard and painful it is to face up when you are acting foolish and you just don't see it. And why it is still so important to take responsibility.

I have looked enormously foolish to people in my life in the last 6 years, at least, as I've dealt with the most serious consequences of my behavior and for the last 16 years, for those who have known my tendency to avoid turning work in.

I have a long road ahead of me to make good.

And it starts with me taking this responsibility.

Love,
Ben