Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Christmas Letters
Trying to simultaneously work through a Christmas letter and not grit my teeth at the same time. Breathe. I cracked out a paragraph that did jokey like Christmas letters do but it was way too cynical of a jokey. Mostly because of the fact that I really don’t want to write a Christmas letter. It seemed funny to me, but I couldn’t get the voices out of my head of all the people that would be reading it and thinking,
“This really doesn’t belong in a Christmas letter.”
So I pulled back and deleted everything I wrote and then I realized that the letter may be a lot harder than I first imagined it would be. Now I’m stuck. The runway is iced over and the plane is gonna’ be grounded for a little while. And the not gritting my teeth is also not really working out.
This is really stressful.
“This really doesn’t belong in a Christmas letter.”
So I pulled back and deleted everything I wrote and then I realized that the letter may be a lot harder than I first imagined it would be. Now I’m stuck. The runway is iced over and the plane is gonna’ be grounded for a little while. And the not gritting my teeth is also not really working out.
This is really stressful.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Answering Without Listening
Richelle and her Christmas music have started their Saturday thing. I was caught trying to answer her question without actually listening to it. I’ve found that this is the great thing about yes or no questions. You don’t have to listen to a thing. You just say yes and people seem perfectly happy.
The problem is when the question comes back to visit you in another venue and you have no idea what was coming. For instance, she just came to me and said, “Can we give this to my dad and get new ones for ourselves at Costco today?”
To which I innocently asked, “We’re going by Costco today?”
“Oh my gosh!” she began yelling, “You really don’t listen to me! I asked you earlier and you said, ‘Yes. We’ll go.’”
I tried to explain the whole answering without listening concept which she found mildly interesting. But she really just wants me to get started on putting up the lights. Apparently, I said “yes” to this as well.
The problem is when the question comes back to visit you in another venue and you have no idea what was coming. For instance, she just came to me and said, “Can we give this to my dad and get new ones for ourselves at Costco today?”
To which I innocently asked, “We’re going by Costco today?”
“Oh my gosh!” she began yelling, “You really don’t listen to me! I asked you earlier and you said, ‘Yes. We’ll go.’”
I tried to explain the whole answering without listening concept which she found mildly interesting. But she really just wants me to get started on putting up the lights. Apparently, I said “yes” to this as well.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Joel Bergman has officially survived the first week of December 2009
Wow. This was a hectic week. No major catastrophes but a lot of little earthquakes that all converged on an already bustling December. Car trouble, school trouble, phone trouble, and having to deal with an overactive imagination through it all.
It actually doesn’t sound that bad now that I’m writing it out on the page and mulling it over in my mind. I’m actually trying to figure out how I can exaggerate the story a bit for inflation’s sake.
I don’t know why I do this to myself.
I think a dam breaks in my mind and the thoughts start gathering and converging into all of the possibilities of what “could happen” which has absolutely nothing to do with the likeliness of what “may happen.” Like my classroom is displaced on a day when I’m going to have to be out and I’m imagining the building getting set on fire with kids screaming, jumping out of windows; a slightly less chaotic version of Lean on Me with mixed martial arts matches breaking out for entertainment.
On the sub plan, I wanted to write, “If anything starts to go awry, just save yourself.”
But everything was fine. There were no problems. I came back with the sub report in tact and the desks all in place (apparently they were brought in mid-morning sometime). He even swept.
Also, I was driving through a gas station car wash earlier this week imagining how I can survive the wiles of everything I was going through at school when I heard a loud crack somewhere on my left; sounding like a sledge hammer pounding into the metal next to my ear. It was actually the sound of my mirror getting snapped off by the metal bars of the washer.
There are no words.
Right afterwards, a handy man started making it worse by telling me how easy it is to replace the mirror.
“It’s simple. You just pop this part out and wedge that back through there and screw it all in. It’s easy.”
I just nodded and smiled saying, “Great, cool. That’s really cool. I’ll do that Thank you very much.”
He was clearly not familiar with my version of “easy.”
I spent the early part of this afternoon trying to stay out of my overly-stressed Armenian mechanic’s way while he walked around muttering and yelling about anything and everything. It was obviously a busy time for him.
To top it off, I had made the mistake of driving into the wrong garage slot and I’d immediately set him off. I think his anger at me was throwing off the coherence of his English which made me even more timid than I already was.
“You go out! What you need?! Back this!”
“What? I… I don’t… um… my mirror. I need to get it fixed. Can you…?
“No! You go out!”
“What? You can’t? You want me to…”
Of course, here my imagination starts to take off. I started imagining that I’d finally come across the type of situation that is truly impossible for anyone to fix. The type of situation where a mechanic just shakes his head and says, “You’re screwed. This is impossible to fix.”
But, again, there was no problem.
Part comes on Monday.
It actually doesn’t sound that bad now that I’m writing it out on the page and mulling it over in my mind. I’m actually trying to figure out how I can exaggerate the story a bit for inflation’s sake.
I don’t know why I do this to myself.
I think a dam breaks in my mind and the thoughts start gathering and converging into all of the possibilities of what “could happen” which has absolutely nothing to do with the likeliness of what “may happen.” Like my classroom is displaced on a day when I’m going to have to be out and I’m imagining the building getting set on fire with kids screaming, jumping out of windows; a slightly less chaotic version of Lean on Me with mixed martial arts matches breaking out for entertainment.
On the sub plan, I wanted to write, “If anything starts to go awry, just save yourself.”
But everything was fine. There were no problems. I came back with the sub report in tact and the desks all in place (apparently they were brought in mid-morning sometime). He even swept.
Also, I was driving through a gas station car wash earlier this week imagining how I can survive the wiles of everything I was going through at school when I heard a loud crack somewhere on my left; sounding like a sledge hammer pounding into the metal next to my ear. It was actually the sound of my mirror getting snapped off by the metal bars of the washer.
There are no words.
Right afterwards, a handy man started making it worse by telling me how easy it is to replace the mirror.
“It’s simple. You just pop this part out and wedge that back through there and screw it all in. It’s easy.”
I just nodded and smiled saying, “Great, cool. That’s really cool. I’ll do that Thank you very much.”
He was clearly not familiar with my version of “easy.”
I spent the early part of this afternoon trying to stay out of my overly-stressed Armenian mechanic’s way while he walked around muttering and yelling about anything and everything. It was obviously a busy time for him.
To top it off, I had made the mistake of driving into the wrong garage slot and I’d immediately set him off. I think his anger at me was throwing off the coherence of his English which made me even more timid than I already was.
“You go out! What you need?! Back this!”
“What? I… I don’t… um… my mirror. I need to get it fixed. Can you…?
“No! You go out!”
“What? You can’t? You want me to…”
Of course, here my imagination starts to take off. I started imagining that I’d finally come across the type of situation that is truly impossible for anyone to fix. The type of situation where a mechanic just shakes his head and says, “You’re screwed. This is impossible to fix.”
But, again, there was no problem.
Part comes on Monday.
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