Isn't It Romantic?

Alan Jacobs is a good thinker. In this post he's describing the decline of baseball's enjoyment as the game becomes much more efficient and business like. This is Moneyball, pure and simple. Jacobs isn't demanding that Major League Baseball go backward, and he doesn't use this word, but I bet he'd be okay with a lot less business and a return to romance.

I was reminded of this New York Times piece by Tim Wu, "The Tyranny Of Convenience" in which he questions the notion that convenience is even a good thing. I like that he uses the word tyranny in that title. Again, we sacrifice romance for convenience, profit, and efficiency. In the process, more often than we might like to admit, we lose.

Romance? Really? That's what we're after?

I know, I know. It sounds hokey, but consider for a moment the best things in our lives and they will all have to do with romance and romantic notions. All our higher order ideals are romantic, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality. Jacobs is admitting that players, owners, and the league itself are all within their rights to want more money, but there's nothing romantic about that idea. Wu understands the desire and need for convenience, but the romantic idea it would free us from drudgery and lead to utopia is belied by the convenience of email, texting, and Slack. No romance there and certainly no utopia.

Yesterday I wrote about my desire to be a writer. Not a teacher who writes or an anything else that also rights, but a writer. There might not be money in it and the process will be inconvenient as hell for my family. But I'll tell you one thing: it's romantic as all get out and I'm in love with that.

Becoming

Hardly anyone thinks this will work. Ever since I've said that I'm quitting teaching, or at least quitting my teaching job, a steady stream of people have asked what I'll do next. When I'm feeling brave, I say I want to be writing. More often than not, I hear that there's no way it will work.

I understand what they're thinking and feeling because I often think and feel the same. I've been writing on the side for forty years. Longer really. Lately I write while teaching at-risk kids in a job that's killing me. Once upon a time I wrote while doing middle school. The idea of doing writing primarily, well, that sounds crazy to me too.

It also sounds so good.

The last couple weeks I've been saddled with even more trouble on the job than usual. I haven't slept well. I'm eating and drinking poorly. Writing has been a struggle. But I'm not stuck with these things. I have all sorts of choice. That's why I'm quitting the job. It's a first step toward doing something better. And I'm noticing that even when writing is hard, when I feel like I can't say anything well, it's good work that I want to be doing. That might change, but it has been true for four decades. I should pay attention to that kind of information.

Most of my troubles spring from not doing things that inspire me. Sure, it's unlikely that I can make a living wage by writing, but I'm much less likely to want to drive my car into Onondaga Lake. And yeah, I know that I haven't figured out what it is that I want to be writing, what exact story I have to tell, but I feel alive when trying to tell it. I need to chase that.

Maybe writing will make me some money. Maybe it won't. But what the hell? There's only one life given to each of us. I might as well try living it.

Nothing

Woke up this morning tired out of my mind. That's not entirely unusual by Thursday and with me waking at 4:40 in order to enjoy writing time. Still, this morning, the condition was more acute than usual. Rather than slow down, I felt myself revving up trying to go faster. I made lists in my head about what had to be done and major changes I needed to make right away. The whole thing left me feeling frantic even as I tried to concentrate on writing one word at a time, one line after the another, through my three pages. I was almost shaking by the time I came up from the basement office and gave the cats some food.

What I need, I told the cats, is to just do nothing.

It wasn't the cry of my laziness. I was giving myself a difficult task to complete. Set aside ten minutes, or better, half an hour, and do nothing. Sit. Stare out the window. Don't even try to meditate. Just do nothing. Be a tree. Be a speck of dust. Be nothing and do nothing. It sounded restful but challenging and thus unlikely.

First rinsed out my mug, packed a lunch, wrote a note to my wife, used the bathroom, got dressed for school. So much to get done before 6:50 when I leave the house. I greeted my wife and kids as they came downstairs. I said hello to the dog as she wagged her way down the stairs, over to me for a rub and scratch, and then into the den for a nap.

Be like the dog, I thought.

At 6:38 I went into the living room and sat on the couch. I pulled a blanket around me. I checked my watch to be sure I had time remaining before I needed to leave. And then I did nothing.

For four minutes.

I couldn't take it any longer than that. My mind kept going to all the things I need to do. I considered writing this piece. I wondered if meditation would be better or if maybe I was attempting a form of meditation here. I worried about the time and whether or not I should go into work right away and attend to things. Would that be more restful? I whirled and whirled until I threw the blanket aside and got off the couch to go do something.

Two things about this:

Whatever I did instead of nothing was so inconsequential that six hours later I can't recall it. The busyness I feel has little to do with importance. It's just that I can't sit still and look out the window.

I need to try again. There's something in this. I need to learn how to be bored and still.

At a meeting the other day we were asked to describe our happy place. I realize today what that place would be: a comfortable spot on a river that is going by. I swear I could watch that all day. And I really need to.

John Lennon knew what he was talking about:

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go

Development

Ask most teachers "how do you like professional development?" The answers will include boring, useless, and a waste of time.

During staff development I nod and look interested while writing in my notebook. I imagine tunneling out or going over the wall dodging management's spotlights and Tommy Guns. At one particularly awful presentation I calculated the factorials from 1 to 20. (20 factorial is equal to the product of 20 and all the positive integers less than 20. Google tells me it comes out to be 2,432,902,008,176,640,000. I wonder if I got it right.) All this because management frowns on my drinking bourbon while on the job.

It was a nice surprise yesterday wasn't a total waste. A full-day training in restorative circles was actually pretty useful. Though it was mostly a re-run of training we did just months ago, I learned a couple things. I'm surprised but happy.

I may be sanguine about this professional development because it is my last with this school. It helps to know I'm almost gone. Some fads and ideas brought in by management for our professional development are good, most are bad, but all of them fade and disappear after three to five years. Like riding a merry-go-round, we come back to where we started over and over. This time I'm getting off.

It's nice to go out on, if not a high note then at least not a low one. I'm grateful to the trainers, the participants, and the clock which moved steadily and without fail toward our dismissal. I'm grateful to my friend with whom I texted ridiculousness throughout. I'm grateful that I'm done with professional development in this organization. One more step toward something new.

A colleague sitting next to me at the training asked what that something new will be. I said I don't know yet. Ah, he said. What a good place to be. It really is a good place, an interesting place strange as that may seem. I've learned that much even if it wasn't part of the plan. Learning is unpredictable like that. We never know what we'll learn next.