In general, I’m probably a lot happier most days than I was in my 20s. I didn’t know where I belonged, in what job. I had money troubles and M had bad-health years—I don’t miss my 20s, to be honest. (I read some poet’s ode to his 20s last night in Pinsky book.) And I wonder how I’ll see my physics-teaching ambition—perhaps I was merely misguided, but I don’t think so. Perhaps I threw a lot of manic sort of energy at my physics teaching partly because I did want there to be a better approach than merely “Here’s a demo, here’s the theory and equation, now solve for velocity.” I recall those years as a bit of thrashing around. On other hand, that’s a years-later view.
I wonder what’s really in journals from those years (just before the daily journaling began) I mean, holy sh!t, I had a lot going on—being a new teacher,
(there I hear a truck. I’ve assumed it’s C___, but I heard on local news recently that Chrysler assembly was going offline for a couple weeks, I thought)
getting new preps each of first three years, doing yearbook, etc. But I did survive, you know—thank goodness. And anyway, that is the past—I’m here now—I’m here-now. I’m alive right now. I’m here now.
I’m getting dull there. It is odd how hard it can be to come up with sentences about now—why should that be? It’s easy enough to describe objects that are sitting (verb choice?) that are—existing? Hell, they’re doing nothing at all. Objects don’t get verbs (until someone uses them or they get electrical motive-vation, capacity to move.)
It’s 6:11. I do want to get to my breakfast earlier. So, 6:15. Not reading this morning helped me be on time. I was gonna get to school and grade a little but also there could be slick roads this morning, Channel 17’s Joey Marino said.
I do like idea of a horizontal biography—the width each day, the breadth of my world and my thinking and my doing each day—rather than the linear-and-time-compressing, time-skipping history/biographical story. That’s not what it’s like to be alive!
[From journal of Weds., 15 Jan. 2020, Journal 316, page 44-6]
