The Autumn of Life
I really don't have a credible reason to not blog today, extra hour and all from Fall Back. I always have ideas and also have a new Chromebook which is proving quite the asset for video conferencing that I had envisioned for it. Resistance is futile. Google wins. I have had four very meaningful video chats or events since purchasing the Chromebook. Plus, the Chromebook is free of dissertation and doctoral pain and it also is not designed to be used for work unless there is some type of unavoidable scenario where I cannot get my school laptop home for some reason. I can use my home laptop as a back-up for most work tasks. Except video conferencing. It just wasn't built for that.
Was thankful for Google Maps driving back from Hanover, Pa (snack capitol of the U.S.) this fine morning. My deficient sense of direction was saying turn right. Google stated turn left. I have always had a piss-poor sense of direction which I attribute to having close to zero spatial reasoning from neurological damage at my birth. But, there is also some learned helplessness there too. However, I cannot lose what I never had. Let us put it this way, do the opposite of what I am thinking in uncharted lands and you will be right 99 % of the time.
I console myself with the idea that pigeons have a great sense of direction and they are pretty dumb. But, when I think about that further, I am not sure that is a good way to equivocate for if pigeons are dumb and can get from Point A to B, what does that say about me? I have a high IQ and a profound Learning Disability. All in the same brain. No one ever really explained to me how my disability affected me so I felt I was stupid in some very specific ways as a kid and teenager. Then, at a physical my senior year of high school, a family doctor laid it out in a way that I could understand. And it was finally demystified. That is why I have a drive to explain things to my students, no doubt compensatory but it comes from a solid place of trying to help.
Today, on the drive back from Hanover, I contemplated how my life-span is following the four seasons. Summer is over and I am, at 57, in the Fall of my years. I have regrets, too many to mention (opposite of the suspect Sinatra song), yet I would say that I have had a consistent characteristic over the years. I tend to make more mistakes than many others but I eventually learn. I am generally fairly persistent and have gotten better at thinking through things the first time and escaping the failure chain learning cycle. Although this Chromebook keyboard is driving me crazy with all of the misspellings I am making. I am double-typing letters. Better than last week. I also have jettisoned the pattern of thinking that I have to get by on less than ideal tools and techniques. I buy good stuff but not frivolously and flagrantly. I live in a relatively inexpensive neighborhood and drive a car with nearly 200K on it. I splurge on good coffee, beer, and books. I don't live like a pauper yet do save for rainy days as a matter of discipline. And I have stopped giving my money to the evangelical movement in the US who are Trump's acolytes. It would be like handing dollars to the Devil. That is how I see it. I don't expect much from the incoherent Left.
I spend and tip generously at Craft Breweries. That is a cause I stand behind with no conflict of conscience. That is what I was doing in Hanover. Good beer and food and about four miles of walking from and to the hotel room.
Overall, I'd say I am bittersweet about my years. I have learned and am learning many things late. Better late than never I suppose but there is also a lot of wreckage and ruin. not moral usually. Just plain old stupidity Yet, when I think that I almost died at birth, I suppose that makes all of the time I have had like that bonus time on the pinball machine of life. What is a pinball machine? Google it!
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