Sorry, blog!

Hey friends in my computer. I'm sorry I haven't been attending to your care and feeding. I hope you're still alive in there!

Yeah, so it's been a bit since I've posted. I'm sorry about that, truly. Recently my husband posted this video on his facebook, and it's been making me think. I wanted to share it with you, but I also wanted to add my own thoughts, and I was having a hard time figuring out how to word them. (I know that 20 minutes is a lot of time to ask of a casual blog reader, but I promise this video is super worth it.)






The problems with our education system has been an issue that's long been very important to me. Up until recently, it's been from my perspective as a student. I failed out of high school. And it's not because I'm not intelligent. Because no one would suggest that. In fact, most people assume I did very well in school based on their interactions with me. But I didn't. I am one of those people that schools fail because I don't fit into their mold. I dropped out of college for somewhat of the same reason. I wasn't happy sitting in a chair all day listening to someone blather on about something. I wasn't learning, I was spending the required amount of time sitting in a lecture hall that some administrative professional deemed necessary for me to be educated. But really, most of my real education has happened on my own time, and on my own terms. I love learning, but I hate school.

When I was nineteen I ran for school board in Seattle. (Please do not Google this, because this was a time of a very unfortunate haircut.) There were three different school board races going on at the time (two candidates in each district), but the newspapers lumped all six of us together when discussing the issues. I was the only one who had any interest in challenging the status quo of the school district and the systems in place, while they were all squabbling about petty issues to distract everyone from the real problems.

I had a campaign fund of forty dollars and I was facing a candidate that was backed by a $15,000 political action committee. Needless to say, I didn't win. In fact, the news reported a "landslide" victory for my opponent when he won with 66% of the vote. I, however, think it was pretty amazing that simply based on my voters pamphlet statement (because like hell did I do any advertising) that I was able to garner so many votes. I was blown away. And I can promise you it was because I was actually saying something different. And it truly resounded with an amazingly large amount of people.


Anyway, I've now started thinking about education not just from my experience as a student, but also from the perspective of a future parent. Yes, I realize that I am many years away from having to deal with my children's entrance into the public education system, but still, its something that I think about. Actually, it's something that scares me. Neither Kyle or I did exceptionally well at school. We both succeeded because we are very smart, and that allowed us to get around the fact that the system wasn't made for people like us. But I'm worried that our children will also be people like us, and that possibly they won't be so lucky.

I don't know what the answer is. Oftentimes that scares me. Radical change, especially on the scale of something as big as the public education system is monumental. I don't even know where do start. But I do know from my experience as a school board candidate years ago that people are ready and open to change.

Meta-Blogging and Other Things

So it seems that blogging is not quite as much fun if you don't receive any comments. It's probably why I can never consistently keep a diary or a journal for more than a week. I suppose if I am uninterested in my real life peeps making their way here then I will have to comment on other people's blogs in the hopes that they find me even the slightest bit interesting and maybe sneak a peek over here and then don't think I am totally and incredibly boring.

I've never really fancied myself a writer. I know I'm not a bad writer by any means, but I'm pretty sure I'm not in really very spectacular, either. It's more stream of consciousness, and I think I write exactly the way I talk. I've been told once or twice that I talk the way I write, but I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. Either that or I end up sounding like a stodgy British professor man. But that's mostly when I'm writing a paper or something. Gosh, it's been a long time since I've had to do that. Thank Jesus. And by Jesus I mean that I'm pretty sure that he had all of nothing to do with it, or really anything that ever happens in my life, but his name is a convenient place holder when I don't believe in any sort of deity. I guess I could say "thank nature" or something, but that just seems wrong to me. Yeah, so for future notice, invisible blog readers, any invocation of God or other such theological character is purely a literary device.

See? Stream of consciousness. Actually, that is probably why I like blogging, rather than paper-writing, or like, trying to write a short story or a book or really anything with a plot.

Speaking of, recently sister and I were going through cabinets in our parents house and discovered a pile of "books" that we had created via school projects. Most of hers were hilarious kindergarten through second grade masterpieces, which are funny and embarrassing of course, but in the way that you can completely disregard because you were six years old when you wrote them and no one should be judged by what they wrote at age six.

My book, however, was a collection of works that I created in the first weeks of my sophomore year of high school. While that was approximately nine year ago (holy cow!), it is still recent enough, and fifteen is still close enough to adult, that the secrets contained within said book are truly terrifying to me. I am really bad at judging my writing. Either I think it's totally and completely the best thing ever written or I think I might be struck with lightning to dare write such horrible crap. Either way I'm about 95% sure I am wrong, but you know. Or maybe you don't.

But anyhow, dear anonymous internets, something I wrote in high school:

Aurora

When I awoke it was dark in my room. The hall light was not on like usual, and I could barely tell where my room ended and the next one began. My bed was hot and my face was sweaty. I rolled over onto my side and tried to fall asleep again, but my eyes would not stay shut.

 Slowly I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stretched my arms. Out my window I could see the lights from the buildings downtown. Their reflection on the thick mass of clouds blanketing the city turned the sky an eerie orange color, one that shouldn't be seen in the middle of the night.

 I had to check my clock to make sure that it was not morning and that the orange color was not just the beginning trace of the sunrise. The numbers glowed red in the darkness of my room, cutting through the dense black atmosphere. 1:59 the read. It was much too early for a sunrise.

 Although I understood the phenomenon causing that orange hue to illuminate the sky I couldn't help but feel that something terrible was about to happen.

Wow, so it is really hard to resist the urge to edit the shit out of that. But still, I think it is pretty awesome. It's probably not, but whatever. And let's please ignore that it was written in silver gel pen on black paper. I was creative, okay?