How it took being happy to realize how miserable I was

There is no perfect metaphor for how I feel on the days when anxiety has a vicious hold on me. I've searched for it. I've used all manner of natural disaster metaphors, none of which truly fit for me. Last night I tried to explain how it felt by writing how my body felt like it was being stretched out and folded over again and again. In my mind, I wanted to express how it felt like I was being packed tightly into some confined space. That isn't exactly correct either. To be fair to my metaphor creating abilities, anxiety is kind of new for me. Okay, that's a straight up lie. Allowing myself to express feelings of anxiety is new to me. I have always dealt with anxiety by drizzling it in chocolate sauce and shoving it down my throat. I tried to suffocate my anxiety with food. Hello, obesity.

For most of my life, I have ignored anything that I felt would make it difficult to, you know, survive emotionally. I am much more likely to let myself cry at a Cheerios commercial than I am because I am having an emotional breakdown. Crying is not a problem. Feeling is the problem. There was a point in my life where I decided every bad thing I experienced was due to my obesity. Because I alone caused my obesity, I decided I could not express feelings of depression, anxiety, sadness, frustration, anger because it was my obesity that caused it, therefore, I had no reason to express those feelings. Instead, I could just shut up and lose the weight.

Until the last few years, I had never felt comfortable as a human being. I've written in the past about my desire to take up as least amount of space as possible, as if somehow, I could make up for my obesity by not ruffling feathers, by sitting quietly passive. Maybe no one would pay attention to all of my body if I could sit still. I took up so much physical space and hated it that I wanted to take up the least amount of emotional space as possible. Now, the first sentence of this paragraph makes it seem like I'm not that way anymore. Man, I am lying all over the place, here. I still prefer to not take up space. I am way more likely to sit quietly in my emotions than I am to express them out of fear of taking up too much space in someone else's existence. Some of this has to do with feeling worthy of taking up that space, some of it is fear that I will take up too much of that space, and eventually my obese body will break that space. As any fat person can tell you, putting too much weight on something will break it. I have broken more chairs than any other person I know.

In November of 2016 I saw a doctor who didn't automatically assume everything wrong with me was due to my obesity. At least, he didn't express that as the immediate thing. He ordered every possible test. He wanted to cover anything that could be playing into my constant exhaustion, my constant hunger, the nagging pain in my shoulder, all of it. I also decided, after years of avoiding such things to go talk to a therapist. After talking to this woman for a while, she stopped me and asked how often I let myself feeling and express any of the things I was telling her. I said, "Never. I never slow down. I never let myself take a day to feel things. There's too much to do." She asked if there were ever days where getting out of bed felt impossible, and I said yes, but I got out of bed any way. I have 130 teenagers depending on me. I don't get to be selfish.

The word selfish caught her attention. I imagine it was more the way the word sounded coming out of my mouth, like such a dirty word. What transpired was a pretty lengthy discussion about what the differences were between self-care and selfishness, and how all relaxation felt selfish to me because there was always more I could be doing to help my students, help my wife, my friends, my family, homeless people, etc. I'll relax when I'm dead. I am not sure those exact words slipped through my lips, but I have thought them many times.

So what does this all amount to? Well, in some ways I am doing better than ever before. There are nights where I sleep more than four hours. My shoulder pain is gone. Weight is slowly, but surely, coming off. I have awesome people around me, many of whom wish I would take up more space. Then, in some ways, I am way worse than ever before, because allowing myself to be anxious, to live with feelings instead of smothering them in delicious, deadly chocolate sauce is hard. Admitting that I am struggling emotionally is hard. It is weird that it took getting to the happiest, most comfortable place I have ever been to admit how fucking miserable I can be.

This whole realization started when I was re-watching my all-time favorite television show: Sports Night. In the second season of the show, one of the main characters, Dan Rydell (Josh Charles) slowly crumbles to the point where he sees a therapist. One night after the show, he tells his co-anchor, Casey McCall (Peter Krause), that there may be long stretches of time when he doesn't say anything funny, or anything at all. He isn't exactly sure what is happening, but he knows he needs to turn it all off. I have watched both seasons of this show no less than 75 times. For some reason, this time it hit me in a different way, in a knowing way. It was exactly the kind of thing I have wanted to say many times in my life, but instead of trusting the people around me to be okay with it, I would just stay home, away from the people who might expect things of how I behave. I'm slowly learning to trust the people. It is not easy. I fail more often than I succeed, but I have some pretty understanding people in my life, and I am getting better at not caring so much about those who are not so understanding.

I don't have any grand point here. I have not reached any life-altering conclusion. This is just a thing that has been inside me for a while and needed out. So now it is out. Maybe you can relate, or maybe you can't, but maybe it helps you understand something in a new way, the way reading blogs helps me understand things. Or maybe,  you are just curious which Cheerios commercial I cry at (hint: All of them).

These are my confessions

1. I hate being the center of attention in person. I hate when conversations turn to me. Ask me anything you want online or as an aside in a group of people, but if I get asked a question in a big group of people I shut down, even if it is a subject I like. This runs counter-intuitive to a person who loves the stage and spends his entire day standing in front of people getting asked questions, but it is true. I am embarrassed by any and all attention given to me in public spaces.

2. I've never seen Singin' in the Rain. It is the only movie that frequently pops up in the top 50 movies of all time lists that I have never seen. 

3. I repeat this saying to myself every day, and I ignore it every day: If I prioritize everything, I prioritize nothing.

4. I have four reoccurring dreams that I can remember with vivid insight. One of them involves me riding a dinosaur. 

5. I am not a morning person or a night person. I adapt to whatever my situation calls for. I was just at home staying up to until 3 and sleeping into 10 or 11 when I worked at a movie theater as I am at going to bed between 9:30 and 10 and getting up at 5:30 now.

6. I am great at promoting self-care to my students, but there are few things I struggle with more in my own life. I am learning, but every time I take care of myself, I have to deal with four or five days of intense guilt. Just this weekend I allowed myself about 5 hours of video game time, and I have been feeling guilty for it all day today. This goes back to confession number 3. Everything has to be a priority, therefore nothing can be neglected for any reason at all. 

7. The longer I teach English, the less I subscribe to the concept of a "right way of speaking/writing." I was pretty much a Prescriptive Grammarian before I took to this profession. I have changed many things about myself over the last 5 or so years, but I think my thoughts on language have changed the most. The only reason I ever correct a student's grammar is to help them figure out how to speak/write in more traditional settings. I have absolutely loved studying the usage of language with my AP students this year. I think I have learned more than they have as we have gone down the rabbit hole of the purposes of language.

8. I lie to people all the time. I have never stopped craving soda and fast food. I just want to put people at ease and make it seem easier. It's hard. 

9. I apologize like 50 times a day. It is instinctive, but I have no idea where it comes from. 

10. In high school, this group of people who terrorized me in middle school suddenly wanted to be my friend, and I drove myself mad wondering when it was all going to turn on me. I got super depressed about it, but had no idea how to talk about it what it was doing to me, so I wrote about it. It ended up this super depressing confession about how much I hated myself. I had no idea what to do with it but I wanted to share it with someone. I was too chicken to just show it to a friend, so I stuck it in my backpack and found a way to have a friend dig in my backpack and discover it. She took it our teacher who took it to the office. Someone talked to my parents about it, but my teacher wanted to talk to me about it. Mr. Rathbun probably saved my life, not in a suicidal way, but just in a way that I could function as a human being. He helped me find a sense of calm in my  mind that raged like a storm. He is probably the reason I became a teacher. I am not sure I ever properly thanked him for that. it is crazy what it means to have an adult who isn't related to you  and that you respect, tell you he believes in you. I have never forgotten that conversation. I try to be that teacher to my students. I think I succeed more than I fail. 

11. I am never mad when people don't like me, but I always wish I could know why they don't like me. I wouldn't try to change their minds or anything, I am just genuinely curious what it is about me that they do not like. This especially applies when people unfriend me on FB. I always want to know what post did me in. 

12. I try to not "like" anything ironically anymore. I am trying to eliminate the concept of "guilty pleasures." I am also trying to cut down on the time I spend talking about things I don't like. It's hard because I have spent so much time doing it, but I don't want anyone to feel stupid for liking the stuff they like, even if I don't understand its appeal. I think I am failing on this more than I am succeeding, but hey, I am trying. 

13. I have never disliked anything just to be a contrarian, contrary to popular belief. Nor do I think my tastes are better than anyone else's, but I know the way I talk about things makes it appear that way. That's not my issue though. I can't help it. 

14. When people ask me for book recommendations I feel immense pressure to get it right, and I really want to create a submission form for the person asking to fill out so I have better idea of what to aim for. (This applies for movie recommendations as well, though I have like 5 movies I recommend to everyone who asks.) 

15. I abhor conversations comparing books to their adaptations. Please keep me out of them. Also, there are plenty of movies that are "better" than the book, so please stop coming at me with that Book is Better noise. 

The language of my fatness

One of the key points of teaching in first few weeks of AP Language is the the meaning of words, specifically the connotative meaning. At the AP conference I attended this summer, our master teacher spent an entire four hour session on how to teach how connotative meanings shape an audience, the tone of a piece, and also our own understanding of how it reads. We received a handout to distribute to our students full of word lists with similar meanings. At the top of the list were synonyms for fat. Our master teacher used us as his students to model the activity, and we spent a solid half hour conversing about how we use different words for fat for different things.

As a toddler I was chubby. Chubby is, of course, an acceptable word for fat toddlers. Even typing the phrase "fat toddlers" feels weird. Chubby toddlers are cute. Being chubby is fine. I do not have much recollection of my chubby days, but I have seen enough photos to know that I was a chubby Yoda-looking baby and toddler. I find myself using this word all of the time when talking about babies or toddlers.

At some point between kid and teen, I became husky. Husky is such a strange one. Even when I was referred to as husky by most of the people who bought my clothes, especially my grandmother, I thought it was a weird word to use to refer to a human being. What exactly does it mean to be husky? Well, the dictionary defines it as a word to mean brawny or muscular, but it also means heavy. As an eleven year old, I was certainly not brawny or muscular, but I was heavy. To make it clear, I was not exactly fat as a young teen. I was bigger than most of the people I knew, and I was certainly called "fat ass" enough to give me the impression that I was fat, but when I look back at photos, I was, by all accounts, a bit over weight. I was hefty? Husky? Chubby? I am not sure what the word was, but this was around the age when kids had all kinds of words for what I was.

Eventually I grew to being obese. I am not sure exactly when because that word, obese, is so clinical, and it has an actual definition in terms of Body Mass Index. It is an ugly word that pretty much everyone I know tries to avoid using. We soften it with the word fat, but even that is to be avoided. We dance around these words. They make people uncomfortable. I see it all of the time when I try to be open about who I am. People are uncomfortable when I call myself fat, as if by using the word "fat" I am saying I a horribly ugly, awful person who should probably be stuffed into a basement somewhere only to be seen under severe circumstances. Granted, most of this is because of social concepts that position thinness as attractive and fatness as gross. We see successful thin people on the covers of magazines, in television, etc. I do not need to go deep into this because you all know.

We want to avoid these words- fat and obese- always, but especially in department stores. No one wants a banner hung over clothes that reads "FAT CLOTHES HERE" or "OBESE PEOPLE YOUR CLOTHES ARE HERE." I mean, who is going to shop in that store? It is silly to think about because it is not like my obesity is a secret. Everyone who has vision can see I am obese. I'm not dropping any truth bombs here, but it would be improper to label clothes as such, so males get BIG AND TALL and females get PLUS SIZES. I have purchased my clothes from big and tall sections since high school. It is no less embarrassing to have a banner that acknowledges I am in the big and tall section than it would be to be shopping in the fat section because they are essentially the same thing. We all know it. The connotative meaning of big and tall is fat people. Yes, tall people, and broad shouldered, muscular people probably buy clothes in the section, but that section of the department store is for fat people.

This has been rattling around in my brain since Wednesday when I took the above photo in a store on Oregon State's campus. I had never run across Extended Sizes before. I have seen extenders for seat belts or the top button of a dress shirt, but never clothes. I am not fat, I am just an extended person. My weight extends me as a human being. My extended body could win a close race in a photo finish, as my belly just extends out a bit. What a bizarre word choice for a section of clothing, especially when we already have an agreed upon label for fat male clothing sections. The more people try to dance around the word fat because of all of the hefty negative connotations, the more squeamish I become over the words we choose to use.

I am fat. It occupies 80% of my daily life. I worry about which chairs will hold me. I wonder if my belly fat is showing at least 100 times a day. I will continue to wear a sweatshirt in the classroom even if I am hot to avoid the possibility of exposing any flesh when removing it over my head. I am hyper-aware of what food I eat in public spaces. There are a thousand other daily thoughts on the subject of my obesity. I am also smart. I am thoughtful. I am funny (okay, this is probably debatable). I am passionate. There are people out there who think I am handsome (it is pretty cool to have someone think that). Being fat does not have to have such a negative connotation. Fat people do cool shit all of the time. While I have not completely accepted my fatness, I have decided that it doesn't have to mean I am useless. I will no longer be paralyzed by it.

A Grad School Moment

I decided to go to grad school for purely selfish reasons. I am not typically one to do anything selfishly, and a Master's degree will certainly benefit my wife and our future kids in terms of a pay raise in my job, and perhaps the opportunity to pivot in terms of career, but I made the decision to go to grad school simply because I wanted to be in rooms of like-minded people. I wanted to read books and discuss them at length with smart, passionate people. I wanted to write papers about literature and have smart people read them and tell me if I have any clue. I craved this.

However, I think I often talk more about how much work it is because, well, it is A LOT of work. And, frankly, I am always slightly embarrassed about how much I love it. I do not think people really care about what I am getting out of my 6th reading of the Scarlet letter or my first reading of any of Henry James' works. It is easier to focus on what others can relate to: being busy. To be honest, there are times when I am not sure how worth it is. The last few weeks I had been feeling this. I have been sick, and feeling off my game. I have not had a chance to take many classes featuring novels/authors I have great interest in, and in my third semester, I feel run-down. Going three semesters of being a full-time student and a full-time teacher has taken its toll on me. Combine that with the usual Imposter Syndrome, and I have been feeling the grad school blues.

And then tonight happened. I am taking a class focused on the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, and we are currently reading Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, a book I find agonizing to read. I am bored out of my mind every time I pick it up. Seated next to me in this class is a guy I have gotten to know a little bit because we have two classes together this semester, so we see each other four days a week, and we were talking about the book, and I admitted I was not liking it at all. He confessed he loved it and started flipping through it showing me all of this underlines, markings and marginalia, and I could tell he was excited about it. It was totally cool. Then, it turned out it was his turn to present today. He passed around his handout, and began his presentation, and I was floored by how cool it was. He had this cool-as-hell angle into the book, gave an insightful presentation, connected it to the presentation from Monday, and then he dropped these just complex, interesting discussion questions on the class. Suddenly, this book I hated so much, this book that literally lured me to sleep, came alive in my hands. I saw what he saw, and I was able to feel a part of the class in a way I have felt detached the last two weeks.

The professor and my other peers also helped me see things in the book I had not seen before. They helped shape the book. I still do not like it, but it was a reminder that liking a thing is not necessary, as long as you can find a way into the book in some way.

Then, after class I was walking to my car, and I saw that guy and another classmate in conversation, so I stopped and we killed an hour talking literature, professors, and most importantly, their experiences in education as minority students. I learned a ton, tonight. I grew to understand my privilege in brand new ways, and I got to know two of my peers a lot better. I am not a social person by nature. In fact, I am pretty awful at meeting people and making friends, and being a regular social human person. There is no guarantee this night will have started some great friendships, but talking to these people about the beauty of Percival Everett's Erasure, the sheer brilliance of a recently retired professor, and the lack of diversity in the course selection at Sac State brightened my spirits on a night where I definitely needed the light.

Seriously, do the shit you love. Even when you are not loving it, something will happen that will remind you why you loved it in the first place.

Oh also, last week I learned I might get to write a thesis and not take the exit exam. Things are looking up for sure!

What am I doing here?

Okay, so here's the thing. I reboot this blog every year or so, and without fail, I fail. I write for two months, get discouraged at the lack of page views and comments, and revert back to Tweet Storms where the same four or five people will favorite tweets of mine, and I will feel good about myself because I expect less gratification on Twitter. I read blogs still. I am currently loving the crap out of this one, https://www.prettylittleloudmouth.com/ and this one, http://www.jacasseur.com/diary

But what do I have to add to the world? Do I think my thoughts are so important that I should type them into this page, then share this page on Facebook and Twitter and wait for people to read, and then feel like they are missing out when they do not come engage with my brilliance!? Honestly, I have no idea what I have to add to the world. Besides, I am not sure I want to add my thoughts to the WORLD, just my World. So what am I doing here?

Am I a health and fitness blog? I mean, no. No one is going to read fitness tips from a Morbidly obese dude, even if I am 22.5 pounds less morbidly obese than I was 423 days ago.

I could do the grad school blogger thing. Ugh. Would anyone read something so esoteric? My musings on the ridiculous over-studying of Freud's sexist Penis-Envy theories in Sac State's Literature Grad School program?

I tried to be a creative writing blog at one point, that didn't seem to be very interesting either. I can't be a book blog either because I read books four years after they get released.

See, I am not cool. I like to write, and I like to think, and I like to engage intelligent people, but I am not particularly cool or unique. I am also not good at any other aspect of blogging, outside of the words. I have no idea how to make my blog *look* cool.

I have my words. I have my brain. Maybe, just maybe those two things are enough to engage people no matter the topics I tackle. Or, you know, maybe not.

Perhaps the real reason for me to reboot this blog is simply because I like writing, and if other people want to read it, cool, if not, also cool.

So here's the deal. I am going to write on this thing. I am going to share it on Facebook and Twitter, and I am going to hope other people will read it.

I am going to write about my battle for my life from the jaws of obesity. I will write about education. I will write about movies and music, and my pop culture obsessions. I will try to tackle issues of the world from my perspective. I hope that sounds appealing, but if not, I have a new place to go so the people who get my Tweets by phone will not have to deal with 20 notifications from me within a 5 minute period.

Cheers.

The Fear Monster myth

I always think of fear as this massive overwhelming monster with rows of razor sharp teeth gnashing together sending sparks flying in every direction. I think it has chainsaws for hands, horns that shoot fire, and a voice that could shake me to my very core, causing my insides to rupture. That's not the truth though is it? Fear is a mosquito. Small, annoying, a nagging itch in the back of my mind. It can be the monster, but on a daily basis, it is just an unswattable annoyance. A little thing that is always just a split second faster than the confidence I send to squash it. That is fear.

Fear is not the absence of confidence, it is just faster, slipperier. Instead of using my confidence to propel myself forward, I send it after fear, and I just never quite catch it. As I chase the fear, I give it more power. Every time I miss it, it grows. That is the weird thing about fear, I give it power. it does not come from a student who is giving me a hard time, and it does not come from the woman in my grad school class who clearly has her shit together, making me feel inadequate. She is not aiming to make me feel that way. I am making me feel that. I fear that I am not on her level, therefore I must not be on the level I am supposed to be to succeed. I do that, not her. In my life time, fear has gotten the better of me more often than not. 

I was going to list all of the things I have been too afraid to do, but it got lengthy and super depressing, so I deleted it. Many involved asking girls out/to dance. A big one involved staying away from college for five years because I was afraid of failing. School was supposed to be my jam. I was afraid at failing at the one thing I have proven to be good at. It should no surprise that my early twenties were pretty much my worst years. 

2016 was supposed to be dedicated to conquering fears. I was going to confront the elusive weight loss, I was going to seek publishing for my novel, and self publish my novella. I headed into the New Year as Kyle the Conqueror! It did not take long for fear to over take me. What if my novella is not good? What if I self-publish it and the only people to buy are the friends of mine who read it for free a year or two ago? Well, I guess I can push back the self-publishing thing. I mean, I started grad school, so I was going to be super busy anyway. Fear tricked me into blaming the sudden demands on my time. My novel has sat for months, without a single Google search about finding agents or writing queries or anything else. I mean, why would anyone want to read a novel about an obese protagonist anyway? They don't. People was escape. I do not offer escape. The odds that anyone who does not love me would love my novel are so unbelievably microscopic, so why try?

My favorite evasive technique is to assume failure, as to halt attempt. I cannot fail if I do not try. Fear is good at that. Beyond being slippery, it is smart. It manifests in different ways in all of us. Fear for me does not look or sound like the fear you might experience. For me it manifests in my own voice, and it appears rational and straight forward, looking out for my best interests. It is a friendly. It wants to save me the embarrassment. Then it reminds me of the times I embarrassed myself, like the spill I took in ninth grade in Ashland Oregon in front of fifty of my classmates, or the time I did ask a girl out and she thought I was joking. Those not so gentle reminders work their way into my consciousness and fester. They burrow in deep and I see them again and again, so I back off whatever thing I am trying to accomplish. 

April was National Poetry Month, and to celebrate I wrote a poem a day. I decided to continue in May too. The poetry is all over the place thematically. It looks to be from a bunch of different collections. When I read over the poems, I do notice that I write about fear and failure rather frequently. These are not empowering pieces about tackling fear, or overcoming failure, no they are super sad pieces about wanting to just go to sleep and be left alone. In these pieces, I reveal that I worry about failing more than I worry about anything else. Failure as a teacher, as a student, as a husband, as a friend. 

Fear, whether in the form of a monster or a mosquito, looms large because I allow it to. Conquering fears is actually pretty easy when you decide to do it. It is the decision that is tough. That decision puts you back into the world of humanity, and that means into the potential for failure. It is entirely possible that not a single person outside of my small friend circle will have any interest in reading my novella and novel, but the reality is, there is only one way to find out. I have lived a majority of my life as untapped potential. I am not sure where that potential lies because I have been too afraid of failing to open my potential and see how I look in it, and how I move around in it. I have no idea what I am able to accomplish because of something that starts as tiny as a bug and when I give it power, transforms. But, if I can give it power, I can also take away that power. 

That is what I am starting to do. I am chipping away at the power. Got myself back into a semi-regular workout that I know I can keep up through the end of school, and then I can turn it up in two weeks. I am going back through my novella and my novel to make sure they express what I hope they express, and do not be surprised if I start flooding your feed with links on how to find my novella. If I can chip away at this little by little, who knows what I will be capable of in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. 

Undivided Attention- Taylor Mali

A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers,
tied up with canvas straps—like classical music’s
birthday gift to the criminally insane—
is gently nudged without its legs
out an eighth‐floor window on 62nd street.

It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers’ crane,
Chopin-­‐shiny black lacquer squares
and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second‐to­‐last
note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat,
the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over—
it’s a piano being pushed out of a window
and lowered down onto a flatbed truck!—and
I’m trying to teach math in the building across the street.

Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned?
All the greatest common factors are delivered by
long‐necked cranes and flatbed trucks
or come through everything, even air.
Like snow.

See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year
my students rush to the window
as if snow were more interesting than math,
which, of course, it is.

So please.

Let me teach like a Steinway,
spinning slowly in April air,
so almost-­‐falling, so hinderingly
dangling from the neck of the movers’ crane.
So on the edge of losing everything.

Let me teach like the first snow, falling

My own shame

This week I read a few articles, saw a few memes, and have just been generally thinking about fat shaming lately. I have to admit, I rarely think too much about the general popular culture movements in fatness. I am too close to it, and have to deal with it on a daily basis, so I tend not to think too much about how it is portrayed in the world at large. I went through a phase when it consumed me pretty regularly. I had a tough time watching Friends' episodes where Courtney Cox donned a fat suit for an endless stream of fat jokes, and I could not even deal with Shallow Hal when it came out. This does not even go into Mike Myers Fat Bastard get-up, Ryan Reynolds in a fat suit for that Just Friends movie, or any other thing where "normal" sized people put on a fat suit to make fun of fat people. I have moved on from that sort of anger at the world. The Rock is going to be a in fat suit for bits and pieces of his big summer blockbuster this year, and it does not bother me, or at the very least, I realize getting angry about it does no one any good. Instead I focus on what I can do in my own creations to make fat people not the butt of the jokes, to portray them as complex beings with feelings. That is the best I can do.

But the fact remains, I struggle with the fat acceptance movement, and I almost never think about why. It feels anti-progressive to struggle to accept this movement, and the reality is, I do accept it, just not for myself. I have been battling with this for a few years, and I have maybe documented it slightly in this blog over the last few years, but never fully. I think it would be great if we got to a place where people who were fat were not made fun of for being fat. I think it is awesome that people out there are owning their bodies no matter the shape or size. It is probably super empowering. I just do not feel it. I do not accept my own fatness, because to accept it would be to accept how horribly unhealthy I have been for a majority of my life. It would be to accept the debilitating joint pain and back pain as a result of that fatness. It would be to accept the fact that climbing two flights of stairs leaves me gasping for air. I just cannot accept it. I cannot look at myself as I am now and say, "This is okay."

I understand my real issue is with my health, not my size, but my size has caused my health. The immense pressure I have put on my knees, my ankles, my feet from the sheer weight of my body, is why I have joint pain. When I lose weight, that joint pain is less agonizing. It is simple math, and while I have a strong distaste for math, it is impossible to ignore. How can I accept this? How can I be okay knowing that? Every day I have general panic that my future kids will end up like me, and that terrifies me. There is a part of me that is glad I have not accepted my body. I do not want to feel like it is okay. I want to change. I have been slowly changing for four years, too slowly, but slowly.

2016 has been a significant year for many reasons, but one of them was the dedication to living healthier, and in terms of food, I am probably doing the best job of my life. I am counting calories, eating much healthier, even when not at home, opting for salads at Sac State instead of Panda Express or Togo's. I have cut way back on sweets, cut back on the sweetener in my iced tea, and outside of a rough march, cut way back on alcohol. I should be losing more weight than I am. I should feel better than I do. The problem is, I sacrificed working out for a grad school program. Managing my life has gotten tricky. I am busier than I have ever been in my entire life. I thought teaching 2 classes, putting together PACT and performing in Titanic five years ago was the busiest I could possibly be, but I was wrong. I have placed a value on strengthening my mind, and strengthening my job prospects, over strengthening my body. I was great at it in January, and early February, but abandoned it.

I hate my body. Hate hate hate. Then I hate myself for hating it. I hate feeling uncomfortable in my own skin. I hate that I am always conscious of my arms showing my stretch marks. I hate worrying that any part of my belly flab might become visible while stretching, especially in a classroom of 30 teenagers. At the moment I hate the throbbing pain in my left knee that has been persistently present for six days now, but I never feel like I can talk about it because it my own fat fault that it hurts. There is no reason to see a doctor, because as my last two doctors told me, all of my issues likely stem from my obesity. No shit, homie.

This is how I feel for myself, by the way, not for anyone else. I do not want anyone to get the impression this is what I think anytime I see a fat person, because it is not. I am thrilled to see fat stories existing in the world today. I am excited that there are fat blogs, and fat fashion, and I am hopeful one day, we will see more fat stories in popular culture where being fat is not a punchline. At the same time, I do not ever want to get to a place where I feel too comfortable in my own fat experience, because it has made me horribly unhealthy, and I want that to change that, not accept it.

I also wish other people's empowerment empowered me. I follow sassy fat people on social media who are clearly comfortable in their own skin, and I always hope it will rub off on me, but every time I think, "it's my body, I should be happy with it" my next immediate thought is "but you ruined the one body you get."

Do not misunderstand me, Fat Shaming is disgusting and unhelpful, and of course, anyone doing the fat shaming is not trying to help any way. They can frame that shit however they want, but they are not trying to help, they are trying, and often times succeeding, at being assholes. No one should feel that they can comment on anyone's body just because. There is not a single fat person in the world who does not know they are fat, trust me.

I usually try to come to some resolution on these blogs, but I got nothing today, sorry.

"If you don't like that...you don't like KINGS basketball"

The current Arco Arena (I know, Sleeptrain, but it will always be Arco to me) opened in time for the 1988-1989 basketball season. The Kings, who had moved from Kansas City in 1985, opened the arena, which was the cheapest NBA building. My family moved to the Sacramento area in December of 1988. I do not know a Sacramento area world without the Sacramento Kings playing in Arco. It was not to long after we got settled that my dad took me to see Rodney McCray, Kenny Smith, Wayman Tisdale, and the others for my first time. It was the birth of mt first and only Love/Hate relationship. Being a Kings fan in the late 80s, early 90s, mid 90s, late 2000s and early and mid 2010s has brought more tears than laughter, but it is our plight to bare.

For years we had a routine, my dad and I, and occasionally a sibling or two. For a long time the Kings offered game plans, where you could pick from a few different packages of anywhere from 7-15 games to get tickets to. My dad would buy the family 2 seats for one of the those packages and he would switch off who he would take. I have no idea if the routine was the same with the rest of the siblings, but for my dad and I, we would first stop at Long John Silver's for dinner because my mom hated the smell of fish and we never got it at home. After dinner, we drove to Arco, climbed the steep steps and took our seats at the top row, or next to last row, and because my dad had work early, with about five minutes left in the game, we would leave our seats and catch the rest of the game on the move. We tried to time it so we were exiting the arena as soon as the game ended and we could beat everyone out of the parking lot. We were never concerned with the freeway because we were going the opposite way of everyone else.

Much like The San Francisco Giants, the Sacramento Kings hold so many wonderful memories of my family, of my friends, and it all stems from Arco Arena. I can remember driving to Arco back when the area was a vast expanse of nothingness with an arena in the middle of it. I remember dreaming of playing on that court when my dad set up our basketball hoop at our house. All I wanted in the world from 1990-1995 was to be Lionel "L Train" Simmons but with Mitch Richmond's jump shot. I must have practiced my Richmond jump shot hundreds of times a day.

I remember when Billy Owens refused to come to Sacramento and somehow the Warriors were willing to part with one third of Run-TMC and brought The Kings its biggest star in that era. I remember when the KIngs used to host a draft viewing experience in Arco, and my dad and I would go every year to watch the draft live at the arena. The arena booed like crazy when they drafted Peja Stojakovic because his European contract was not up yet, and we had to wait two years to see him in the Kings uniform. It turned out to be worth the wait!

I have lived through eternal heartbreak as a fan of this team, and its dumpy arena personifies that. It, like the Kings, can be tough to love most of the time, but when you really think about the memories, you cannot help but love it. Nothing in this world has ever made me feel pride in the city where I was raised like Arco Arena during the 1998-2005 seasons. I had never experienced that much energy, emotion, love, and joy. Those Chris Webber led Kings teams were a wonder to behold. Webber, Divac, Peja, Bibby, J-Will, Bobby Jackson, Scott Pollard, Hedo, etc had us cheering for every single second of every single game. The height, of course, was the 2001-2002 season when the Kings had the best record in the Western Conference! For those of us who had been sitting in the top two rows cheering our hearts out when the Kings were routinely finishing with 25-35 wins, and were the laughing stock of the NBA, it was more than just a basketball team, it was like members of our family finally succeeding. 

The last six years have been rough, but the city of Sacramento rallied and proved to the the nation why Larry Bird called the Kings fans the best fans in the game way back in 1986. We are the best fans in the game. We support a team that routinely breaks our heart because they represent a city always fighting for respect. Through all of the years, Arco has persevered. An entire city went up around it. No longer is it alone. No longer do people wonder what that random building in the middle of nowhere is when they fly into Sacramento. It has been a landmark, an ugly landmark, but a landmark of our city, and while I am excited to see the full unveiling of the Golden 1 Center, I am going to miss going to Arco to see the Purple and Black, or the Powder Blue and red, or whatever iteration comes next. 

I have too many wonderful memories of Arco to even spill out into this blog, but I do want to highlight one. In the 2000-2001 season my good friend David got two tickets and asked me to go with him. It was early January in 2001. The Phoenix Suns were in town, the Kings, Lakers and Suns were battling it out for supremacy in the Western Division. It was a HUGE game, and four minutes in Chris Webber got himself ejected. I was sure that was it. I did not think Vlade could handle all the middle with all of of Jason Kidd's ability to break Jason Williams down. I made a comment early in the game about not believing in Vlade and the two dudes behind us heard it and for the rest of the game, every time Vlade did anything good, they gave me a hard time about it. As the game went on and those two guys got increasingly more drunk, the comments got more obnoxious until one of them dumped beer all over my hat. I was seconds away from probably getting into a fight when I turned to David who was just laughing about the whole thing. When I asked him why he was laughing he commented on the absurdity of us arguing over Vlade keeping the team in the game. We were all on the same side. It diffused the situation and allowed me to sit and enjoy the rest of the game, which went into overtime and saw the Kings pull out the victory, mostly due to Vlade's free throw shooting. Even though Tony Delk went for over 50 points, somehow, the magical Kings pulled it out.

Thank you Arco Arena for over 25 years of memories, I will cherish them, even the heartbreaking ones. Thank you for giving me a place to watch world class athletes doing world class things.  

A jumble of thoughts

Clearly, I have not been able to keep up with the schedule I had hoped to, so I am going to have to lose the 2 times a week posting. My new goal is to post every Sunday. Setting an actual schedule is incredibly helpful, and since I have to update my grad school Teaching College Composition blog every weekend, it is a good time for me to update this blog as well.

As it turns out, being a full time teacher and a full time grad student is insane. The work load is more than I would recommend to anyone, and it has definitely taken its toll on me in recent weeks. If I survive April and May, it will be a miracle, seriously. Between writing two fourteen-page papers, four shorter essays, a lit review, two annotated bibliographies, reading three more novels, preparing students for the AP Lit exam, teaching four junior English classes, planning next year's yearbook, and writing, and submitting paperwork to the UC system to get yearbook as an A-G credit, I may just die.

That being said, being a grad student has actually helped me find the energy to teach every day. It has reminded me of how important learning is. I actually think I have been a better teacher the last two months because of the time at grad school. Plus, one of my courses has opened my eyes to being a better teacher of writing, which is the area in which I am weakest. Next year I am going to be a whole new teacher, and I am totally stoked. But I have to get through the next eight weeks first.

This week, which was supposed to be awesome because it was spring break from teaching, took a pretty nasty turn Thursday night. My wife had my car in Oakland, and someone smashed the window and stole my wife's laptop and a duffle bag full of clothes and makeup. It turns out our deductible on our insurance is so high that we are pretty much paying out of pocket to fix the window and if we want to replace the lost items. The last few months we were starting to climb out of the financial hole we have been in for what feels like forever, and this is definitely an unexpected hit. But, I know we will survive it. We have survived worse together. And it turned out that, for me, this was not even the kicker.

Friday afternoon I ventured out to Arden Fair Mall to get a receipt on the Macbook Air that was stolen, and as I was walking around the mall, I heard some whispers from behind me. I heard two voices cracking jokes about my obesity. It appeared that these people were actually following me just cracking jokes. I have written at length about my experiences with people making fun of me for being fat, and I am not super eager to rehash that conversation, but it is hard to not write about it when it is something I continue to deal with multiple times a month. Yes, multiple times a month I hear people in the world making comments about how fat I am, as if I am oblivious to the fact that I am an obese person. I have been obese since I was probably fourteen years old, this is not a surprise to me. What is surprising is that the things my fourteen year old peers taunted me with in middle school and high school, are still happening. Those people who caused me to miss half of the school year in seventh and eighth grade because I could not possibly face them, grew into adults who do the same thing.

After listening to these two people for longer than I should have, I finally snapped. I wish I hadn't. I wish I had not given them the satisfaction of knowing they got to me. On a regular day I probably could have let it roll off of me. I have become pretty damn good at ignoring such things. Friday though, man they managed to find the exact way to make their words stick. I have said this before, but if you take pictures of people to mock them online, or if you mock people openly in public, you are an asshole and I have no time for you in my life. Please delete me from any social media if you think that is funny. You can go on and on about politically correctness being bad, but if your aim is to hurt people, you are not some defender of Freedom of Speech, you are just a fraction of a human being, and have no concept of decency.

If I could go back to any moment in my life, I would go to my twelve year old self and implore myself to not get obese. It is a seriously awful thing to be fat and try to occupy space in public. Almost always, that obesity was caused by bad decisions so people think it is fair game for mockery. This entire weekend I have been replaying all the worst things I have heard or had done to me because of my obesity. It is an awful space to be occupying, but I have not been able to shake it at all. It is Sunday and I am still stewing in how awful it feels.

I am a productive member of society. I think I have an honorable profession. I am working hard to better my mind, and my station in life. I like to think I treat people fairly and fight for people who are struggling to fight for themselves. I think most people who know me would say that I am kind and sincere, so why should it matter to me what two people who have never met me before think? Why does it hurt? I wish I had answers, I really do. This is not the kind of thing I can seem to intellectualize. It boggles my mind that there are people out there who feel the need to be so mean. And I know that it is a reflection of them and not of me, but that does not help.

My hope is that now that I have written it out, I can let it go. I do not need to hold on to the anger, the sadness, the hopelessness I have been feeling for three days. Last night I had a great work out. I am a dedicated teacher and student. I am a dedicated friend and husband who has people who love me. It is time to focus on those things. It is time to remind myself that I am not my obesity. We are not the things the world makes fun of us for. We are stronger than that. I am stronger than that.

Four Jolly Ranchers

I went through a stretch in January where I saw no weight loss, which was followed by a steady weight loss for four weeks in a row, which was followed by a week of no weight loss. This week to be exact. In my attempt to get at the reason behind it, I scoured my Fitbit and MyFitnessPal applications, because, well, applications make the world go around. Looking through my history on those two apps I discovered really, only one glaring difference. This week I ate exactly four individually wrapped jolly ranchers. 2 watermelon flavored, 1 blue raspberry (whatever the hell that means) and 1 apple. Full disclosure, if there had been any cherry flavored ones, it would have been 2 watermelon and 2 cherry, even though the woman in charge of the jolly ranchers gets upset when everyone takes only the red ones.

In my warped sense of reality, those four jolly ranchers are the entire reason I did not experience any weight loss. Four individually wrapped candies stood between me and version of me who weighs one less pound. Keeping in mind just how ridiculous of a notion that is, it got me thinking about the little things. I mean, things do not get much smaller than individually wrapped pieces of candy. The decision to park on the third level of the parking garage instead of the ground floor, even though there are spaces on the ground floor is a little thing. (If I had more time, I would park at the top floor.) This little decision pays pretty big dividends every day. It forces me to walk faster to get to class on time. It forces me to go down stairs, then back up them after class. For someone in much better shape than I, it is no big deal, but for many many years I would take the elevator to avoid even a single flight of stairs.

A few days ago I posted a photo on Instagram and Facebook that showed the four books I am planning on teaching for AP Language, and a former student from my student teaching days commented that she wished she could go back to high school to have me again. I imagine to her it was a little thing, and in reality, a comment on Instagram is a little thing, but that little thing made my entire week because I spent much of this week putting out fires at school that another teacher started. To think that a twenty-one year girl with an entire life of her own would think to comment that she wished she could have me a teacher again was pretty remarkable, especially because while I was her teacher, I was worried she hated my class.

Little things have a big impact. A smile here, a high-five there. Parking far away from the grocery store to get more steps. Working out for two minutes longer than you expected. Getting in bed 10 minutes earlier. Listening to your favorite song. Cutting yourself a little bit of slack at the end of a bad day. I have been reading a poem a day in 2016, and it takes no more than five minutes on any given day, but it feeds my soul. Little things are important. maybe four jolly ranchers kept me from a pound of weight loss, and maybe they did not, but choosing to not dwell on that fact has made all of the difference. It is not about forgiving myself for eating the candy, it is about me realizing four pieces of candy over the course of seven days are not going to be a problem in the bigger picture. Some weeks the weight comes off and some weeks it doesn't.

 All of those little things add up, and in my year of focusing on the positive, taking any sort of time for something good, is allowing me to feel better even in the face of tough times. I have had a few people tell me over the last two weeks that I look lighter, not thinner, but lighter. My walk is lighter, my smile a bit wider, my laugh a little more full. I do not succeed at the good little things every day, but the good little things are starting to outweigh the bad little things in a major way. Think of what could happen if you changed a few little things!

Introducing Kyle 3.0 (100th post)

There was a time, a few short years ago, where my goal for this blog was to be a completely changed man by the time I got to my 100th post. In my mind there was this big weight loss reveal where I held up a pair of my fat jeans and then tossed them aside to reveal the new svelte Kyle Hadley. Well, I'm still wearing my fat jeans. I am not svelte. I am not new. Nope, on the surface, I am the same obese Kyle. Nearly 100 pounds less obese, so maybe I downgraded from morbidly obese to plain ole obese. But, let me clear about something, beneath the surface, beneath the obesity, I am a new man.

It is strange to think about the guy I was before I started this journey nearly four years ago. That guy expected to fail at everything, so he rarely did anything. That guy was so disgusted with himself he never stopped to look in a mirror. That guy never brushed his teeth because it didn't matter. He bought clothes with holes in them to save a few bucks because he hated the way he looked, so what did it matter. That guy could not make a relationship work. That guy never stood for himself because he feared people would eventually just make fun of him for being obese. That guy walked around afraid all of the time that everyone was whispering about how gross he was. That guy is no longer in charge here.

He still exists, but he stopped running the show. He was replaced by a new model. The new and improved me (Kyle 2.0) who has lost nearly 100 pounds because he actually, you know, tried some shit. I ran/walked a 5K. I stopped drinking soda. Now I eat chicken and vegetables in the place of Carl's Jr. I pay attention to the food the I eat. I spend time in the gym on a weekly basis. I missed the gym last week when I was too sick to function. I wrote a novel a few years ago because along with those nearly 100 pounds I have shed thus far, I shed a ton of the fear. I walk around now without thinking about being laughed at. I stand up for myself. I have this awesome functioning relationship and am working on shedding the bad people I have let hang around too long.

So my dream of tossing the fat jeans away has not arrived yet, but I can toss away the metaphorical fat jeans and reveal another new model, Kyle 3.0. Kyle 3.0 is studying to get his Master's because he does not want to be complacent. Kyle 3.0 is pursuing publishing the novel that Kyle 2.0 wrote. This newest model wakes up most days looking for the good, even through a tough school year. (he fails some times, but he is trying.) I am logging calories, tracking steps, reading up on proper ways to lose weight. Until the sickness and the broken treadmills I was in the gym 5 days a week. I am reading poetry every day. Kyle 3.0 is doing a better job of taking care of the whole person, and he realizes the number on the scale is a fraction of what the journey was meant to be about.

My newest goal is stop dwelling on Kyle 1.0. It is time to let him go and forgive him. I have to stop thinking about all the time I lost, and focus on taking advantage of the time I have. I am on my way. I hope you'll all stick around and continue this journey with me. And to everyone who has ever read, passed along nice things, told me to keep fighting, or told me how much my journey has inspired, I love you and you all rock.

Kyle's Favorites: (500) Days of Summer

I saw this movie five times in the theater. I saw it in four different cities, that is how much I loved it. The poster for the film hangs in our apartment. I have seen the movie on DVD over 50 times, easily. I took this movie with me as a sub and showed it in classes where I was not left a lesson plan. During my students teaching I taught the movie during a short one week film unit. I have shown the movie to my yearbook class as a reward for finishing the yearbook, and this year I added the movie to my junior curriculum as part of a bigger film unit. The love I feel for this movie is deep. I think it is brilliant, and I try not to throw that word around loosely.

(500) Days of Summer concerns the relationship between Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) which spans 500 turbulent days. There is an omniscient narrator who tells us right off the bat that "This is a story of boy meets girl, but it is not a love story." From the very start of this film, we realize this is not going to be a traditional romantic comedy and it definitely is not. Tom believes Summer is the one from the moment he sees her. Summer very clearly states she is not interested in a relationship, and they become friends. Summer knows that Tom is into her, but he never fully says it because he just wants her in his life and because of that, it gets tricky when they start kissing, going on adorable dates to Ikea, and start having sex. Are they a couple or are they not a couple? Who knows? Clearly neither of them know. Tom believes they are, Summer maintains that they are just friends. This back and forth could get old quickly, but the great thing about the script is that the story unfolds in a non-linear fashion. We get the good mixed with the bad. We get the humor followed by the sadness. The film never lets us wallow in the sadness for very long and it never lets us celebrate the happiness for too long. It creates this wonderful blend of emotions and it is not afraid to smack us around with them. My favorite transition is from the morning after the first sex to the first day post break up.

One of the things I love about the movie is the narrative tricks. First off, the movie is told out of order, so we see the 500 days of this relationship as it jumps around in time. Happiness flips to sadness and back all in the span of a few minutes as we get cutaway shots showing what day we are about to watch. Then we have a droll voiced narrator weaving his way in and out of the story. He does not seem to care much what happens to the protagonist, but exists just to help us understand what it going on. The movie has a devastating animated sequence, black and white sequences, characters talking directly to the camera,and a full dance number. All of that is great, but there is one scene that sort of drives this movie to my favorites list. It is a scene to which every person can relate, I believe. As Tom goes to a party hosted by Summer, the film goes to a split screen and on one side we see Tom's expectations and on the other side we see the reality. This is after the break up, and after months of not seeing each other outside of a attending the same wedding, which led to the protagonist's renewed hope. His expectations and the reality are so grossly different that it hurts to watch them side by side. I have seen movies press forward with the expectations only to pull back and reveal it was in the character's head and then go forward with the reality, but to see them side by side just hurts. It is an achingly brilliant move on whomever decided to go that way. It is like that in the shooting script, but who knows if the director had input there. That scene will crush you because we have all done it. We have all seen what we want to happen in our heads, only to see reality go in a completely different direction. In a movie full of hilarious moments and sad moments, this scene is easily the most crushing. The scene even ends with the protagonist no longer a human being, but a sketch in one of his architectural creations as all of his surrounding are being erased to a sad poignant song.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are the leads, and share a breezy, yet commanding chemistry that leaves me wishing they would team up more often on film. Marc Webb was a music video director before this and the duo of screen writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have gone on to write the screenplay for the John Green YA adaptations. The supporting actors all add to both the humor and heart of the film.

Another thing I love about this movie is the way it deconstructs not only the romantic comedy genre, but also the idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, I know there are people who I think misread this film as being wish fulfillment from Tom's POV, but it shows how POV is skewed. Summer is a full blown character with hopes and dreams, and Tom mistakenly looks for meaning through her. She is clear with him from the beginning, but he only sees what he wants to see. The film shines a light on how we construct our own narrative, and how we filter everything through our own lens, often times forgetting the people in our stories, are actually living their own stories. The film is as much about how we tell a story, as it is about telling the story. It is almost metatextual in that way.

The film also uses music to perfection. In a tranquil scene The Temper Trap's "Sweet Disposition" plays, then later in the film, when Summer and Tom reconnect, the song plays again, giving us the impression that things just may end up going well for the young couple. Many of my students even said they did not believe the narrator when he said it was not a love story because of this scene. They wanted to be believe because of how the mood was set up by the music, the lighting and how the two young people were framed together with the sunset in the back and flowers in the background. The movie features other great moments driven by music, but this is the one I come back to time and time again.

(500) Days of Summer will frustrate you, make you cry and make you laugh. I think, though, in the end, it gives you hope. It makes you believe in the search for true love, even though it hurts when it does not go your way. it deconstructs our idea of what a romantic comedy is supposed to be and it perfectly deconstructs the character tropes of the genre. It has a kick ass soundtrack that is made more kick ass by how each song is used in the film. The non-linear narrative technique serves the film in a variety of ways, but mostly it keeps the film from feeling too sad in the second half. The performances, direction, script and editing are all top notch. It does not over stay its welcome at a brisk 95 minutes and it leaves you feeling something. I will not say what you will be left feeling by it, but I do not know anyone who did not feel something when the film was over. half of my students hate me for playing it for them because it felt too real, but that was kind of the point. This is a movie that I know in twenty years I will still watching and enjoying, and I hope that if you have not seen the movie, this make you want to see it and I hope that if you have seen it, this gives you something new to think about.

This school year has been an utter failure

Two weeks ago I played a Spoken Word poem about depression for one of my classes, at the request of two students. The poem is a young girl trying to explain her depression to her mother, and I was deeply moved by the piece. When the poem ended, I looked around and saw that multiple students were crying. As we talked about the poem, I found myself overcome with emotion. I broke down and cried a little bit in front of my class, which was a first.

I have four sections of the same class this year, on top of AP Lit. AP Lit has been a blast mostly because I have had some sort of relationship with nearly all of the students in it for a year or two. Of my four sections of junior English, I have one that is so good at class discussions. This is the class that got something out of the spoken word poem. We also get a lot from each other, because of the discussions. My class is at its best, when discussions play a big role. A big part of my job is to help students learn how to think for themselves, and learn how to articulate those thoughts.

I am new to this teaching thing, but have been doing it long enough to know this year has been a complete bust. I cannot seem to get a majority of my students to care about learning, about thinking, about reading, about anything, really. Every day is a new struggle. I am doing everything I know how, and nothing is working. I took out my Into the Wild unit to put in a film unit in hopes it would get them moving in the right direction, and even a film unit did not work. I got rid of all non-reading homework. This year all parts of the essay writing process are happening in class, including giving class time to type up final drafts because they do not do homework. In some ways I have liked it because it has allowed me to figure out exactly what is the most important material that I absolutely must teach. The problem is, none of it has worked. Even if I circulate the computer lab for the entire 70 minute period, I still end up only getting about seventy-five percent of essays turned in. What little reading I have assigned has gone mostly unread. Most work is not being done, and when a majority of the classes will not contribute to class discussions on top of that, I have no way of knowing if anything I am teaching is working. Do you have any idea what it feels like to feel totally helpless in your job? It sucks. I have never, in my entire life, felt so ineffective at anything.

It would be so easy to quit on them like they have quit on me, but that is not how I do things, so I listen to them, figure out what they want, what they like, and I try to incorporate those things into my lessons. With The Great Gatsby we have talked a bunch about money, and if it matters where it comes from, and we compare Jay Gatsby to rappers who started as drug dealers. The Great Gatsby is the first unit that has somewhat worked this year. Students appeared to dig reading the book. They like the mystery of this super rich guy. Money is important to teenagers.

Because I am trying to do anything I can to get them engaged, I played that poem. It rattled me. It rattled that one class, but it was just one class, on one day, and we quickly moved on, except the poem lingered with one particular student, and this week I got an email from a parent that reminded me that if I am making a difference in one life, I am doing my job well. The email mentioned that poem, and how I handled the tough subject matter. The mother, who was an English teacher at one point, also wrote "Being a good teacher with high expectations yet remaining approachable and vulnerable is a hard balance to achieve. Thank you for being that kind of teacher."

I have been thinking about that all week because I had worried that I had lost my high expectations this year. I so desperately wanted my students to just turn in anything, I worried that I forgot what it means to have high expectations. This was such a great reminder. It didn't hurt that she CCed my principal in the email.

I have these students for another three and a half months. This wonderful email reminded me that I can do this. I can be effective. I can maintain my high expectations, and till find a way to relate to these kids, and maybe, just maybe, we can all learn together.

Teaching is such a roller coaster.

Kyle's Favorites: Taylor Swift's "New Romantics"

As I get my blogging feet under me, and, as I deal with the realities of my busy life, I have found that I need concrete things to write about. I also need deadlines. Because of these things, I am trying to set up a blogging schedule as well as things to write about.

This is what I have decided. I am going to update this blog two times a week. Once on Tuesday or Wednesday, and once on the weekend. The mid-week post will be a series of posts about popular culture things I love, or Kyle's Favorites. These things may be songs, movies, books, television shows, albums, etc. I want something that will help me keep my analytical skills sharp, but without the heady academic writing I will be doing in my Grad program. As I am doing my best to make 2016 a year of positivity, I want to focus on talking about why I love the things I love. As my time is relatively impacted, I might not write about movies as often as I have in the past, simply because I am not watching as many movies as I have in the past.

My first entry into this new category is my second favorite Taylor Swift song off of her massively successful 1989 album. Except, that it's not actually on the album, unless you got the special deluxe edition. It will forever be a mystery why this song was left off the actual album, as it is, simply put, a dope ass pop song.



Check it out. Swift's album is named for the year she was born, and the 1980s were a rich landscape of cheesy pop music, but most of her album is strictly modern. It is a celebration of who she is now, not of the era in which she is born. Perhaps that is why this track was left off. The synth poppy track would sound pretty close to home as a Duran Duran or Adam Ant song, who were products of the New Romanticism movement of music in the late 70s and early 80s. Of course, the song, like most of Swift's greatest hits, talks about her life. This is her greatest weapon, her ability to frame her own narrative through music. Whereas most of her earlier work took love deeply serious, and she wrote like a lovesick teenager, 1989 as a whole takes on a less romantic view of love. In fact, the title of the this particular song, is part of the new satirical Swift. The New Romantics are not romantic at all, in terms of what we traditionally consider to be romantic.

The song begins "We're all bored/we're all so tired of everything." These are not the lyrics you expect to hear when the track starts. It only gets better from there. A personal favorite line of mine comes pretty quickly after the opening "We show off our different scarlet letters/
Trust me mine is better." Obviously I enjoy a literary reference more than most, but I also love how apt this is for her, specifically. To the the public eye, hoping to shame women for being, well, women, Swift has had her fair share of public shame. Each relationship scrutinized, each decisions met with think piece after think piece. The shame the public forced on her is *better* than anything we could imagine. Her sarcastic tone, as she tosses this line out, is perfect.

The New Romantic sings out their heartbreak, dances it out, fills the sadness with friends, the emptiness and boredom of life are shared with those other Scarlet-letter wielding people. Once the chorus hits, Swift become impenetrable surrounded by her girls, tossing boys aside, tossing criticism aside, grooving to the 80s synth pop, and finding the definition of who she truly is.

between the cool vocal, the lyrics that hit like little daggers, the brashy hook, and the fact that it is a super exclusive track, what is not to love? Swift spends most of 1989 reframing her narrative from teenage quirky country-pop girl into a full blown pop star. Lyrically the album changes who we have been conditioned to think of Taylor Swift as. No longer is she the girl worried about tearsdrops on her guitar. Now she's building castles out of the bricks the world has hurled at her. This album was her coming out party, and what better song to close it out with than a song that goes "We need love, but all we want is danger."

Being frank with students

Two years ago I wrote a post about a student who asked me a lot of questions about weight loss, and obesity and how I dealt with my own obesity. For a few weeks after I wrote that post, I was receiving messages telling me I made a mistake being so honest with a student and other messages applauding me for my honesty with that student. It never entered my mind to not be honest with him, just as it never occurs to me to not be honest with all of my students about most things.

If you want teenagers to be honest with you, they have to respect you. I do not deserve their respect just by being their teacher. I have to earn it on a daily basis, or I am not doing my job. I have found, in my brief time as a teacher, that students respond to honesty. They like to see it in their teachers. Because I am honest with them, usually they are honest with me. They tell me when what we are learning is interesting or useful, or when they are not learning. They are great at letting me know the difference between boredom and exhaustion. We have built a relationship based on being honest with each other. Pretty much the only off-limit topic is my sex life. I have been asked a few times how old I was when I lost my virginity, and it is the only thing I refuse to answer. If they want my political beliefs, they have to come up and ask quietly after class because I do not want to appear as if I am forcing my beliefs on them, but generally I will answer any questions they ask.

I teach many students who are overweight, I think all teachers do. We are an unhealthy nation. By being honest about my struggles, my triumphs, or my fears, these students see someone they recognize. It has given a few of them power to take back control of their own lives. When I told my students that I worked out before school, I had a student come up a week later who told me that knowing I was getting up at 4:30 to work out, made it easier for him to get up at 6 and work out. On any given day I have students coming in to tell me about what they did at Crossfit the night before, or the new vegetables they tried (I might talk about spaghetti squash and cauliflower a lot), or even better, little snacks they like that are healthy. They also ask me for updates on my journey and we commiserate together about how hard working out is, but how rewarding it is, and we all need to remember how good it feels when we complete our work out.

But, when I fail, I tell them. When I go a long time without working out, I am honest when they ask. They understand how it goes. It actually makes them more likely to tell me that they forgot to do the homework, instead of creating some elaborate bullshit excuse. They understand failure is a part of life because I am unafraid to let them see my failure. Some teachers do not want their students to see them make mistakes, but I think it is good. They need to know that mistakes are a natural part of life.

I write about this today because a particularly obese former student of mine emailed me today to tell me that he was able to run a mile without stopping for the first time in his life. He told me that he conquered his fear of the gym and with running in places where people can see him. Occasionally I overshare. Occasionally we get so far away from the topic about which we are learning because we talk about why I didn't drink or do any drugs in high school, or I pause to tell the story of how my stupid masculinity convinced me I could put together a bookcase on my own, which left Martina and I with a leaning bookcase. Sometimes these stories add nothing to the lives of my students, but there are days where something we talk about helps students change habits, or allows them to feel comfortable forming and expressing their own opinions on things, and they get excited when they do new things, and want me to know about it.

So, yes, my students feel comfortable talking to me like I am a person, not a teacher. They say things to me they might not say to other teachers. I am okay with them knowing more about my life if that is what I get in return.

Saturday Night Gym Thoughts part 2

I woke up yesterday morning with every intention of going to the gym at 7:30pm (Kings tip-off). After watching the trio of superhero shows on The CW, running errands, having lunch with my best friend, grading essays, playing with the dog, and writing for a few hours, it was 9:30. My plan of watching the first half of the Kings game at the gym was ruined. At that point, I would have only caught the last few minutes. After getting ready and stretching, it would have been nearly 10 at night before I started the work out, which would mean not getting home until after 11, and then not getting to sleep until nearly midnight. Midnight is late. Too late. Martina is gone this weekend, so no one would ever know if I decided to stay home and not work out. It was of no consequence to anyone but me. I had the final episode of the first season of Top Chef I could have watched, or after two hours of struggling to find a groove in writing, I had two solid hours of writing and I could have stuck to writing until bed. There is half-read Harry Potter book chilling on my nightstand as well. These are all things I would have rather done. Besides I have not lost any weight in two weeks, so it is not like the work outs are, you know, working.

Instead, I made myself change my clothes, put on my running shoes, and go down to the gym. I negotiated with myself that fifteen minutes was better than nothing. Sure, it wasn't the sixty minutes I normally did, but it was something.

January has been full of great work outs. Nights where I feel lighter than I ever have. Nights where I get so invigorated, I feel I can accomplish anything in the world. Last night was not one of the those nights. Last night sucked. My left thigh hurt. The wifi was not working, causing my Podcast to keep cutting out, which left me with only the television. The first few minutes were fine because I had the final two or three minutes of the Kings game. Saturday night after 10 at night, the sporting events vanish though. Not even a tennis match. I often turn a sporting event on while listening to my podcasts, but without the podcasts, I had to watch commercials, and that leads to paying attention to how much longer I have. It sucks.

But

I finished. Sixty minutes. Nothing is more rewarding than completing a work out you had no desire to do. It is easy (well, easy is relative I suppose) to get a work out in when you are motivated to do so. Completing a workout when you struggled every single second, that's the good stuff man. That is where you realize you are doing this for real. Those are the nights you learn that holding yourself accountable is enough. It is fun to post to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It is good to have that accountability. It adds pressure. But, if on a solo Saturday night, you drag yourself to do a workout you do not want to do, you know you actually do want to do it.

For fifty nine minutes and fifty nine seconds, I was miserable. Then, the cool down program started and I knew I had made it. Suddenly all of the misery rolled off of me with the sweat from the work out. As good as Thursday and Friday night at the gym were, Saturday was that bad. I checked the time every five minutes, filled my head with negative thoughts about how I see myself. Nearly convinced myself to just quit trying to lose weight. After twenty three days of solid working out and eating well, I am only four pounds down from where I started 2015. Maybe it is just who I am. That fear of my personality being tied to weight haunted me for like forty of the minutes on that treadmill.

Some how I managed to shove it all down and finish the work out. I am still dealing with some residual negativity and I would be lying if I said I was not haunted by a dream in which everyone I loved told me I was fat and gross and undeserving of good things, which is a real fear I wake up with at least once a week.

The goal is not weight loss. The goal is health. It is tough to measure. My body feels stronger when not in agonizing pain from working out. Mentally I am definitely healthier than I was for most of my life before I actively sought out health. I have to keep plugging away. The only way this works is if I get myself to the gym on a regular basis whether I want to be there or not.

Life is about to get even busier tomorrow as my Master's program begins. Because of my commute, 4 days a week I will leave my house slightly after six in the morning and 3 days get home at like 6:45, and 1 day I will not get home until almost 10. I cannot let myself forget how important feeling better is. Making time is the only way.

Last thought. After the Kings game ended, I turned on Diners, Drive ins, and Dives. Not sure if working out while watching it was the best idea or the worst idea, but it definitely kept me entertained.

A random encounter that changed my perspective

Every morning a group of older men sit at a table at Starbucks, and fill each other in on their previous day, or shoot the breeze about current events, or laugh at the stupidity of one of the men. It is an eclectic group of men. One talks in a deep southern drawl, another is a heavy set Hispanic man with deep callouses on his hands. There is a scrawny Asian man, occasionally, and every so often an abrasive black man. They all pale in comparison in terms of intrigue to the quiet, man with long curly hair he often tucks into a beanie, and a long white beard that almost never moves as he speaks. His hands shake uncontrollably, and every seven minutes he gets up from the table and goes outside to smoke a cigarette, no matter the weather. For eighteen months I have watched these men, curious as to their individual and collective stories. How did this group of men come to be friends? Why do they spend hours in Starbucks? As a writer, and as an observer, I find all of these men interesting. They welcome a variety of people to their table, exchange gifts with long time baristas, and hold court on a wide spectrum of topics.

One day, around the New Year, the smoker of the group stood outside holding his cigarette in his left hand, clothed in a tie-dye peace sign shirt, jeans that hung low and loose, thick black boots, and a rainbow colored beanie. I walked by him, nodded like I usually do when I see him and went into Starbucks to write. Three hours later as I emerged from the haze of writing, there he was again, outside, cigarette in his left hand. He asked me my name, and asked how I liked the apartment complex where I live. (My complex is backed up to the shopping center which has the Starbucks, and I walk to and from Starbucks, so he knew where I lived.) As I put my bag down to talk to him, I noticed his right hand shaking uncontrollably, and his left leg too. His face read that it was a struggle for him to raise his left hand to his lips to take a puff on his burning cigarette. His name is Raymond. Raymond helped change my perspective of life that day. In the weeks since, we have occasionally chatted, usually briefly, because as I found out during our first conversation, he cannot sit still for very long.

Raymond's uncontrollable shaking comes courtesy of an accident in 2007. An accident that put him on permanent disability. An accident for which he is still paying hospital bills. An accident that left him with rods in his spine, weak limbs that tighten if he stays in one spot for longer than 15 minutes, and left him with a stutter. Raymond was a career military man. He was scheduled to go to Vietnam, but we pulled out. He was stationed in different parts of the world in the 1980s and 1990s. In the early 2000s he worked on a base in San Diego. The accident happened on the military base. He told me the details were still a bit fuzzy to him. He shook his head, smiling as he stuttered through the story.

He was out directing some men who were re-positioning surveillance cameras on the base, when he noticed, out of the corner of his right eye, an army jeep swerving recklessly towards him. It was too late to jump out of the way, and the jeep hit him, and tossed him into a concrete barricade of some sort. He awoke days later in a hospital. A week after that he was released from the hospital, and all he wanted to do was go back to work, but it was not to be.

His story was depressing but his tone and body language were anything but. He told me he was thankful to have kids who helped him. Thankful that he survived and gets to live into old age. He said that the hospital bills are terrible, but he has a roof over his head, food to eat, and people around who make him smile. The daily struggles help remind him to appreciate the time he has left, and since the accident he gets to read more, and life has slowed down. He still misses working, and picks up odd jobs here and there, but only in the warmer months because the cold months are too hard on the rods in his body. He picked up smoking after the accident because he needed something to do with his hands while he walked around outside after sitting for ten minutes.

The warmth and joy that emanated from his core, rocked me back a little bit, honestly. If I get water in my shoe, my whole day is flat out ruined. Here is a guy whose entire life was fractured by an event over which he had no control, and he walks around every day appreciating it and taking it all in.

At the close of our discussion he wished me a good day, we shook hands and as I walked away, he said "God bless you." This is not a phrase I enjoy hearing, if I am being completely honest. My relationship with God is rocky, and has been for twenty years, and normally when someone says it to me, it feels so fabricated, like they are trying to teach me a lesson. The sincerity rang out from him though.

I try to remember how grateful Raymond is to experience every day, and my goal is to get myself there.

How can I learn better?

Our online grade book has an app that allows students to check grades even when we close our books to enter final grades. I think it is an unofficial app, but it has an app. Beyond the app, the students and parents have access to a portal, which allows for them to check grades in real time. If I enter something, I can have students coming to ask me about the grade they got within three minutes. For example, today I entered grades for an annotated poem for AP. Less than 10 minutes later, one of the students came in to ask why he got a ZERO when he knows he turned in the assignment. His annotated poem turned out to be on the last day of the Island of Misfit Papers (no-name wall) before I tossed it. Problem solved.

To a high school student, grades are the single most important part of school. Not intrinsically mind you, they don't really care. They HAVE to care. Cell phones, cars, weekends out, all depend on grades. Parents, teachers, administrators, colleges all pressure students to get good grades. In elementary school, kids go home and get asked "What did you learn today?" I have asked over 300 students int he last 2 years if they ever get asked that question, and a handful said yes. They get asked "How did you do on that test?" "What grade did you get?" Students are conditioned to bypass any comments on an essay, in favor of looking for a grade. I put grades at the end of an essay just so the students have to at least flip through the essay to maybe glance at some of the comments I leave.

This focus on results is damaging. It is damaging to teenagers, to teachers, to parents, and to colleges. Studies are showing that high school graduates are less prepared for colleges now more than ever. Cheating appears to be at an all-time high as well. When the importance is the outcome, the journey, or the learning, gets lost. I have seen great kids bawling due to one F because they believe that F is going to destroy their future. Parents believe the four year college is the only worthy route to a successful life. Not only is a four year college the only route, but it has to be a well thought-of college. The UC System or bust.

As someone who went to a high school that wasn't exactly well regarded in terms of education, and who went to junior college, and eventually a State school, hearing students regurgitate these ideas, hurts. It pains me to think that I have students who think their entire lives hinge on getting into Berkeley. I am a pretty smart guy, but it never came super naturally to me. I worked at it. I fought for learning, and because of that, I believe that the college from which you get your degree is not nearly as important as the education you get out of your school. I know plenty of dumb people with degrees from great schools.

Learning is what is important, but it has gotten lost. It has gotten lost in a sea of grades, extra curricular activities meant to pad a college application, and stress about the future. I have students already worrying about how to deal with a mortgage in the future. Everything is about the next step, not the current step. Producing well-educated students is my job. Producing thoughtful teenagers, is my calling. It gets increasingly difficult to do both of those jobs, when all students see is the end result.

I apply this to my regular life now too. Weight loss is great. But focusing on how much weight I do or do not lose, keeps me from focusing on the important things I learn about myself, about food, about my body. It can be demoralizing if the focus is solely placed on the end result. Frankly, it does not even matter if I never reach my ultimate weight loss goal. As long as I am trying to improve, and learning about myself along the way, my life will be better. My life is better. Now the next step is to stop thinking so much about the future and live in my present. Enjoy the things I learn on a daily basis. Take those little things and apply them to the bigger picture, when the time is right.

before grades come out, I always remind my students of two things:
1. Grades do not determine intelligence.
2. Grades do not determine your life.

We can plug so many other stressers into that second tip. Much of what we stress about does not determine our lives.

I tell my students to ask "How can I learn better" not "How can I raise my grade?" I ask myself "How can I be healthier?" not "How can I lose weight?" It is about perspective. We could all use an adjustment to our perspective at times. It's not about getting an A, it's about learning the information and understanding how to apply it to our lives.

Have an awesome weekend readers.