A word for 2021

 

I have always been a procrastinator… someone who can always find a good reason to put off until tomorrow what could, and usually should, be done today. Sometimes for a good reason, more often for a sketchy reason, or no reason at all, I would decide that it could wait. Whatever it was, however important it was… I had time later, or would make time later. It would get done.

Of course, the flip side of any good procrastinator is the ability to get away with it… to power through whatever you have to do in record time, just before the deadline, and not pay any price at all for all of the delays. In retrospect, maybe the worst thing that happened to me in my university career was the time I went to a morning English class in my first year of university, on the day our big research paper was due, with not much more than a topic and some sources in hand. The prof spoke at length about how, if we hadn’t put in weeks worth of work on this essay, we weren’t going to do well, and very possibly going to fail. I was a little panicky in class that day, with none of my 2000 words written, and his words ringing in my ears. But, as has always tended to happen, that ability that too often lies dormant in me kicked in, the words started flowing, and I got those 2000 words written over the course of that day.

The beauty of college courses, of course, were that even then due date was exactly that… your assignments were due on that specific date, at any time. In the pre-email days we are talking about, however, things were a little more challenging… you had to get in to campus, where the secretaries who were there until aomost the end of night classes would accept your papers, and make sure they went into the box of your professor. But only after they stamped it with that all important date stamp, that signified, despite all of your procrastination, that your paper was in on time.

So why was this paper a terrible thing? Because it was the point that I realized, even at university, I was able to get away with it. This rushed, barely researched paper that I whipped off on the day it was due, that I literally finished, spell-checked (which wasn’t done in real time by computers then), printed, and handed in, not only got me an A+, but the top mark in the class on that paper, and a compliment from my prof. It taught me that I could get away with procrastinating, as long as possible, and not pay any price.

Of course, as with any lesson like that, you continue to push those boundaries, until you reach the point where you can’t get away with it. I went to that point, and then far beyond… and, in a nutshell, that’s why I didn’t start teaching until I was almost 40. I got rattled, I got to a point where I felt like I was wasting all of that ‘potential’ I had (my feelings about that word are another post), and I basically shut down school and went another way, until I was finally able to come back to it much later in life.

Oddly, we are now in a time where, in a way, procrastination is what is keeping us safe. All of those things that we normally do, the good and bad and everything in between, are on hold indefinitely. Want to see your family? Nah, not today… maybe later. Go to a concert? Nope. Travel? Well, maybe within your health region, depending on the day, and the latest words from DBH. But so many of those places on your bucket list, things to do and see and experience, will have to wait until after the vaccine, at least, until who knows when. 2020 was a whole lot of things, most of them bad, but on some level it was the year we all became procrastinators.

Given both my history, and the current state of the world, I decided I needed to start 2021 with some direction; with intention, to get beyond all of the shit and chaos that has marked both my life and the world over the last few years. This is a year where I will move into an amazing new home, with an amazing partner that I feel so privileged to get to love; a year where I will start a new job (and no, I have no idea yet what that job will be, but it’s time), finish my schooling once and for all, and begin to reap the rewards of all the stress and struggle and strife. (Alliteration, for my English teacher gf) I’m reminded of a quote I saw written randomly on a wall in Vancouver, that came up in my Facebook memories the other day: “you know all of those things you’ve always wanted to do? You should go do them.” And the time to do them is my word for 2021: Now.

No more waiting. No more procrastinating, delaying, fucking around. As my amazing, brilliant, total smart-ass kiddo likes to point out, I’m in my late 40s now, and while that’s not exactly old, it’s not exactly young, either. I’m going to start doing all of those things I want to do, need to do, can’t wait to do... Now.  I’ve said things like this before, taken steps down that road on a number of occasions, but my false starts are over. I was struck with this thought tonight, and it seemed to me that the best way to jump start the process was to write this down.

And do it now.

One Week

It’s a really strange place I find myself in today… in some ways, in a better place than I’ve ever been, and in others, so lost I’m not sure what to do with myself right now, never mind tomorrow, next week or next month. I’ve been looking for a way in, a way to open the door let some of it out, and haven’t been able to find a way.. until right now.

                I’ve been home for the last couple of days… took them off to try to wrap my head around the fact that Nanny is gone; and in that regard, I’ve failed miserably. I’m lucky, I know; I’m almost 46, and have dealt with an incredibly small amount of loss in my life. Almost 46, still with 2 grandparents, parents who are together, a large, amazing family. But because of that, even as I think I’m pretty good at coping with life, I also realize that I’m not entirely sure how to deal with loss. I was 20 when Papa passed away, and I struggled with that for a long time; I feel like I should be better equipped now, but, apparently, I’m not. I’m working on a post about Nanny, about everything she meant to me, but I’m struggling to write it, as well; hopefully that will come to me soon, perhaps in a moment of inspiration just like this one seems to be, although I guess I shouldn’t speak too much until I’m done writing.

                So I’m home, and instead of doing the myriad of things I should be doing, I’m flipping through the channels on TV, and a little movie that I saw years ago and loved came on. It’s called One Week, starring Joshua Jackson; in it, the main character is diagnosed with late stage, terminal cancer, and rather than begin his new life as a patient, he hops on a motorbike and heads west from Toronto.  It is rooted in Canada; he stops at all manner of small-town oddities (a giant paperclip, dinosaur, teepee… I was waiting for the giant lamp from Donalda to show up), before ending up on the beach in Tofino, where a German couple reminds him about the beauty of the place he is lucky enough to be from. I’ve always felt incredibly lucky to be Canadian; that, too, is another wormhole I need to avoid going down, but as I contemplated a life that may have meant leaving it behind, at least for a while, I came to realize that there is nowhere else on earth I want to live.

                Which brings me back to the current moment; restless, uneasy, and yet optimistic about the future, and very much aware that looking forward I have more opportunities than I ever have, and opportunities that I will be contemplating from a stronger position than I’ve ever been in.  Less than a year from now I will have completed my masters, finished the last schooling I’m ever going to do (and my god has it taken me forever to get here!); I will be in a continuing counselling job, working with kids I click with, kids that I am very well suited to help, even if I’m not sure at this point whether they are the age group I want to continue with. Counsellors are in short supply these days; I will be able to switch districts, should I choose to, and the door to school admin will also be open to me, should I choose to go that route. I will have a plethora of good opportunities, doors open to me that I know I am suited to go through, fully capable of taking whichever path I should choose. 

                And even as next year seems to close in so many ways, next week also seems far away. The hoops of the masters program are incredibly hard to jump through, not because I’m not capable, but because it just feels like hoops that we are jumping through. My living situation is… fluid, might be a good word for it; I’ve got next month dealt with, and a place to go eventually, but there’s some gaps in there, and I’m struggling with that a little bit. Not that I’m worried I’ll have no place to go, just that it all seems so tenuous, at a time where I feel like some good solid roots might be a good thing. I described myself as a tarp flapping in the breeze the other day, and it still seems apt; still attached, not actually going anywhere for the moment, but also not nearly as grounded as I’m used to. But maybe I just need to embrace that for a while, relish in the fact that I have some freedom, and the means and opportunity to drift on the wind and enjoy it, rather than regret it.

                So maybe that’s how I’ll fill that potential gap this summer; maybe I’ll do the trip Joshua Jackson’s character took, except in reverse. Explore this amazing country of ours, see some places new and some familiar, and just go where the wind takes me for a little while. I did a weekend trip like that recently, and loved it; there are not a ton of times in your life where it’s as easy as it will be for me to do that, so why not? I’m not even sure what I’m looking for, so who knows what I’ll find; I also know that there’s the distinct possibility that I’ll find that what I’m coming back to is exactly what I want. Friends, family, a fulfilling career in a place that I love; that’s a pretty awesome set of circumstances to come back to… even as I write this I see that. Life is good… I see that, I just need to cut loose from it for a little while to truly appreciate it again, I think.

                The movie ended with a quote, and, as always, I asked my friend Google if he knew who it was from.  So simple, as so many of these quotes are, and yet so powerful. It’s from Tennyson’s Ulysses, and it’s maybe a better summary of life than I’ve ever seen in one line.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

Thank You, CMS

First, I want to say I’m sorry; I know this isn’t the way you wanted your year to end, in confusion and chaos, with really only one day’s notice that the end of the year is upon us.  I mean, your summer holidays start early, and you don’t have to write your final exams, so it’s not all bad, I guess, but this is not the way your year, and for some of you your time at middle school, should end.  You don’t deserve how this year is ending, and I wish it were different.

Next, I want to say congratulations on getting through another year of school.  Success is different for everyone, and I know that each and every one of you were able to celebrate a number of successes through the year.  Maybe it was straight As, maybe it was a victory on the rugby field or basketball court, and maybe it was getting through the year, and passing.  I hope I was able to help you achieve some of those successes, or at least not get in the way of you reaching them.  I know I have a lot to learn as a teacher, but you can trust that my effort and intentions were always there, even if my skill sometimes wasn’t.

I want to say thank you, for being (mostly) very patient with me as I figured out how to do this amazing, exhausting, rewarding, at times frustrating job.  Early on in the year, before I really knew any of you, I wasn’t sure that would be the case; there were some issues, as there always will be, and while I handled them the best I could, I wasn’t sure it would be good enough to get through the year.  Some of you can be very challenging at times… you know who you are. The real breakthrough for me came when, at the end of a kinda rough day, I mentioned in one of my classes that the reception for subs can sometimes be rocky; the response I got (“well yeah, but you’re not a sub, you’re our teacher”) was more important than to me than you will ever know.  I may have thanked you for it already; I will again tomorrow, just to make sure.  Crossing the line from sub to teacher was a big step.

As the year went on, I came to know those of you I taught better, and, gradually, even more and more of you; those in my classes, those who I coached, even those of you who I just came in contact with in the halls, or the gym, or my classroom.  A goal at the start of the year was to become part of the school community, and I think that is the goal I was most successful with:  thank you for helping me with that.

To those of you moving on to high school, I wish you the best of luck.  I had a number of discussions with other teachers this year about what a great group of grade 9s we had; not sure you heard that very often, but I think you should, one last time.  I taught most of you, came to know many more, and you went from the grade that I most nervous about teaching to the one I was most comfortable with.  You will probably not get a final awards ceremony, or success assembly, as you deserve, but again, that is through no fault of your own.  You’re caught in the middle.  It sucks.  I’m sorry.

To those of you back at CMS next year, I hope to see you there.  I have no idea what will happen this summer, but hopefully, if things fall into place, I will find a way to be back there teaching next year.  Have more things that bring a smile to my face, like Dang-it or literally, like Gandalf or 666, and find a new April Fool’s joke to play on you.  It got more difficult as the year went on; you started to realize, sometimes, that I wasn’t serious, that the surprise quizzes, or changed due dates were simply to mess with you.  You put a smile on my face every single day; I hope I was often able to do the same for you.

It’s been an awesome year, and I’m not going to let the terrible way it is ending diminish that.   

Thank you, CMS

Why I Will Vote Yes

I’m no expert on the BCTF, labour law, or any type of union negotiations.  It’s very possible that my take on this entire process is naïve, or misguided, or just plain wrong. I sincerely hope that the people in charge of negotiations on our side are judging the situation much better than I am, and that the results of our current struggle are going to be very different than I am afraid they are.  Perhaps the purpose of the strike vote is to get another strong mandate from the union, to show the government that we are united in willing to fully walk off the job.  I hope so, because the alternative seems like a fatal mistake to me.

The gist of the Griffin case that the government shocked and horrified so many by appealing (and I never got that.  With so much money on the line, and so much face for them to lose with that decision, of course they were going to appeal. They had no other option.) was that the government was negotiating in bad faith, that their entire strategy was to stall, delay, and frustrate the BCTF into an all-out strike.  This was their end-game, the thing that they most of all wanted us to do.  Do we really think that has drastically changed in any of the negotiations since?

To me, it didn’t seem like the Phase One strike mode we were in was doing much… no emails, no meetings, not much change and not much impact.  If that were the case, however, then why did the government take the unprecedented step they took with the lockout?  It was a drastic, confrontational action that seemed illogical, vindictive and poorly thought out.  I now still believe the latter two points (are we finished with the clarifications yet?), but with how things have played out since, I’m starting to understand the logic of it.  Escalate, increase pressure, take the initiative.  Be in control.  What I didn’t get at the time was that the action could do nothing but increase teachers’ resolve, make us more unified… wasn’t that counter-productive to the government’s side in this?  Perhaps, unless they don’t think they will break us this time, but instead just want to beat us into submission.  Then, a unified union (redundant?) is exactly what they want… a strike will just come sooner.

I hate… no, I HATE, the idea of striking for so many reasons, especially at this time of year.  Mid-June should be a celebration of the just completed year for the younger grades, and that vital prep time for stressful and important final exams for the older ones.  These are kids we have worked our asses off for, and with, for nine months, and they deserve better than having us walk out in the last few days of the school year.  This is my first year of teaching, my first time having my kids (and they have become, in so many ways, my kids) for an entire year, and I have come to realize that I love the job, and I have a knack for it.  I’m not a great, or in some ways even a good, teacher yet, but the potential is there, and it will come with experience. I don’t want to end my year like this… but at this point, where are right now, I don’t think we have any choice.

There is a lot of talk on Twitter right now about what a No vote would mean; and I think that some of the more militant members of the BCTF are doing themselves, and their colleagues, a disservice with how coercive and, at times, bullying, they are coming across.  People who vote no will do so because they don’t believe a strike is in our best interests, in their students’ best interests, in the best interests of the public education system that you have to care about if you work in it.  I seriously considered it, and in many ways believe it would be the right thing to do; but I won’t.

As bad as a unified strike will be for our cause, in my opinion, it would be infinitely worse to have our union split down the middle over what we should do.  A weak mandate, widespread dissension within the union, in-fighting even as we are in the midst of a bigger battle, and we are done for.  Now is not the time to eat our own.  There will be questions once this is said and done, about the leadership, about our strategy, about where our money has gone to, but this is not the time to ask those questions.  I am rarely a pessimistic person, but in this moment, with these negotiations, I am there.  As Ben Franklin so aptly put it, we must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately.  I think our options now are a strike and imposed settlement, or a broken union.  I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

And it is not just our union’s future that is at stake here, make no mistake.  This government has mounted a systematic attack on the public education system, and we who provide it.  If we let them push forward their agenda, unchecked, the results to our public school system will be devastating.  It is no coincidence that Christy Clark’s son goes to private school; it is no coincidence that our current Minister of Education once said that the BCTF should get out of education.  They are not looking to make a deal here.  They are looking to break us.

I am no longer hopeful that any deal will be reached at the table, with the current situation.  We have handled the endgame poorly, and have taken a stand at a time I don’t think we should have.  That said, our options are limited.  We can strike, and deal with whatever comes from that, or we can split down the middle, and face the end of our union.

Better beaten than broken.  I will vote Yes.

I know...

I’ll never forget the day I got the phone call that every parent dreads.  Lizzie has to go into emergency right now, it said… there’s a problem with her platelets.  I didn’t know much when I got that call, but I knew enough that an issue with her platelets could very possibly mean leukemia.  I know now there are worse words a parent can hear than that one (from second hand knowledge, thank… well, whoever it is you thank for that), but in that moment that was scary enough.

                We had noticed over the last few months that Lizzie seemed to bruise very badly, very easily, and the bruises seemed to linger longer than they should.  This came to a head when she slipped and fell while walking down a stone staircase, bruising herself very badly in the process; these bruises were very deep, and lasted far longer than seemed normal.  We finally took her in to get them checked out, and her doctor ordered blood tests.  It was these test results that caused that phone call; something wasn’t right, and in that moment it seemed like it could be very wrong.

                We figured out pretty quickly that while Lizzie’s condition was serious, it wasn’t nearly as bad as we initially feared.  Nights at the hospital were quickly unnecessary, and we began to spend time (more than we wanted, but less than so many others) at the BCCH Oncology/Hematology clinic, there for a few hours while Lizzie got her treatment.  We have been going there every three, or four, or five, weeks, as needed, for almost six years now, and that time there has made it clear that we are absolutely some of the lucky ones.  So many families, so many stories, all different and yet at the core all fundamentally the same; we do whatever we can, whatever we need to, to make our kids feel better.

                Over our time at BCCH, the stories of two families have stuck out for me, because of personal connections; these families are amazing, their stories tragic, and heartbreaking, and uplifting.   I won’t tell you their stories here;  if you want to read them, they can be found at these two links:  Jasper Mohan (http://jasperupdates.tumblr.com/ ) and Lilee-Jean Whittle-Putt (http://loveforlilee.com/ )

                Jasper was, by every account I’ve ever heard, an amazing young man who could have done whatever he liked in this world; personable, well spoken, hard-working, and absolutely brilliant. He fit more into his 15 years than many will in a lifetime, a statement which sounds so trite, and yet in this case is accurate.  I never actually met Jasper; we were in the clinic at BCCH at the same time one day, and I intended to introduce myself, but he was so busy talking to nurses, and doctors, and parents, and other patients, that I never got a chance.  You could literally feel the room brighten when he walked in, and see the effect he had on so many people in such a short time; again, sounds trite, but true. Everyone knew him, everyone wanted to talk to him, and even then, with what would turn out to be only weeks left in his life, he was up to the challenge, and more.

                Lilee-Jean’s story is one that has hit a little closer to home; I know the family, not well, but as we do in a small town where your parents have taught virtually every kid to graduate in the last 30 years.  LJ has taken a turn for the worse in the last few days, and it looks like her story may be coming to an end all too soon.  All that is left to do now is pray, for those who do; I hope those prayers, of the countless people who are including LJ in theirs, are answered.  Children should not have to go through everything that this amazing, strong, resilient little girl has.

                As a parent, these stories hit a lot closer to home than they otherwise would.  You hug your child a little tighter, tell them you love them a little more often, check on them in the night one more time, as if these things will keep them safe from all the danger the world has to offer.  We do it because it is what we can do, and hope that by controlling what we can, we will keep them safe.

                I found out pretty early on that there were things beyond my control, that we can’t protect them from the dangers that lurk in their own bodies.  I am one of the lucky ones, though; my daughter is bright, and cheerful, and in almost every way perfectly healthy.  She is growing like a weed, growing up way too fast, and becoming more and more amazing each and every day.  Taller, cheekier, funnier, smarter; more her, more the person that she is going to become, and I am thankful every day that I get to see it.

Because I know what it’s like to get a phone call from the doctor, telling you that your perfect little child isn’t perfect, and there may be something terribly wrong.

I know what it’s like to sit on a hospital bed while doctors poke and probe your child, doing their best but scaring and hurting your child, with you unable to do a damn thing.

I know what it’s like to lay awake through the night in a hospital bed, your child sleeping beside you, while you wonder if tomorrow is going to be the day you get the bad news, even as you hope it will be good.

I know what it’s like to check on your child in the night, almost afraid to look because you are afraid something has gone wrong, something very specific and real.

I know all of these things and a million more, things that 9 years ago it never even crossed my mind that I would have to learn.  And in spite of knowing these things… no, that’s not right.  I think it’s even more because of these things I know, I know that when it comes to circumstances like this, I don’t know a single goddamn thing.

Andrew and Chelsey, my thoughts and prayers are with you.  Stephen and Barb, I am so sorry for your loss.