So you may be wondering what's going on with my life lately.

But probably not.

I don't care, however. I will let you in on a couple of things, though not exciting to anyone else, are exciting to me.

I graded a bunch of papers today.  No, that's not exciting, but the fact that I have fewer left to do is kind of exciting.  See how little it takes to please me.

I have wanted to reflect on the tragedies that have befallen my country lately, but I don't dare because as soon as I do, liberals, conservatives, moderates, proteststants, catholics, jews and gentiles begin to twist any of my comments into a forum for political invective.  Do you know how much this saddens me?  So, I am not going to say anything else about politics.

My life is not very exciting most of the time, and I do see some need for changes to be made, though I am not quite sure what those changes might be.  I'm almost 55, so you think I would just settle down and be content with what I have.  I am content with what I have, but a great prophet (Bob Dylan) once said, that he not busy being born is busy dying.  To me, that means if you are not continually striving to overcome challenges and meet new adventures head on, then you are becoming stagnant.

I wish -- well, I'm not going down that road.  You know the old saying, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."  Would you believe me if I told you that once I made that statement in one of my classes, and my students had no idea what it meant.  I guess they struggle with anything other than text speak. lol.  I am reminded of the novel 1984 in which the government had as one of its primary goals to gut all the passion and nuances out of language so that the people would be unable to even think of anything remotely rebellious, much less express it.  Newspeak.  Text speak is the new Newspeak.  Actually, that is a bit too cynical.  Some people can get quite clever with tweets and texts.

There was also Doublespeak in 1984.  Politicians could learn from that. An example from the novel is one of the party's slogans.  War is Peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Sorry, politics again.

We have more testing this week in school.  Block scheduling.  Two or three days where I won't get my plan period.  General chaos and confusion.  All in a day's work.

Well, I don't have much else to say.

So Does anyone even Care?

I haven't written in my blog in forever.  I lost interest.  One of the problems with people who have my condition is that they start one project after another with overwhelming enthusiasm and then they run out of creative energy, drive, motivation, or they just find out that what they thought was a brilliant idea was no more than a flash of brilliance -- a large snowflake sizzled in a bonfire.  I don't know how many times I have started something and not finished it.  People do not know what a chore it is.  I can't help it really.  Another characterization of my condition is delusions of grandeur.  You start off thinking you can conquer the world, and then you discover a. the world is too big or b. you are too small.  What is really bad is this sets into motion a cycle of defeat that damages a person even more.   Great idea, fierce opening salvo to complete idea, realization you don't have the knowledge, energy, creativity or worst of all focus to complete said idea, huge, massive depression at failure and the desire to live under a rock until the next great idea comes along.  Vicious, vicious cycle.  No one who does not have a mental illness can even begin to realize what it means and how it affects people.  No one.  You have flashes of promise and joy at what may possibily happen and then huge periods of depression until the next wild scheme comes to mind. The sad thing is that I get treatment for mine.  People who do not get treatment for bipolar disorder have inordinately high percentages of suicide.  It's tough to explain to someone why one minute you feel like you can conquer the world and all its moons and the next minute you feel like driving your car off the cliff.  The odd thing is that there are often no reason why there's the change.  Nothing happens except some damned hormone kicks in or fails to kick in and it sabotages any attempts you make to achieve normalcy.  End of rant.