Declaration of Chaos Control Initiative.

This is another post that proves what I mean about this blog being truly miscellaneous in nature. Personal ruminations on my life and goals right now...

I am in the midst of a crisis of self-efficacy. By which I mean that lately I lack strategies for conquering a pervasive sense of helplessness that has negatively shaped and colored my emotional, material, and real-waking-time life. (My dreams haven't been very disturbing, which is one sign to me that it isn't too late to avoid a meltdown.) I aim to get to the bottom of this and fix it before it's out of control in the kind of ways that friends, students, employers, and potential compatriots note and remark upon.

I try to avoid the language of 'destiny' and other such tricky and anti-pragmatical hocus-pocus. However, without origins and gods and cosmological speculation, I know, nevertheless, that I have important shit to do on this earth. Period. Examples: starting a free school, traveling the world, keeping my heart free from all the captivating but worthless, mediocre shit that surrounds me, and even just sticking to the lonely path of living up to my own ideals within a capitalist-military industrialist-falling empire type of society. I know that these goals and all the others require a calm and lucid subject of their enactment--i.e., little old me.

I also know that certain psychological reflexes that I exhibit in stressful situations are counterproductive to these aims. Therefore, my immediate crisis requires some immediate attention, so that I do not become so distracted by self-involved, melancholy, and anxious introspection that I lose touch with what is important about my place in the human and material world that I desire to inhabit.

My perceived source of stress and feelings of helplessness is definitely my work--as in, the work I get paid to do, teaching developmental English courses at a community college. I am very, very new at this on several levels, despite having some previous experience teaching high school English.

First of all, since Asheville, Burnsville, and rural Nash County are all full of white people, I am experiencing what I couldn't call culture shock, but rather cultural...um...adjustment? This is one aspect of the stress that I believe is quite positive. My range of intercultural exchange has expanded dramatically in the past few months I have spent in Greensboro; in addition to my born-on-American-soil students, whose skin colors and cultures vary widely, this semester I have also taught or tutored immigrants (and refugees) from Vietnam, Korea, China, Laos, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Mexico, Cuba, Sierra Leone, Togo, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Ghana. Last week, I taught a Laotian man how to use a word processor. I help new English speakers to master subject-verb agreement. I help one really old countryfied lady to develop strategies for reading and comprehending college-level texts. I help many single mothers to conquer the systems that cannot help but to stand in opposition to their dreams of giving their children a better future. The fruit of my efforts gives people confidence in new surroundings, new opportunities...

Despite the positive and even transformative experiences on that front, I feel like I am stumbling through my classes and my preparation for them every day, just trying to hang onto all the little strings that want to unravel. Unfamiliar curricula aside, my main problem is the despair and anxiety that I feel every time a new grading project comes my way, which is an almost daily event. I manage my time poorly, at least partly because of the drudgery and complication I associate with grading piles of tests or essays. My spirit revolts against the idea that this paper in front of me can tell me anything about what a student has learned! Although I am always fair and consistent about grades, I cringe every time I am required to put a big ugly number on someone's paper, especially given all the context surrounding...ugh, all of it!

I could rail all day about why I hate grading, about how it feels like trying to read vital signs from a dead rabbit, but the point is that the anxiety that this produces creates a mental block on everything else that is important to me, like planning lessons, reading books, playing music...and all I can do is fret with furrowed brow about what I "should" be doing but cannot seem to begin. This leads to lags and snags of all sorts.

With the help of my brilliant partner--my hero of the week, or lifetime, by the way--I developed a short list of guidelines for myself which do not, and cannot, address the larger issues at work here, but may be able to help me avoid falling to bits and failing in a big way.


GENERAL GUIDELINES AND PRINCIPLES FOR DISCIPLINE AND STRESS REDUCTION:

- Leave the laptop at home. Access crackbook and blogs in the early a.m. or later in the evening, when there is no work to do because I have already done it. Use the crappy school PC's for work-related stuff.

- Plan for Monday by Friday. Anxiety-free weekends are essential.

- Habit is good. It will feel unnatural until I reap the rewards, whereupon I will sing its virtues because for example, on my way to see Melt Banana in Chapel Hill, I will have no nagging worries.

- Take care of testing center business promptly, for otherwise, it is promptly forgotten.

- Remember that the purpose is also to create more time for important things like: Going to shows; lovin' on my sweet dyspeptic creatron; playing music; following through on craft projects; cooking; passing the Praxis for ESL; reading books; WRITING; planning interesting lessons for my classes and my language exchange partner; and generally creating a better world.

- Wake the fuck up and have a healthy breakfast, drink tea, and establish bearings early so I can think clearly. Make any "official" phone calls, since it makes me seem like the kind of responsible person who wakes up early to handle shit. Write unambitious but detailed to-do lists in the morning before leaving, so that the unstructured work day doesn't turn into a mess of confused half-efforts.

- Read more Kozol, radical teaching journals, etc. to stay inspired.

- Keep good, healthy, convenient food around to avoid time- and money-consuming eating habits. Soups, crackers, cheese, avocado, granola, yogurt, Larabars (yum), Thai noodle packs, pre-cut veggies, popcorn, English muffins, and nuts all come to mind.


This is what I have been able to come up with so far. Intriguing, I know. But really, it's the simple stuff that ends up mattering! I don't want to embody Benjamin Franklin's rigidly scheduled automaton fetish...but one must admit that the man was successful.

I would like to know about how all you other aspiring laziness-and-despair conquerors are doing it. ¡Digame!