My boys have only one day of school left before embarking on their annual summer breaks. Ah… summer break… remember those? I sure do.
One of the completely crappy things about growing up (one of, I assure you, many) is the the loss of the summer break. I mean sure, kids need a break to let their minds reset, to spend some time outdoors, and to just be a kid. But seriously, do we think that adults don’t need the same kind of break? And a week of vacation here and a long weekend there just don’t stinking cut it.
I never feel refreshed and ready to tackle the monotony of the work-a-day world after a typical adult vacation. In fact, the last day or two of any break I take from work (including most weekends) is usually spent dreading the fact that I have to return to work in a day or two. Weekends consist of two parts for me:
- Saturday, the day or relaxation.
- Sunday, the day of dreading Monday.
As sick of I was of school by the time summer break rolled around in May, I never felt the dread in August (when school started again) that I feel after a week off from work. In fact, I always looked forward to the challenges of the coming school year.
I know that I have written of this before, but I really should have been a teacher. It’s pretty amazing how 20/20 that stinking hindsight can be, isn’t it? I like kids. Most kids respond well to me. Teaching young people skills that will help them be successful in life (… yes, skills they will need to get crappy jobs of their own 🙁 …) seems like it would be a fulfilling way to spend a day. In the craphandle of Nebraska, teaching is one of the best paying gigs around for an average schmuck like me. And… summers off!
According to wiseGEEK, only about 2% of the population in the US takes advantage of a career in teaching. I guess it probably does (or should) take a certain temperament and personality to be a successful teacher, but it seems like there would be more of us who wouldn’t want to give up our summers off. Of course, many people are probably like I was when I went for my post-high school education. I had it stuck in my head that I could make more money with a business degree than I could a teaching degree. I was an idiot. I was an idiot not only because I have not been able to make more money in the stupid business world than I could have teaching. I was an idiot thinking that making a lot of money (which I have not been able to do) is somehow more important than doing something that doesn’t make me want to gouge my brains out every day.
Marketing guru Seth Godin, in a blog post today (“Dancing on the edge of finished”), writes about the uber-busy society of today. His post struck home with me. In the glory of days past, there was a time when we could actually complete something and call it done. According to Seth, in today’s world, there really is no “done”. Seth refers to it as “the dance,” this constant go-go-go that is life today.
Seth writes:
“Facing a sea of infinity, it’s easy to despair, sure that you will never reach dry land, never have the sense of accomplishment of saying, ‘I’m done.’ ”
Oh how I agree with that! It is very discouraging to feel like each new accomplishment doesn’t really get you closer to an end goal but is only another tick-mark on a checklist that never ends.
Seth, in his always-optimistic way, follows with:
“At the same time, to be finished, done, complete–this is a bit like being dead. The silence and the feeling that maybe that’s all.”
NOOOO, Seth Godin! It is nothing like being dead! Well, not that I have accomplished a lot of goals, so I really don’t know… but it can’t be like being dead! Being dead is like being dead, and actually accomplishing a goal to the point of completion would (in my fantasies of actually making that happen) have to be one of the most satisfying things ever! Don’t spin the lack of ever finishing to be something good! It’s not! In fact, never being able to actually to say “It is done” makes life seem an awful lot like a grind. If life is nothing more than a daily grind, where is the joy? Of course, Seth has an answer to that:
“It’s a dance, not an endless grind.”
Great… a dance… and me with my two stinking left feet.
See, teachers get to finish. When the final bell sounds at the end of the school year, they are done. Whether good or bad, happy or sad, when those kids leave the school for the summer, the teacher’s job is complete. Whether the teacher can look back on the last nine or ten months of effort and be satisfied with the results is often dependent on the efforts that teacher made over the previous period of time, but it is done. And, in August (barring a near-total failure on the part of the teacher), a fresh start is guaranteed. The teacher can learn from the mistakes and victories of the past and carry what was learned forward into the next year. Each year is a goal completed. Each year has a resolution. Each year is followed by a summer break… BONUS!
In the world of endless tasks to be completed, to avoid the “grind”, I can only conclude that you have to be doing something you absolutely love in order to make the toil more resemble a “dance.” Settling for a grind and trying to make that grind somehow resemble a dance just doesn’t work — not if you want your efforts to seem like they have some sort of meaning.
Or, if for nothing more than a sense of closure on a previous period of time, maybe we all need a summer break every year…
) and it was worth the read. Seth predicts a future work world that is quickly coming to fruition (it really is pretty much already here); a world where just doing what you’ve been trained to do (work hard and do what you’re told) does not lead to any sort of success. Of course, the “new” success means you have to go outside of your comfort zone and become indispensable in the world in some way, shape or manner… so I know there ain’t no success in my future. Also, Seth preaches that one should do his or her “art” to be fulfilled and become indispensable, and he claims that you can find “art” in working a job… so I have some basic philosophical differences with Mr. Godin. Of course, Mr. Godin is well respected, has thousands of followers, and is independently wealthy. I get no respect, write a blog that my dad and a couple of friends read, and scrape by. Whose outlook you want to subscribe to is up to you.
, and I was about to send this little sucker right to my deleted items folder when I noticed a couple of phrases:
, which means I can get commission if someone clicks one of those links and actually buys something from Amazon. I have been an Amazon Associate for about two years, and I have actually made some money doing it. Of course, I haven’t seen any of that money yet. Amazon won’t actually pay anything out until you have built up at least $10 in commission… and I haven’t hit that mark yet. In another three or four years, I should get my first $10 check from Amazon.
of the world who share all kinds of free insight into crap that they are experts about. Their whole ploy is to give you “free advice” to make you feel like a friend, and then they try to sell their books to you or try to talk you into hiring them to do consulting or speaking engagements. Well, my forty-one-years of life have not exactly led me to become much of an expert at anything. I know a little about a lot, but a lot about little. I have been too busy chasing the next-step-up in middle-class pay to stay with any one company in any given field for more than a couple of years. If your current promotions and pay increases aren’t getting you where you want to be: quit, and maybe the next job will take you where you want to go. Of course, the next job never does. So, I’ve had the opportunity to work with all kinds of interesting people in many different fields, but I haven’t stuck around any of them long enough to actually have become an expert at anything. I’m an expert bitcher, but companies aren’t going to hire me to give a “bitch seminar” to their workforce… at least not yet. I figure if I pray about it long enough, 
, if nothing else, will get tired of me asking and either give it to me just to shut me up or strike me dead…
covering the latest embarrassments of the rich and famous, or any of the slew of Yahoo! bloggers covering the latest in world events; people who get the story first tend to get a following. I think this may be the route I need to follow. I need to get the hot stories first. Of course, I live in Nebraska, so the celebrity fodder may be a little out of my grasp.
is from my part of Nebraska, so I could dedicate my blog to digging up all of the crap I can to humiliate 
I did a little blog about 
right after she won and it was actually one of the most visited rants I have posted! But… I have a pretty strong suspicion that Teresa Scanlan is almost as squeaky clean as you would think a 
should be. I bet she actually believes what she says she believes, and I don’t think that “
thought about skipping church once because she was just too tired to go, but then she prayed about it and changed her mind” will draw a lot of visitors to my little site.
! Yeah, that’s it! Apparently 
was on a diplomatic mission to 
and she and her entourage accidentally knocked over a big oil thingie in the Gulf of Istanbul. Anti-American sentiment is through the roof in the countries bordering the Gulf… and by Great Northern Spiked-Back Whale lovers around the world! Check back to this site often for more of the latest…