Mind Your Own God Damn Business

So, I can’t help but notice that it’s been about two weeks since I updated. How embarrassing.

I can explain.

It seems that it’s 2010, and I can play video games again.

And that’s pretty much it.

Whoops! My life is ruined!

At first, it was just Torchlight. Then, I got my hands on Plants Vs. Zombies. Then, I loaded Civilization 4 onto my computer, and that was the beginning of the end. Civilization 4 is the kind of game that’s super easy to accidentally spend several hours playing. A typical game takes about three hours, but it’s segmented into hundreds of tiny turns, so if you’re the kind of person who is willing to do any amount of rationalization necessary to justify playing video games (e.g. me),  it’s incredibly easy to sit down and think something like “I’ll play a couple of turns before I start on something productive!” or “Okay, I’ve just blown two hours playing this. One more turn and I’ll drive my injured friend to the hospital like I promised,” and before you know it, three days have passed and you’re still clicking away, cursing at the Aztecs and trying to invent the Internet before anyone else. I’ve played plenty of games for huge stretches of time, but not quite as much on accident. While I was working at that middle school in the self-contained room for the severely emotionally disturbed kids, I would estimate that I spent between 25-30% of my life playing World of Warcraft, but that was no accident. Back when I was semi-seriously raiding, I knew that if I was going to make it all the way through Karazahn, I was going to have to sit at my computer for six hours talking to people that I hated and pressing the same three or four keys on my keyboard again and again (Indication number 6 that I hated my life and didn’t even realize it about three years ago: the highlight of my week was flushing six hours of my life down the toilet raiding in World of Warcraft. It’s wedged in between “Making dating choices that I wouldn’t normally” and “Enjoying That 70′s Show just a little bit too much”)

Anyway, the first month of January has been filled with video games, and, well, that’s about it. I haven’t quite been rocking it “Early 20′s Johnny Castle” style, where I let my life completely fall into ruins so I can play a few more hours of Starcraft and Tekken 3, but it’s been pretty fucking close. I’ve been making the things I need to get done harder than they need to be. I’m doing fine in school, but I’m perpetually sleep deprived and doing things at the last minute, and the things I want to do that aren’t mandatory have been falling by the wayside. I have a pile of books I want to read that I’ve ignored, one of my plants is dying, I haven’t been shaving as regularly and I think you’ve seen what’s happened to the frequency of my writing.

Looks like someone didn't turn in their homework on time.

Last Monday, I was working this kick ass job at a local middle school. It was for a teacher who ran the gifted and talented program, which took up most of her day but was also something I couldn’t do while I was there, so I had three advanced language arts classes during the day and had the rest of the time to myself. You don’t make a lot of money as a sub, but on days where you only have to spend about two and a half hours actually working and it’s with advanced kids, it still seems like a pretty sweet deal. Like I said, I had quite a bit of free time, so I grabbed a book about teaching off of the teacher’s bookshelf, because, you know, I want to be a teacher, and also because I left the copy of Fargo Rock City that my friend Dan gave me at home.

In the book I picked, who’s title I can’t remember (but the author’s name, which is, I swear to God, Harry Wong, will be burned into my mind forever), there was a section about the four phases of teaching. I can’t remember the name of the first phase, but it was basically “You get fucked in the ass by those kids and it sucks and you want to die”, a phase that I am intimately acquainted with. The second was “Survival”, which is when you aren’t getting killed anymore, and you’ve figured out how to fill up the day and keep the kids busy, but you’re not really doing anything special with them. Essentially, you’ve just managed to figure out a way to make it through the day without the kids burning down the classroom. The third stage was “Mastery”, when you actually start to figure some things out and actually teach the kids instead of just loading them up with pop quizzes and busy work, and the final stage…well, I can’t remember what it’s called or what it entails, so let’s just say for the sake of my amusement that it’s called “Chili Doggin’ It”, and it’s when you learn how to fly and start choke-slamming the kids and showing up to work dressed as the Ultimate Warrior. It’s a highly-enlightened phase that very few teachers reach, and the few that do are promptly relieved of their duties and sent to prison.

Texting in class? BIG MISTAKE.

The book then goes on to say that everyone goes through these different phases, but a lot of teachers spend an inordinate amount of time in the Survival phase, and a lot never really get out of it and move to the next phase. Being a sub is pretty much all about the Survival phase, and I can understand the allure of it; after spending a bunch of time in the first phase when you’re just trying to keep the kids from shitting on the floor and jacking each other off, there’s a pretty strong sense of accomplishment and relief when they’re sitting there quietly working on some pointless busy work instead of swearing at you in Spanish. There have been a few (very few) moments when I’ve worked extended jobs where I’ve gotten a little glimpse at Mastery, though, where I manage to make something happen instead of just keeping the kids from killing each other. It’s a good feeling.

This is related to my love of video games, I promise.

I spent some time thinking about those phases, and I kind of feel like everything Harry Wong (did I mention that his name is Harry Wong? Because his name is Harry Wong. First name Harry, last name Wong. Harry Wong) said about the phases of teaching pretty much ring true for life in general, especially the part about survival. This may come as a shock to those of you who know me, but as a 30 year old who lives in his parent’s basement and is still struggling to find a way to make it above the poverty line, I feel like I’ve spent a fair amount of my life in Survival – not really trying to figure out a way to make sure that I’m better off at the end of the day than I was when I woke up, but just trying to make it through another day at work, collect another paycheck, and just fill up my time and keep my bills paid until I die. A large part of that for me has been video games.

Make no mistake, I’m not bagging on video games – if anything, the fact that I appear to be unable to accomplish things that are important to me when they’re around should be a testament to just how incredibly fucking awesome that they are. I clearly don’t have the necessary self control to be around them all of the time though.

So I think that video games are going to be a weekend-only thing for me. I would be retarded to give them up completely, but I like writing, and I like reading, and I like getting more than two hours of sleep a night, and I don’t seem to be smart enough to make room for those things AND games seven days a week.

So, it looks like the first month of 2010 can be written off as a learning experience and lots and lots of turn-based strategy. Nothing wrong with that, but let’s see if I can start doing some other things that I care about too.

Sorry this post was a motivational speech to myself. It was necessary, though. I’ve got a lot of work to do if I want to be Chili Doggin’ it someday.

I know that’s not the Ultimate Warrior, but I was looking for a good video of him, and nothing I found even came close to the quality of this one. Holy shit Randy Savage is insane. How did he even give an interview this crazy? Did he get hit really hard on the head right before he walked on camera? Did he just give himself a cocaine enema? All I know is that this is the best video I’ve ever seen.

“He says I can’t sing and I can’t dance but I can make romance YEAH right there a fork in the road!”

Why the hell didn’t I watch more professional wrestling when I was a kid?