Postcards from the Funny Farm

To live life without learning is foolishness. In a world full of preachers and teachers, who should we listen to? I thought about it for awhile and I came up with this for myself: I listen and learn from people who are determined, dependable, and compassionate. Those three adjectives can exist independent of one another in a person and in those cases, I am only 1/3 interested.? It is the people who contain all 3 that fascinate and teach me the most in my life journey. Usually in my blog I like to post pictures to illustrate my point. In this case, instead, I can only write what each trait looks like since they are too abstract to produce picture results:

Determination looks like finishing a task before you start another. It’s the setting of short and long term goals and then determining to meet them whatever come what may.? If set goals end up being too much, then you are at least closer than you started. “Aim for the moon, land among the stars.”

Dependable looks like someone who stays with the same people year after year. Dependable takes care of loved ones. Dependable calls people back and dependable often makes the first call, without a reason. Dependable has little anxiety because the option to run away from things is not present.? There is no fear of failure, but rather fear of not fulfilling one’s cause or commitment in life.

Compassionate looks like letting other people fail. Compassionate will accept counter offers. Compassionate sees the world from a lower position when pride threatens proper judgment. Compassionate is the teacher in all of us that recognizes we are all students at some point.

In friends, co-workers, and even family members we should look to people with these three adjectives in their personality. In a world that is increasingly driven by cash, flash, and appearance, it’s easy to learn the wrong things from the wrong people. Do you want to go through life with the class of a pack mule or on the back of english saddles? With a little effort, the latter is possible. Determination, dependability, and compassion are in short supply in our world. Folks in my life who show these traits, whether they are my gardener or my superintendent, are the ones I learn the most from in my life journey.

In the past few years, my job and my private life have both benefitted by me setting goals.  That may sound a simple suggestion but it is really subject to interpretation.  For example, in teaching kids you might make a general goal of:

I will meet the needs of all my students.

This is really hard to achieve for two reasons:  #1) the needs are not defined and #2) each student has different needs.  I would say this goal as is is quite impossible.  Now watch what happens when we make it more specific and put measurable objectives in:

I will give each child a pre-test and post-test on which they will show 90-100% accuracy or at least a 10% improvement from pre to post.

You can also do this with your kids:

I will spend 30 minutes with my 10 year old son every Thursday talking and interacting away from the rest of the family.

Note I left out the general and went to the specific.

The serenity prayer goes as follows:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

The line that begins with courage is the goal setting line.

You need the courage but also the wisdom to kmow what you can control. I encourage you to be specific in setting measurable goals. Another example of how I do this is in my CAN Blog Self-Rating system that you can read all about on my personal blog. Understand that without a goal you can never achieve it and without a specific goal you can’t even see where you’re headed. Do you set specific or general goals?

Along the rows of Adelanto where I teach, there are rows and rows of foreclosed homes. The damage in the varies from the windows being busted out to the trashcans laying askew on the driveway week after week. My overly creative mind, sometimes to its own detriment, can’t help but imagine the stories:

This is where she dreamt of more for her life …

This is where he first held her hand …

This is where grandma passed away.

You can imagine a lot more if you try.  I watched mt oldest daughter Isabella take her first steps at our last house we used to rent.  While I wouldn’t have liked to stay there, it would be great to age and grow old in the same house where all your wonderful memories happened.  Imagine if my daughter could hang her tire chains on the place I put mine.

So how much heartache is going on out there with millions losing their mortgages?  I’ll bet it isn’t the signing over of the place that gets them the most.  More than that, it’s got to be the memories they are being crow-barred away from.  I am so thankful I have a good job and I can pay my mortgage.  But, in an economy like this, is it wise to hand on to object memories like houses?  Maybe it’s wiser to see it more as large brick of wood once on a truck and now in another shape.  Not much more, and not much less.

My wife and I watched “The Grapes of Wrath” last night and while it was a bit tedious at times, it packed some powerful and therapeutic messages for me.  The adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel was about the Joads, a familiy from Oklahoma, traveling in the 40’s to find work.  It is during the ferocious dust bowl period that made farmers’ land fallow.  Those who once owned the farms were now vagrant/migrant workers.  The greed and selfishness of the banks and landowners is an eerie backdrop to this realistic fiction. With our country in such financial crisis it seems it could return to this. Maybe it’s not so bad to be afraid of that. Maybe I should shop a little harder for the http://www.buy.com/specialty_store_6/weekly_deals/62329.html”>best buy rather than just paying for the first one I find.

The whole “aura” of the movie always gets to me emotionally because my grandpa came to Bakersfield, CA from Arkansas when my dad was just a kid.  Certainly my dad was younger than Tom Joad being born in 1945.  I see the Joads as “my people.”  It is quite a powerful movie when you really connect with the messages.  Those messages re about life, death, family, faith, hard work, government, and more.

Favorite scene: When the Joads ask to buy a loaf of bread for a dime in a diner.  They are told the bread is 15 cents a loaf and not for sale anyway.  This being all they had, the storekeeper lets them have it for 10 and lies about how much the candy costs so the Joad kids can have some swirl sticks.  The movie is great from beginning to end, but that scene is forever etched into my mind.

I found inspiration from this old DVD.  If you have the ability to watch it, you won’t regret it.

I realized tonight how there are so many faces to Damien.  Not only do I write three blogs but there are also potential hundreds of me in real life that could write more.  Sometimes, being able to bring the right one up on command is the key to successful living.

When I am at work, I teach with a certain demeanor.  I am with kids so I act silly and try to drop a lot of Nickelodeon references.  When I deal with co-workers I become a listener, a different sort of teacher, a coach, and maybe sometimes in the teacher’s lounge, a type that might complain once in a while.  As you can see I have already mentioned a whole lot of faces of me.

When I get home there is the husband to wife, “How was your day?” face.  The kids run up and hug my legs never to let go easily face.  There is the “Dad help me with my homework face,” and of course the one you see the effect of daily: the blogging face. All the promotional products on TV present so many discordant images of what face should be ours.

I think about how we need to be aware of the faces we show at different times in our lives.  I have given my son the frustrated teacher face one too many times.  He deserves the loving dad face.  I need to work hard at that.  When my 1 year old cries and reaches for me, she doesn’t need the blogger’s profile.  She deserves the loving, tickling, dada face.  This has been a quick blogging and life tip. Does any of this ring true with you and your faces?

Check out my other blogs at:

Damien at the Speed of Life

Dynamite Lesson Plan

I have to share with you: the recent heavy topics here like bipolar and setting serious goals have been taking a toll on me.  From time to time I like to take a sideline from those highly important yet highly taxing posts.  Today I want to tell you about a furniture store online: Legacy Classic Furniture.  Now before you go running off to find another blog to read, hear me out because I just spent about an hour browsing this place and it is a really good bookmark.  If you’re like me, we are sort of “perpetually” organizing and decorating our kids’ rooms.  Our room looked oretty good when we moved in, but theirs have been works in progress for sure.  In clicking around this site my wife and I (yes I had to share the wealth with her) purchased most of the final touches on our 2 girls room (ages 3 and 1).  If your house needs furniture of any type, this is the place to bookmark, this is the place to spend some time browsing.  I feel so inspired now from buying furniture.  It goes to show you that sometimes spontanaeity works better than goals … sometimes ;)

Can you believe it’s nearing October already?  I always get inspiration in the leaf-littered, full moon, windy days of October.  The sunsets up here in the high desert are hauntingly beautiful.  So now comes the question for my wife and I of where to get the kids’ Halloween costumes.  We already have seen a few seasonal stores open up along our main road in town but we haven’t had the best luck at those places in the past.  I find myself drawn more to Halloween Costume Stores.  Let me explain some cons we experienced last year shopping locally:

1. They didn’t have a cowboy hat for our little girl (cowgirl).
2. The costumes were strewn all across the ground.
3. Kids were vandalizing masks in fron of us and the teenage help did nothing -and-
4. There just wasn’t much of a selection.
5. We left empty handed and made our costumes out of our old clothes and props in the closet.

My hope in this series is to produce a paradigm shift in people’s attitude toward bipolar.  Remember when you were a kid and your parents said you were going somewhere really special?  Depending on your age, it could have been grandmother’s house or a flight to a 3 day stay at Disneyland.  Remember feeling your mood rise instantly beyond what is normal?  Well … that is normal.  Unfortunately for bipolars, their brain can experience this transition for no apparent reason at any random time.  You might think that it’s a good thing, how can it be bad to shoot up to a high mood right?  Well, when there are no logical reasons to be in such an elevated mood a bipolar person can succumb to all sorts of crazy activity … some of it potentially damaging, even deadly.  The brain is a fragile and delicate instrument and for those afflicted with bipolar, life is filled with all sorts of heavy duty work.

In a highly elevated mood, bipolars can experience what is called “grandiosity.”  This is one of the most malicious of all symptoms.  It has been described as a flight of ideas, the feeling one can conquer the world.  You don’t see yourself as Napoleon as a schizophrenic might, but you see yourself as like Napoleon out to conquer the world and you never feel as if you can lose.  This is one possible symptom of a manic episode.  The manic episode can last several days and I have even read of famous bipolars who experienced these for months or more.  This has an effect on blood pressure, spending, sleep habits, etc.  The manic episode has a profoundly devastating effect on relationships, jobs, family, and finances.  I read of one man who went to 20 stores over a 2 days period without sleeping to buy every Buzz Lightyear action figure.  When the episode passed, he realized he had maxed many credit cards in this manic acting out.  Bipolars in a manic state can be very offended and angry if you confront them.  Often this can lead to a straight jacket and a paddy wagon to a hospital.

Then there is the depression.  Just like on a globe there is a South pole and a North pole that are diametrically opposed, so the moods of a bipolar are polarized.  If you remember having a dog or pet die, you remember sinking moods.  Some drops in mood are inevitable in normal brains.  In biopolars they attack viciously with no regard for reason.  For bipolars, ones mood will drop from being manic to being in the utter depths of despair.  I know many people reading this understand depression.  We call this “unipolar.”  The psyche and mood of a person stays down too long and that produces debilitating issues for the depressed person.  For the bipolar person it can be multiple times worse due to all the damage one has done while manic.  Depending on how severe the episode, the bipolar may not even remember the insane theings she/he did while manic.  In a depressed state she/he is ill-equipped to pick up the pieces and get their mood back to normal.

It is like the mood thermostat is broken.  You might set it on “calm” but it fluctuates out of control without any mercy whatsoever.  The brain of a bipolar lacks the natural ability to adjust moods.  Thank goodness for bipolars, there is a wonder drug called Lithium that we will discuss in a future post.  Lithium acts as a repairman who can make the thermostat work a heck of a lot better than without.  As I discuss how Lithium works, I think you will be shocked and amazed to hear about the stigma that keeps many individuals and families from taking this drug.  The same way a Cat5e patch cable connects a computer to a network, si Lithium enables the bipolar to function in society. I’ll explain how it was discovered as a drug for bipolars and why anyone diagnosed with bipolar should talk to their psychiatrist about getting it if they haven’t already.  Lithium is the thermostat fixer for bipolar.  There is hope, thanks to Lithium.

Are you a homeowner? If so, you know how long it can take to get the furniture you want in your home. This can be due to limited finances, spare-time, or knowledge of where to buy the stuff you need. My family just purchased it’s first home mortgage so we can relate with furniture envy big time. In our house, we are getting all new stuff as we go but most specifically, we are looking for bar stools.

I ran across a website that specializes in bar stools and they have some really competitive prices when you buy of the internet. For us, waiting for UPS to deliver our barstools is a heck of a lot better than traveling into town only to haggle a price with those insistent salespeople. At (link) there are wooden, metal, wrought iron, and every barstool conceivable there. The pictures are sharp and you can enlarge them to get a better view than if you were right there.

We all know these days you should check a company out before using them. This website is approved by the Better Business Bureau which, for me, was a huge incentive to try them. If you have bar stool envy, get it satisfied online. When they get into your home, your new Bar Stools will thank you!

It is admirable to want to rush in and show a relative where she/he is messing up their life but if you are not willing to go the extra mile you might be better off to leave it alone. Take some time first, go do something physical, then make your call. Consider this article when you do:

Do you have relatives? Most everyone does. If you answered yes, do they ever drive you insane making bad choices for themselves and for their kids? Well you are not alone. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: boundaries must be set with family. This is a healthy thing. When you see people in your family consistently doing the wrong thing, tell them if you like but be aware it may hit you back. Did you know that lifeguards are taught not to swim out and hold a drowning man above the water? The reason is because he flails and it could take them down as well. That’s why they carry that red floater, to throw to the one in distress.

In trying to “get something off your chest” however well intended, you may be labeled “judgmental,” “ignorant,” or just plain “stuck up” as the relative inevitably “flails.” Sometimes “letting the chips fall where they may” can injure you. Still, your cares about this relative may keep haunting you like a salesman at the door. In that case you have to deal with it.

NOTE: If you suspect your loved ones are doing something harmful or neglectful to their children, skip the confrontation and please report them immediately to child protective services. I am absolutely 100% pro kids before any psychology-speak comes into play.

If it’s a lesser thing, just remember that it is hard to love sometimes. Before you act in love, make sure it is in love and not as a result of your pride. Most importantly, make sure that you care enough to go a few rounds with your loved ones. It may be you who is the one to “rudely” awaken them from a deep sleep of denial. Like any intervention, bring armor for your emotion most of all.

Last statement: If you don’t care, don’t speak.