The Century Mark

Today is a milestone of sorts for my little blog that I like to call The Daily Grind. This will be the 100th post that I have made, and I have been thinking of how I want to mark the occasion. Like a baseball player approaching 3000 hits, you think about how great it would be to hit a game winning grand slam on your big number, I think I’ll settle for a sharp single to right, or perhaps even a double to the gap. So I will leave aside the issues of the day for today, and focus on a bigger picture, namely who I am, as best as I can express it through words. While I am honestly working on writing shorter columns, I can’t make that claim for this one, there is just too much to say and it is a special occasion.

There are seven descriptions that define who I am if I really break it down, and I will tackle them in descending order, finishing up with what I feel is most important and relevant. First off, I am a teacher, a high school history teacher to be precise. I have been doing it long enough that I’ve learned a thing or two and feel like I pretty much know what I am doing, and also I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s hard to really imagine doing much else at this point in my life, despite my occasionally dreaming of the riches that could await me in some high rise office. The reason that I got into teaching is the main reason that I stay in it, which is the opportunity to interact with smart, mostly sweet, and always interesting young people on a daily basis. I love the subject matter as well and I thoroughly enjoy learning new information and synthesizing it in a way that has relevance and meaning to the lives of my students. I can’t lie, I also enjoy being able to wear my adidas to work every day in lieu of dress shoes, being able to get away with shaving once a week if that, and summer vacation is not such a bad deal either.

I am a writer, and while I don’t get paid for it, I am hoping that one day in the not too distant future to be able to call myself simply a self-supporting freelance writer. I started the Grind as a way to start writing for an audience, and while I found it surprisingly tough to do at first, I have gotten to the point where the words generally flow and I hope, come out in a way that is at least interesting, and maybe even sometimes enlightening and entertaining. Like everything in life, my writing is a work in progress, but like most things in life, you only get better at something by doing it, so I faithfully attempt to put out columns on a regular basis. I plan to start submitting some stuff to both online sites and print sources, and I am going to start working on a book that deals with the American dream, and what different people’s version of it is. I will be writing a column about that in more detail and hope to be able to talk to as many people from as many different walks of life as I can to use as material for the book.

I am a friend, not always a great one, but I try and what I lack in timeliness of returning emails and phone calls I always try to make up for in quality when I do respond. I was blessed growing up to have some great friends who loved and supported me through good times and bad, and who have, and in many cases continue to shape my thoughts and opinions. I am grateful to old friends and new, and the older I get the more I realize how important their companionship is. And I’m starting to get pretty dang old too!

I am a son, and my relationship with my parents is something that is at the core of who I am. I was raised by a dad who taught me that being a man means taking care of your family first and foremost, and everything else comes in second place. I was raised by a mom who gave me love and support and a kick in the pants when it was needed, which it often was, but who I could and still can always count on, and who provided me the role model of an intelligent, independent woman who loved her family more than anything else. She could have been anything she wanted to be, but she chose to be a mom and a wife, and while she also became a registered nurse, the first two far outweigh anything else in my book. I talk with my parents once a week on Sunday nights and keep in touch with my mom via email during the week, and I love them so dearly and their opinion of me is always in my thoughts when I make decisions.

I am a husband, and while I have written about my love and devotion to my wife Julie, it is worth saying again that I couldn’t have been more fortunate to meet her when I did, back in college as a naïve young college kid, and to have had her stick with me long enough for me to figure out what was what. Being a husband is not something that I always do properly, but I’m learning and getting better at it, I do the dishes and put the toilet seat down at least, even if I do leave my socks laying around at various point throughout the house, but being a husband means putting our relationship above almost all else, and that much I do without hesitation and with no sense of being obligated to do so, I do it because I want to. I guess the best way I can express myself here is that in the moment before I enter the house after being out at work or wherever, I get a good feeling when I know that Jules is inside waiting for me and that we’ll be spending time together.

The only responsibility that is more important to me than that of a faithful husband is as a dedicated dad. My kids, Jake and Chloe, are the light of my life and my soul, and there is no way I can even begin to express my love for them in a single paragraph so I won’t really even try. From the moment when I saw the tiny crown of Jake’s head start to appear in this world my life was changed forever. When Chloe came out, much quicker I might add, a few years later and I had my girl, I couldn’t have been more fulfilled. They are unique individuals, but they are also a reflection of Julie and I, and I couldn’t be prouder as a parent of who they are as people and the path in life that they are on, which is the path of a true human being. Nothing I do in my life nor any accomplishments I may achieve will ever come close to what I do as a parent, and when I leave this earth I can only hope that I am survived by the two quality human beings that I had a part in bringing into it.

I am a human being, which means that I share this planet with six and half billion other human beings, all of whom have their own stories to tell, their own hopes and dreams, their own fears and insecurities, and hopefully their own moments of joy and triumph. Humanity is fascinating to me, and being fully human is ultimately the greatest pursuit anyone can undertake. I don’t know what the end result will look like, or even what it should look like or what the goals are supposed to be, it is just something where you have to trust your instincts, trust in the people around you and in a higher power or powers if you are inclined to consider that possibility. But even though being human and achieving humanity may be hard to define and even harder to achieve, it is what keeps me going each and every day, trying to fight the good fight, preach the good word, and live the good life, and always, always trying to be just a little bit better today than I was yesterday.

Thanks for taking some time out of your day to read what I put out there, it may not always be in accordance with your own beliefs and philosophy, it may not always be as coherent or relevant as I would like it to be, but it is always from my heart and reflective of what’s in my soul. I’ve enjoyed writing the first hundred columns and look forward to putting out the next hundred, and hopefully I can keep on keeping on, and getting a little bit better every day.