Things I Hate (and Have No Control Over)

I have been struggling lately. I know it’s hard to imagine that someone was effervescent and enjoyable as me would struggle with a syndrome like DGAF. For those of you who I have vented to, complained to, whined to, or just made mumbling sounds at as I walked away from….I’m sorry. My therapist says that I need to let go of things that I cannot control because negative feelings like frustration, anger, and bitterness happen because I am trying to control things that I can’t. I would agree with her…and add on that I also then feel shame and embarrassment for feelings such feelings because the person I want to be and the person I am are two very different people. So….here’s a list of things that I hate AND things I have no control over. As I write them down…I’m letting go of what I cannot change and forgiving myself for the things that I could change but am too lazy or too tired to change.

– The Koch Brothers….I know they are the boogey-men of the Democratic party but I hate them. I hate that they can buy elections like kids buy pokemon cards…gotta catch them all.

-Climate-change deniers, you are bastards and will burn in a fire furnace…of course that furnace is our only planet that we are destroying so you will probably both burn in a fiery furnace and then freeze like a human-popsicle. Both of these fates you deserve…and you’re taking the rest of us with you. It’s not like we have another Earth waiting in the wings for when we decimate this one.

-Teachers who alternately don’t care enough to do their best for their students and then also have martyr syndrome because they are doing such good work….you know by helping “these” kids.

-People who text, then I text back in less than 10 seconds, then they don’t text back for hours. I KNOW YOU CAN’T PUT YOUR PHONE AWAY THAT FAST! I HAVE SPEEDY THUMBS!!!!!

-Parents who put their weaves, nails, colored contacts, and booty shorts ahead of getting their kids more than one uniform or food. Add that to parents who yell at me while they are yelling at someone else on the phone (you can’t afford two shirts for your kid but you have an iPhone!) Oh in this case…it’s actually the same parent.

-Politicians who give breaks to corporations worth billions of dollars but then freak out about raising the minimum wage or leaving snap benefits at the same level…It’s unbelievable that some politicians work so hard at keeping the poor poor.

-Duke Energy. You are like if the Koch brothers and Darryl Issa had a hate child and then it systematically poisoned the southern half of the United States…but also bought of the entire state of North Carolina and half of DC so you didn’t have to be accountable for it.

-The nut-zos in the NRA. I get it….you want to keep your guns. I’m from Wyoming…I get it. However, that doesn’t mean that you should get to buy a bazooka or a AK47 without showing ID or some sort of background check. I mean the kid in PA who used a knife to go on a rampage hurt a lot of people but didn’t kill any…. imagine if he had a gun….it would have been Sandy Hook or Columbine or Virigina Tech or  ________ (Insert name of any one of the 44 school shootings since Newtown). At this rate I deserve combat pay just for teaching 2nd grade. Let’s look at gun reform in a logical and rational way…we need an systematic overhaul of how we help people with mental illness, we need to provide more support to kids who are outsiders to get them into a community, we also need to have a way to keep guns away from people who are not stable.

-The almost complete ignoral of the homeless problems facing urban kids. We are not doing right by them as a society. I see them show up in my class looking hollow-eyed and deflated at 7! Then just as quickly as they come…they disappear again. Where did they go? Are they safe? Are they fed? Will they enroll in another school? Will they learn to read? Will they fall into a different class where the teacher pronounces them DOA and just get shuffled along until they have kids of their own? Will they remember that I cared about them even though they were only in my class for a week?

-People who can vote but choose not to. I read somewhere that if people have a contempt for government then they will have a government that is contemptible. That’s what we have. The normal middle of the road people abdicate their moral obligation for voting to the crackpots, ideologue, crazies, and ass-clowns because they don’t think their vote matters. I know…I used to be someone who said…”I would rather not vote then vote uninformed” That’s a weak excuse to let the country go to hell in a handbasket because I was too lazy to get informed. For a presidential election the voter turn out rate should be in the 90%’s (In 2012 it was 58%…in 2010 it was a whopping 41%). When did the normal people stop voting? When did normal people stop running for office? Did they every start voting? Why don’t people in their twenties know that they have the power to effect change? We don’t have to let rich, old, white men rule our country…they are no longer the majority but have somehow still created a caste system of the haves and the havenots. Most of country is not who is interviewed on Fox news or MSNBC but that majority is giving the reigns over to those geniuses like Cliven Bundy and Ted Cruz.

-Citizen United and McCutcheon. I think we need to get a system like England. Each canidate is given ____ amount of dollars by the government and that’s all that can be spent for elections. It makes more sense then the over 2 billion dollars that have been spent in the last 2 years for elections….that’s not even money spent towards lobbying.

 

Ok…If you read this far then you are either a good friend who is worried about my stability or a bad friend who is documenting my decent into crazyville. Either way thanks for reading….my fury at the things I can not change peaked somewhere are the NRA and now has gotten back down to a manageable level. Time to leave these things behind and focus on the things that I can change.

I can continue to care about every kid who comes into my class for no matter how long they are there.

I can show my students that chaos and yelling is not how all adults function.

I can join Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety group.

I can talk about the importance of voting to people I know and volunteer for campaigns I care about….I promise not to do this on a first date though.

I can vote with my money everyday by consuming products that support my ecological values and political values. This may be tricky but I would rather spend time becoming informed then keep throwing money at companies who are doing bad things for people, communities, and the world.

I can become more conservative with my finances so that I don’t buy unnecessary things which will both support my ideology about saving money and also my ideology about conservation of resources.

I can do my job for my students in my classroom and remember that I can’t change other people. Not my circus, not my monkeys.