On my mind...

So, it's 11:55 pm and I'm bored. Not bored in the "Hey, its 11:55 pm, shouldn't I be going to bed?" kind of way, but in the "I still have stuff to do so I can't go to bed, but can't someone entertain me while I do it" kind of way.

I'm currently trying to figure out how to teach writing. I graded the exams of my students and, well, to say that there's a range is the understatement of the century. There's the kid who wrote an essay good enough to get him into grad school , and then there's the one who thinks that the Beatles and the Brady Bunch were both around in 1952 and wrote something like "The kids were all excited to see the Beatles 'cuz that showed that they were important." Yeah. Okay. Sure.

But, that's neither here nor there. Because the point is that I'm bored. I want to be doing something exciting, or daring or bizarre. Maybe Bridget Fonda (in Singles) was right and somewhere around 25 bizarre turns into immature.

So, someone, anyone, wake up and talk to me! Tell me a story. Do card tricks. Anything.

I think its that instant satisfaction thing again -- caused largely by email, I think. Right now I'm bored, so immediately, I need someone to entertain me. Never mind that the entire over-25 set is sleeping because, hey, its midnight now, and we all have to get up tomorrow. I need entertainment and you're the ones to give it to me!!!

I think it might be connected to something Jenn said about being an email addict. For some reason (maybe Jenn's internet connection?) this has been a slow week for emails coming in and I've been wondering why I'm the only one holding up the email addict banner. You guys still are in this with me, right?

Okay, that last sentence showed that I must be tired, even though I don't feel it. Either that or I'm insane, which I refuse to accept. So, since no emails are coming in, except for something from the College Student Retention listserv (and yes, that's exactly as thrilling as it sounds), I'm gonna suck it up and go to bed. Forget trying to come up with something brilliant to get my students to understand grammar and punctuation. Instead, I wil take a nap, wake up tomorrow and do it all over again.

Usually, I just write about whatever's on my mind. As you can see, there hasn't been much the last few days (other than my anger at President Bush). So, I'm going to spend this time responding to Jenn's blog.

For those of you who don't know Jenn, or at least don't read her blog, you should know that one of the big themes running through it is a search for answers. Some hope that out of all of the confusion that the world brings us, there are good reasons for everything and that it all makes sense somehow. So, here's my response -- There are no answers.

This isn't some kind of nietzsche-esqe, God is Dead kind of rant, or anything like that. It isn't that I don't believe that the world makes sense. I do. I just don't think that it makes sense in the way we usually WANT it to make sense.

For example, along the course of our lives, we make decisions that change how our lives are going to work out. Sometimes, we look at these decisions years later and wonder what the heck we were thinking -- why were we so proud? so needy? so indecisive? so thoughtless? or maybe why did we think we knew the answers when we didn't really know anything?

So many of these seemingly small decisions (a fight, a kiss, arguing, making up, a midnight drunken phone call or a hung-up phone) end up changing everything. For example, if not for one day in September 1996 (and no, this blog is not the place for details) I can tell you my life would be a whole heck of a lot different now. Not necessarily better, happier, more fulfillling or any of that stuff that we hope our lives will lead us to but definitely different.

And now, all these years later, would I go back and change it all if given the chance? I don't know. I'd have the answers Jenn is always searching for, but maybe part of the "good stuff" in life is in not knowing. Not knowing what might have been, not knowing all the answers and getting to wonder, "what if?"

And maybe that's how it all makes sense. That the good stuff is lying somewhere in the "maybe" and the "what if" and that, if we knew everything, life would be boring and meaningless. Or at least, that's what I'm telling myself.