Harry's Ruminations

I remember distinctly being in Don Napier's 6th grade Language Arts class in Sebastian Middle School in Jackson, KY and getting one of those writing assignments everyone hates.   Write an essay arguing a position. It was the early days of the Kentucky Education Reform Act in Kentucky.  The Supreme Court of Kentucky (SCOK) had decided that the education system in Kentucky was unconstitutional, that our perennial position just above Mississippi on every aptitude test was not good enough, so out with the old, in with the new. Write More! Went the mandate.  We'll no longer grade you on objective things (neatness, grammar, spelling, content) but on subjective things called a "writing portfolio."  Thus, prompt like the genius nugget above. Let me put it further in context:  I was writing this paper out of sheer boredom.  A blizzard raged outside, an honest-to-God, Minnesota worthy 4-5 feet of snow with drifts.  It was so bad my Dad stayed in our tiny...

The other day, I found myself wallowing a tad, and I cried out to God, simply: "God, please help me." At the time, I was writing in my journal, some pretty negative, emotionally-charged stuff, like: I feel like a failure as a husband. I feel like a failure as a father. My career isn't working out the way I really would like.  I'm certainly duller than I was in 2010, and I feel overwhelmed all the time. I'm not coding regularly anymore. Writing the above, I literally stopped in mid sentence and immediately wrote these words: So, fuck it.  What am I going to DO?  Blah, bah, blah.  I've been here, what, a dozen times before?  What the fuck to do? Here's (part of) what I plan to do. I think it's time to step out of small group leadership. I strongly think going off  Facebook+  again would be healthy.  I'm tired of seeing all the happy people of the world when I'm sad, and at the same time, I'm wasting inordinate amounts of tim...