Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Blessed New Year

I hope everyone has had a great holiday season so far. I know my Christmas was amazing, and the break is still going strong.

Thankfully, I was able to spend some time with my grandparents and aunt. They actually all came into town for R.J.'s birth, but missed out on J.T.'s birth, so it was my aunt's first time meeting him, and he charmed her as he does everyone.

It's also been nice to have two weeks to spend time with the boys and my wife. Teaching may have it's downsides, but the amount of time I get to spend with my family just can't be beat.

The boys were over-blessed with toys from all the grandparents. Seriously, my Jeep looked like Santa's sleigh and every bump we went over made every single noise making toy go off in a cacophony of catchy tunes and animal noises.

The new year is quickly approaching and I'm am doing something I've never done before: New Years Resolutions. Or goals, really. In any case, I've been spending the past couple of weeks, looking at what I would like to accomplish in 2015. I won't share the whole list here, though I may a brief overview, in a New Year's post; but I will say the whole process is invigorating.

I scoffed at the idea of New Year's Resolutions. I could never wrap my head around writing down these lofty statements, that wouldn't last a week. The running joke was: "My New Years Resolution is to have no resolutions." But I think my point of view on this changed when I began to consider goal orienting my life.

My family has often accused me of having a jellyfish mentality. And I do in a sense. Now, this can be a gift, setback don't upset me as much as they do other people, and it can also be a curse, I have little drive, no clear "goal".

So I decided I would work on that inherent weakness, I would set goals, manageable goals, and do my best in 2015 to accomplish them.

I thought this would be an incredibly boring task, and one that would "constrain" my creativity. I was proved pleasantly wrong.

I found it to be invigorating, and it actually sparked my creativity. Writing down the goal "Get Published" began to get the brain storm going on how I could make that happen: Short story? Article for an education publication? Self-publish?  

What I've found is that goal setting gives my creativity a path. It focuses it so that I can best utilize that energy. It's comparable to what happens to light when it is focused in a laser beam. Without the focus it is just ambient lighting, put the right lens on it, however, and it can really start a fire.

Now, I just need to do whatever it takes to accomplish those goals.

Value of a Dollar

Sorry that it has been a while since I last blogged. Life has been a little crazy around here lately now that the holiday season is in full swing, and the end of the first semester at school is winding down. I was also crazy busy with NaNoWriMo last month, and as such, wasn't really able to sit down and write a blog post.

I did manage to win. It came down to the wire due to my procrastination during Thanksgiving break (SO MUCH PIE), but I finished at around 10:30pm on Sunday, November 30th. That being said, I have not finished the actual book, and so I am now trying to stay disciplined enough to actually finish the durn thing, despite the fact I can see plot holes big enough to swallow the Spruce Goose.

But this blog post is not about writing today. Instead, I am going to write about a much more mundane, though necessary topic: money. Specifically, personal finance. YAY!

To start this off allow me to give a bit of a disclaimer. My father has his doctorate in marketing and finance. He is a businessman through and through. And he did his best to teach me about money and finances. He really did.

I, however, am a notorious creature of comfort. If there is an easier, softer way, I am going to take it. Every time. And so the notion of saving, and living below your means are all concepts I understand and agree with on paper, but when it comes to implementing them, I just couldn't hang.

During my college years, and early twenties, I managed to do some serious damage to my credit and to get my self in a bit of debt. Now, I am not in as much debt as some of my friends, but I really shouldn't be in any debt, since I had no student loans.

I've been forced to take a hard look at some of the issues I've cause with my financial irresponsibility these past couple of weeks. My wife and I began to look at some homes to buy, seeing as our rent is quite a bit more than what the mortgage and taxes and fees would be for a modestly priced home. However, because of my financial irresponsibility buying a house right now is just not feasable because of my credit score.

So, I've begun a budget and a way to pay back all of the debt I owe and to raise my credit score enough that we can move into a home and to begin saving for the future.

I know understand all the lessons my father tried to teach me in regards to money, and I wish I could go back in time and slap my younger self upside the head and tell him to listen to his father and not be so damn irresponsible, but I can't.

So I have just have to learn the lessons I was taught by life and move forward from here. I will be posting updates in my financial journey here, just as a way to keep myself accountable and to keep a record of what I've done, but perhaps someone who is a similar financial situation as I am will come along and it will help them in their financial journey as well.

Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day in the United States. A national holiday that celebrates the many thousands of men and women who have served this country in times of war and in times of peace.

The day has its beginning with the cessation of major conflict in World War I (On November 11, at 11 AM), became known as Armistice Day and eventually evolved into Veterans Day. Not to be confused with Memorial Day, Veterans Day is for all Veterans of the US Armed Forces, living and deceased.

This was an important holiday for my grandfather who served as a tank driver and commander in Patton's 3rd Army during WWII. The only other holidays that were more important to him were Christmas, July 4th and Memorial Day. And he made sure I knew the importance of the holiday as well.

My post today is partly a thank you.

Thank you to the members of our Armed Forces, current and retired, dead and alive. Thank you for your service and for your sacrifice. For your long months away from home; for missed memories and holidays spent away from loved ones and the comfort of home. These are all things I cherish; all the more because so many miss out every day, month and year because they have volunteered to serve our country.  They have freely given up theirs, so that I can have mine. For that, thank you.

My post is also partly a musing on a trend that deeply disturbs me; a trend that screams the opposite of appreciation to veterans everywhere.

Just over a week ago, the citizens of the United States participated in mid-term elections. While not as flashy as presidential term elections; there were important positions at stake. Here in Texas, we elected a new governor and lieutenant governor for the first time in over a decade.

However, here in my own county, Nueces, voter turnout was at a record low. Nueces county has 190,026 registered voters. Of those 190,026 voters, only 58,005 ballots were cast. That's 30.52% (http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/TX/Nueces/53331/147970/en/summary.html).

Still Nueces county's 30.52% is a bit higher than Texas' overall of 28.5%. Both are still below the national average of 36.4%, with Texas having the dubious distinction of the lowest voter turnout in the United States.

Now, some may say that this is because of the Voter I.D. laws in Texas, and I'm not inclined to totally disagree, but that doesn't account for the nation wide average of 36.4%. Over two-thirds of our nation did not vote. In Texas nearly 75% did not vote.

This is a serious problem.

And there is a reason I am blogging about it on Veterans Day.

On Veterans Day, the majority of Americans will most likely tweet or make a Facebook post acknowledging Veterans Day or thanking veterans in a general way. Some will even personally thank a family member, friend, or in a rare case a stranger for serving. As well they should.

But in my opinion, gratitude is best expressed through actions, not words. And as a nation we showed just how little gratitude we had for our veterans when only a third of us went out to vote.

How is voting showing gratitude to our veterans, past and present?

Veterans fought, sacrificed and even died for many of our liberties, foremost among these was the right to vote: to elect our own leaders and have a say in the creation of our laws.

Our voter turnout shows what we think of showing our gratitude through voting. Our lives are too busy, too hectic to take advantage of the benefits created by the sacrifice of thousands. How selfish is that? How conceited that I take the missed Christmases, Easters, Thanksgivings, birth of children and deaths of loved one and say I didn't find time in my day? How conceited that I take those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and say that I am too busy to get over to my polling location. Or I don't want to wait in a line? Or even, God forbid, that I'm not going to vote anyway because my vote doesn't make a difference? (More on that point in the post-script)

Right about the time I was getting ready for the birth of my second son, my cousin  was experiencing the birth of his first son over Skype because he was on deployment in Afghanistan. Moments like these are the sacrifices our veterans make. They are real and they are visceral and they are moments they will never get back and the best way I can think of honoring his sacrifice is to make good on the right he was sacrificing for.

We should be ashamed as a nation!

Our right to vote was bought and paid for in the blood, sweat and tears of our veterans and we do their sacrifices no honor when we refuse to exercise that right.

As a nation we need to make sure this never happens again.

We need to show our nation's veterans far more gratitude than a token Facebook post or a thank you in passing. We need to show them that their sacrifices were not in vain.

Post-Script -

I hate whenever I hear something about "my vote not making the difference". It ticks me off because it is such a selfish, individualistic way of looking at things, and at its heart, a representative democracy is neither selfish, nor is it individualistic. At least not in that way.

Here's why:

In the gubernatorial race here in Nueces County the turnout was something like this:

Greg Abbot: 54.14% (30,827)
Wendy Davis: 43.40% (24,217)
Everyone Else: 2.46% (1,404)
Total Vote: 56,448
Total who didn't vote: 133578

Here's what those numbers mean when you factor in ALL of the registered voters:
Greg Abbot: 16.2% (30,827)
Wendy Davis: 16.2% (24,217)
Everyone Else: .7% (1,404)
Those who didn't vote: 70.3% (133,578)

When you expand the race to include those who made the decision not to vote (a decision as important as candidate or party in my mind) the race shrinks to negligible levels between the Democrat and Republican nominee. At that level, the Independent Party could have run away with the vote for a we know.

Collectively, all those "My Votes Don't Matter", matter quite a bit. And at the state level, the disparity was even higher.

Alone, your vote may not count for much and may not sway an election. But it is important to remember that your vote is never alone.

Writing is Coming

Its close. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for you uninitiated) is going to be here in a little over 27 hours. A month long sprint marathon to take an idea (and maybe some notes) and turn it into 50,000 words worth of a story. This will be my third year participating. I won my first year, but last year I got a late start and was never able to make up the word count. It didn't help that my story fought me every single step of the way.

I do NaNoWriMo for several reasons; but I think the foremost among those is that every single year I have done it, NaNo has managed to teach me something about writing and about myself as a writer.

My first year back in 2012, when I completed NaNoWriMo, and was declared a winner, I realized that I could do this writing thing. Before that point, I knew I could write and that according to most of my professors, posed some form of skill in the written word. But I didn't know that I could write fiction. It had always been something I thought and talked about, but aside from some poorly thought out and executed stories, had never taken off the ground.

That first year of NaNoWriMo proved to me that I had the ability to take a small idea in my head and expound it into something 50,000 words long that  resembled a novel. Albeit with a plot that meandered and never  finished. But it had action. And setting. And dialogue. And characters. And for the first time, I  began to consider myself an amateur writer, writing as a hobby and  a possible career. (I say hobby and I am careful to label myself as a "writer" but that is a whole nother blog post).

The second thing that first year taught me was that I have the ability to write. That's it. What I don't posses are the skills (or if I do they are unrefined) to take writing (and my passion for telling a story) and turn it into publishable materials.

As a result, I began to educate myself. My father had always balked at buying me "noveling" books during phases in my youth because he would tell me, "The way to get better at writing is to write. Not read a book on it." And he was half right. Had I not sat down and typed out 60,000 words in a month we would not be having this discussion. But he was wrong as well. I needed an education in writing. I needed to learn the art/science of writing fiction.

So  I began to seek out those materials. I began to read books on the art of story crafting. I began to watch creative writing lectures on youtube. I began to listen to podcasts like Writing Excuses and I Should be Writing. I read blog posts and Q&As by my favorite authors on the writing process. I would've loved to have taken a B.F.A. in Creative Writing course, but had to settle with picking my old college professors (who also taught creative writing) brains whenever they would let me. I began to pay attention when I read, watching what the author did rather than for pure entertainment.  The author's books that I enjoyed I would read over and over; pouring over their chapter structure, how they created dialogue and how they would set up plot twists. Something I rarely did when I was just a reader.

I joined writing forums, and recently Scribophile (how did you elude me till now!?!?!?) and was brave enough to get people to critique my writing and strong enough to take it when they tore it apart. Even if they didn't get my "vision". Even if they were my wife.

My second year taught me that I needed to learn how to plan. My first year I went in guns blazing and though divine intervention, my story stayed with me long enough to come to somewhat of a conclusion. I was a "pantser" and I looked down my nose at those poor OCD souls who had to plan their novels. Where was the surprise in that?

But then as I began to learn about "pantsers" and planners, I began to realize that while I was capable of writing as a pantser, my stories were limited by the lack of direction.

My first year I had enough momentum to propel past that final word count. And had I managed to close all the loose threads, I was looking at a word count that would make Brandon Sanderson look like Dr. Seuss. Last year I found myself floundering after my introduction. My plot (and I) quickly lost steam and I finished with a word count of around 35,000.

I learned that I have to incubate my ideas. I can't just take the idea and pull a full novel out of it by writing like a madman. Some writers can. I can't. And I would have never learned that about myself had I not participated in NaNoWriMo.

I am looking forward to this NaNoWriMo. I've got my story (and my doubts about it too) and I've done a lot some planning on it. I am looking forward to what I am going to learn this year about myself as a writer. Am I expecting to write a publishable novel in one month? No. But I am in it for the journey. And if you've never done NaNoWriMo, I hope you'll join me. You might be excited at what you learn.

Fifth Year of Teaching

I am almost three weeks into my fifth year of teaching! It is hard for me to believe that I have been in the classroom for that long, and even harder to believe that I actually survived my first few years. Thinking back and looking back on some of my journals from that time period, I think the first year or two of teaching may have actually been a sort of living hell for me. Nothing like how I feel about the job now.

That last week of summer leading up to my first day as a teacher was racked with fear. I think I might have slept an hour or so a night, and when I did finally sleep I often had nightmares of the first day of school. And that last Sunday, I felt like I was going to sick up and had swallowed a ball of dry ice.

Compare that with how I felt this last week of summer. It's not that there was a total lack of nerves, because there wasn't. Rather I felt anticipation and focus. Not fear. I knew what to expect and I knew what I had to do in order to be successful this year. I still have dreams about going back to school (they typically start in late July) but no longer do they cause me to wake up in a cold sweat wondering how I was going to survive the year and what the HELL had I gotten myself into.

Looking back, I can say that last year was the year that I finally realized that I was going to be in the Education business for the long haul and that this was where I needed to be. Before that point, I was always looking for something else. Something that didn't have the stress and dread that teaching had meant before. I was associating fear with a desire to do a different job. ANY job.

Now I buying into education for the long haul. I know this is where I am going to spend my career and I am honestly excited and happy about that. This next Spring semester I will begin my Master's in Education Administration and will hopefully be moving on to the next stage of my professional career. Onward and upward.

No longer do I feel that I am simply keeping my head above water. The first three years were really all about survival. Just making it to four o'clock (I never knew a 45 minute class could last so long) without having my students start a riot and hoping and praying that they somehow learned something during the course of the instructional period.

For the past two years though, school days fly by and I KNOW that my students are learning and taking things away from my class.

If I could say anything to first, second or third year teachers, it's this:

Hang in there. Don't give up. Yes it is going to be a struggle. Yes you are going to want to quit. Don't. No you are not the only teacher who thinks they have made a horrible, horrible mistake. Soon you will reach your groove and teaching will no longer seem a Herculean task. Instead you will walk around with your head held high because you KNOW you are an educator and you KNOW you are making a difference. I can guarantee you that every teacher had stood where you stood, paralyzed with fear and indecision. You will survive. And if you continue to learn and push yourself, you will thrive.