So in a few short weeks I will go back to work in my 28th year of teaching. My classroom will be full of new students ready for a new semester.
And it will be my 23rd at my current school. All of them in the same classroom, no less. The same 70′ by 50′ physical space.
So I sit down this morning to think about where I am, what I am doing, and how I might want to make adjustments. If I don’t take this deep inventory soon, I will be too busy to do it.
So here it goes. I apologize in advance for the unavoidable length of this essay.
I moved out here to Ventura County for work in 2000, and all in all I do not regret that decision. But that was 22 years ago. That is a long time to be doing the same thing in the same place. I looked back at my notes from six years ago and I am seeing some of the same complaints about my life: I am stuck, same ol’ same ol’, etc. Many of my valued co-workers have long since left for greener pastures after a decade or so at our school. There is a time to take a job and a time to leave that job, and they heeded the signs and departed after having thought long and hard about it. I have often wondered if I should have followed my valued co-workers for greener pastures elsewhere.
Oh, Ventura… I saw with dismay they made an arrest yesterday in a murder which took place in a local neighborhood I often hang out in, and that there was another stabbing last night in town. This happens too often here. The City of Ventura has beautiful scenery by the beach here in Southern California, but there is a seedy aspect to it that belies its blue-collar roots. I have never liked this aspect of Ventura since I first came to know the place 23 years ago. The seaside town of Ventura has incredible natural beauty, but it is also kind of dodgy and dirty. Someone should really clean Ventura up if you want it to be mentioned in the same breath as other similar California beach cities like Carlsbad, Dana Point, or Manhattan Beach – much nicer places to visit and live. There are homeless in all parts of Ventura, and trash is left where they congregate. The parking lot next to the Ventura Pier smells like piss, and you don’t want to be walking around there at night. Serious shootings with serious gangs in the Chicago or Los Angeles manner are still blessedly rare here, but stabbings minor and otherwise among the drug addicted and desperate are common in Ventura. “Sketchy” is the word. Especially at night. I’m tired of it.
“The Homeless in Ventura: Frustration, Confusion, Ambivalence, Avoidance”
October 15, 2019
It is a multifaceted problem with mental health, drug addiction, and high real estate costs contributing. But the results are plain to see. Small forest fires from homeless encampment bonfires which spread out of control in the river bottoms when it gets windy are commonplace here. Drug abuse, overdoses, and mental illness. Stabbing after stabbing, usually without someone dying. One lady’s murder made the news last year, because she talked about her fear for her life beforehand – take a good look at Ms. Kelsey Dillon, and you will have a face for the homeless misery in Ventura to remember –
They found Kelsey’s murdered body in the brush near a homeless encampment at the 33 and 101 Freeway junction near downtown. The brutal killing of one who lives in the shadows in Ventura, most likely by one or more persons who lives in those same shadows. Kelsey’s murder remains unsolved. I will not hold my breath waiting for an arrest.
Here is another telling detail about Ventura: the bathrooms around town are locked tight to keep the homeless out – if you don’t do that, they will camp out there and try and take a “bird bath” in the sink, or shoot up drugs and pass out with the door locked. So the public bathrooms in Ventura are often dirty and look like a homeless encampment camped out there, because often that is the case. Often the bathrooms look like a hurricane hit them – like a war zone. Yuck. The next place I live will have public bathrooms that are clean and available to all – a symbol that you live in a better, more affluent area. You want to gauge the health of your community? Take a look at the public bathrooms. Are they locked up tight to keep the sketchy fuckers out? Do you have to get a code to get past the locks to use them? Or are they clean and used by respectful customers who don’t abuse them? Without high-tech digital locks on the doors? You don’t have to ask the workers for the code to get through the bathroom door security?
And even with the homeless, the trash, the stabbings, the smell of urine – it still costs like $650,000 to buy even a starter house here. Why, I wonder. Is Ventura worth it? Why not sell my overvalued house (one million dollars? really?) and move somewhere cleaner and nicer? The golden age of California is far behind us and receding rapidly. I mention this to friends here and they remind me I live near the beach and pay a premium for coastal California: the gorgeous scenery and temperate climate. I get that. But something else? Something new? I am ready. Or at least I am over Ventura.
I took this photo this morning August 1, 2022:
There used to be a Marie Calendar’s restaurant in the parking lot above. But it went out of business years ago and has been empty since. It is a magnet for the homeless now, as is seen by the trash left in the above photo. The fatal stabbing on July 25 I mentioned earlier took place about one block south of here. Trashy. Sketchy. Frowsy.
Such a place on the margins attracts those up to no good who desire a place where nobody is watching and few care. There will be further crime large and small amidst the abandoned storefronts and surrounding areas.
Thoughts like these often run through my head about the place I have lived in for 22 years and with mixed feelings call “home.” I would move if I could. I often fantasize about where I might live next. I do copious amounts of online research.
My father long ago offered to give me the money to move two hours south down to Orange County where he and the rest of my family lives – where we all grew up together. In my pride, I said “no.” I had made my adult life in Ventura. I did not want to go back to where I grew up, thinking that going backwards was not moving forwards in life. I would choose something new to me, Ventura, and make it work. And I believed in Foothill Technology High School and working there. Now, after I see my niece and nephews get clearly better education in the Irvine high schools than they would get in the Ventura ones, I think I might have made a mistake. The better parts of Orange County are just better. The jobs there are more numerous and they pay better. There is more money and education. The area is more developed and has more opportunity. It is cleaner and safer. As a rule the nicer the locale is, the fewer the homeless. Maybe I should have moved to Orange County when my dad made me the offer. Sigh. The conventional wisdom is to move to the most expensive place you can afford to live, and enjoy the benefits. I chose otherwise.
I’m not sure I made the wrong decision. I just don’t know. I don’t know.
For better or worse, I still live and work in the city of Ventura more than two decades later. I came here to work a job, and I am still here for the job. My wife and I committed to raising my two daughters, giving them stability, and a home which they could call home, even at the expense of our ability to have novelty and a “change.” My daughters have lived their entire lives here and have friends and deep roots. I would not move so late in the game and ask them to start over. But if I don’t like where I live – or if I have serious misgivings about it – then I should move, right? But it is not that easy with daughters in middle and high school, and myself only a few years before retirement. Ventura is not a bad place to raise kids, all in all, even if it is far from the best sort of place. And it has been a long decade and a half of child-raising and working through pandemics and other difficulties. And I have done a good job at work and at home: serving my students in my classroom as best I can, and raising my daughters from the crib on up. My best hours have been invested in career and family. I was a worker-bee on campus and an on-dudy daddy at home. For a full decade I even had a second job as an adjunct professor, in addition to everything else. (I had that second job with newborn babies at home, believe it or not.) I am proud of the job I have done during my stay in Ventura. I have given it my all. It was not easy.
But I am more than a bit tired of it all. I occasionally run into former students from early in the Aughts when I started teaching at my current school, and they are already approaching their late 30s. I will have their children in my classes soon enough, if I am not careful. Jeez.
This morning I reflect on all this, and I feel a bit blue. I feel trapped, stagnant, bored. I have been where I am for a long time. I look around Ventura and the raw natural beauty of the place is undeniable, but the ugly underbelly remains plenty ugly. Someone needs to clean it up. I wish Ventura would get gentrified. It has so much potential, but…
At any rate, I am ready for something new. The feeling crept up on me. But there is a time to arrive at a place and a time to leave it. You stay too long, and you are at risk. Someone else will push you out the door.
I engage in rationalizations with myself. Richard, you are on the downslope of the race, I remind myself. It is a marathon, not a sprint, I tell myself. It would be sad to have kept up a blistering pace only to let things go towards the end and have the entire race fall apart. So I look at the bigger-picture and remind myself that I have some six more years of this. “Stay the course, Richard,” I say to myself. “Hang in there.” I recognize I have to pace myself. Keep the finish line and a strong performance all the way until you get there in mind: endurance and pain tolerance, as you learned. This is the life you have chosen. Soon enough a new era in your life will open up. The last six years of your career will go much faster than the first six did, that’s for sure.
It is all good advice.
It is my head talking to my heart.
Usually when the two converse, my head has the final word.
I look at my thought records from my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy journals of three and five years ago, and they say pretty much the same as now about feeling stuck among stagnation. And those years have gone by quickly. And I have not faltered in my job or parenting duties. These last few years will also go quickly. Then I will be there: 30 years on the job. Daughters in college starting their adult lives. Retirement and retrenchment. A new stage in my life and new opportunities. A change. A letting go. Getting ready for the end. A rest and a reprieve.
But work and family will be heavy lifting for the foreseeable future, and there is not much anyone can do about that. It is unavoidable. But what action plan can I consciously craft to help me get through this last stage of work and childrearing? To get me to 61.5-years of age? What coping mechanisms can I employ to make the present more bearable? Work will be work. But work is far from the only thing in my life.
So I sat down for a few hours this afternoon and came up with the following:
SPANISH:
First of all, continue making a formal study of Spanish. Little by little, bite by bite, you acquire familiarity and vocabulary; you know more and more. This is a good way of keeping yourself intellectually curious, as well as intellectually sharp. New words, new ways of fashioning sentences… and new cultures and ways of seeing the world. You have been studying Spanish, to a lesser or greater extent, since you were 21-years old, although in a classroom setting. Keep reading books, listening to the radio, and watching the news from Spanish-speaking countries.
This is also an escape mechanism from the present, as I can take action to prepare for a future lived at least partly in Latin America when I retire. I will be ready. In my precious free time, always be learning, Richard. You enjoy it. It helps keep your intellect active.
TENNIS
Sometime someday I suspect I will finally wear out my joints and have to “retire” from competitive tennis.
When such a day arrives, I don’t know what I will do. Especially after I cut almost all social links to work, I need my tennis community. It gives me so much: a thorough workout while maximizing my athletic talents while competing with friends and socializing with them after the match. Tennis is a huge foundation for my life and provides me athletic and social benefits. Three or four times per week, I am playing a sport with a ball like when I was a boy and having a beer with friends afterwards. What is there not to like?
This much is clear: if for some reason tennis were to go away, I would be in trouble. This is why getting boosted to the USTA NTRP 5.0 level last December was so threatening.
Keep the tennis going, Richard.
It keeps you sane.
It is something to look forward to on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis. It is where you hang with your buddies. It is an antidote to the stress and acrimony of the Monday through Friday workaday world. Tennis is my anodyne.
I have been playing tennis since I was 4 years old – some 51 years. Perhaps I can keep it going for another 50 years.
Or so I can hope.
MARKSMANSHIP
Similar to how for a time I learned everything I could about tennis racquets, tennis strings, the pros and cons of all the tools of tennis, I went through a similar stage with firearms. Double stack versus single stack, DAO vs. SAO vs. “striker fired” handguns. Appendix vs. 4:30 for your EDC. Jacketed hollow points vs. FMJ. I learned everything I could learn.
My firearms preferences evolved over the years in a trial-and-error journey. In tennis, at first I thought this racquet would work best, but time and experience moved me in another direction – until finally I found something in the Goldilocks zone: not too heavy, not too light, but just right for me. Then I would train seriously with the racquet without changing things up, becoming intimately familiar with it. Almost the exact same thing happened with firearms and – after several years and expending many many hours and much energy, and making a few missteps – I came to discover what works best for me. Trial and error. Book research and theoretical knowledge are fine to start with, but practical experience is what separates the wheat from the chaff.
So I would take these tools seriously – tennis racquets and firearms – and learn constantly and grow my skills conscientiously. I would practice the basics over and over again. The fundamentals, the fundamentals! Both tennis and marksmanship consist of perishable skills, and one must stay fresh and practice incessantly, if you want the best results. Dry fire semi-constantly, and do live-fire at the range and sign up for professional training as much as you are willing to spend money for – marksmanship is a hobby I enjoy and take seriously. It deserves no less. To learn and grow requires money, time, and effort. No skimping, Richard.
But there were differences. I came to learn how to string my own tennis racquets, but I never was going to learn how to re-load ammo. There is a limit in my investment in firearms which was not there in tennis. The sport of precision shooting is limited in what it can offer me in terms of exercise, competition, and companionship. I can’t see myself participating in IDPA or USPSA contests. There are too many other more important concerns making claims on my money, time, and attention. That is reality. So if tennis is a major passion of mine, firearms will remain a minor one, in comparison.
But even minor hobbies still provide solid enjoyment and render emotional sustenance to the dedicated amateur. It is great to have hobbies: they keep you from getting bored! And a passion project like firearms, given relatively less time and attention than I give to tennis, can still be a substantial pursuit for me. Keep this part of your life on a continual basis.
One of my mantras is the following: “Anything worth doing should be difficult.” This is because it is precisely the difficult pursuits which render the greatest long-term results in satisfaction and enjoyment.
Always be learning and maturing. Always be growing your skills. No shortcuts. No half-measures.
Take it seriously, Rich. No dabbling.
BIKING
Tennis is my first sport, and swimming is my second: those have made up the bedrock of my workouts for years.
But you need a change. Workouts get stale after some time after your body adapts to them, and you can get into a rut. It is good now and again to shake everything up in your workouts. Shock your body with a new exercise, Richard. Remember what your doctor told you about cross-training to avoid overuse injuries as you age.
Get back into biking.
You used to bike semi-seriously, but then you had kids. Biking is so time consuming that it went by the wayside for a decade and a half. But now that my kids are getting older, I can get back on the bike.
And maybe start doing more of your workout swims in the ocean rather than in the pool. This could be really cool! I am sure swimming a mile in the ocean will be much harder than doing it in the pool.
Try going for a two hour bike ride along the beach early in the morning on the day you don’t play tennis on the weekend. Get that extended nature therapy by being outdoors and exercising. You will return home exhausted and renewed. It might get dark so early such bike rides are impossible after work on weekdays. But the weekends you will have the necessary daylight.
Do not make it so bike riding is primarily a summer activity. Make it year round, as much as you can.
PLEX
You did all the research and finally purchased and set up a solid NAS in your household this year. One of the main goals was to set up a Plex server with which to watch media. This has been a great success, as far as that goes.
But the distaff members of your household tend to monopolize it.
Elbow your way into the living room and get some use out of your Plex server. That is fair.
WARDROBE
After not caring overly much about clothing for most of your life, in the last couple of years you made a concerted effort to curate your wardrobe. In fact, you even tried to develop your own personal sartorial look – your own idiosyncratic sense of style.
Richard, you lived 50 years without caring much about that. Why start so late?
Boredom, mostly.
It started with getting some quality leather boots to anchor your look and set the tone. So after research I purchased a pair of Thursday Morning dress boots, and then you came to own many such pairs in different colors. Then you moved to other clothing – mostly in the neutral white, blue, and gray foundational colors. Then you added a few other choices in more daring colors. (Yes, I researched all this at length.)
And so you finally acquired something of a personal style. It is very individual. It evolves over time. It is an evolutionary process not unlike that of tennis racquets or firearms for me. There have been hits and misses. I made clothing purchases which were disappointments and others which weren’t.
But don’t get lazy, Richard. Don’t take the path of least resistance by making the most convenient and comfortable clothing choices, even if the result is underwhelming. Take the extra time and effort to look as good as possible, especially (but not only) at work. In short: don’t be a slob.
Often during the school year you get so exhausted you are happy to get any clothing put on at all before you arrive at work. But with a bit more planning and design you can be (relatively) well dressed. Dress consciously. Don’t just pick up whatever because of fatigue or a lack of time.
Listen Richard, you are never going to be a fashionista, or even think all that much about clothes, but still…
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Try to set aside 45 minutes uninterrupted to listen to a piece of classical music each evening. Put your phone away and focus entirely on the music. Do not allow your mind to be distracted. The music and only the music. Relax.
You have been listening to this music since before you started playing tennis, which is saying something. Listening to it again and again over the decades gives you a feel for it which only grows with time. Enjoy!
Kick the girls off the flatscreen TV and soundbar, if need be. You can have the home theater for this 45 minutes nightly.
NO NEWS AFTER CHECKING IN ONCE
Everyday you read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Ventura County Star, and a few other more niche publications. In fact, you read them several times a day. So here is something new to try: read the news once per day, and then let it alone until tomorrow.
When it comes time to die, will you regret not having read enough of the news? Or not having listened to enough beautiful music?
Really, Richard?
Think about it.
So those are some goals for this coming year and onward.
And I am in a better frame of mind than when I started this essay.
This morning I was feeling blue about going back to my classroom and dealing with another school year. I had come to feel trapped, stuck, and bored in semi-seedy Ventura. And the heavy lifting of parenting needy teenagers – driving my daughters to their unending list of soccer obligations and everything else – won’t get any easier for several more years. That won’t change. It is unavoidable. I can’t change my life too much in the short-term for complicated reasons. But I can change how I approach and think about my life, until such a time as I can change it up. I have strategies to cope with what I cannot change. This does not mean the unpleasant aspects of the current reality disappear. Those realities when encountered cause me to experience angry “hot thoughts” which threaten to set my heart rate soaring and then afterwards to sink my mood into my shoes. But when I take the time to think it though honestly, when I write it all down and weigh the evidence soberly, I appreciate the fuller picture. I see the nuance.
And I feel better. I have hobbies and interests to keep me occupied, in addition to work and family obligations. I have some control. I have a plan.
Like I told you: almost always my head rules over my heart.
So I’m ready for the new school year, I think.
Wish me luck.
