Tuesday, February 1, 2022

 Tuesday, February 1, 2022

 

   I slept well. I limited my walk since my body was still adapting to Katy's arch supports for my Crocs yesterday.

    I still was not willing to do anything to promote the reading method I created. Just thinking about reaching out hurt. My nephew is a writer who is reluctant to send his work to publishers. His mother says, "Start collecting your rejection notices. Think of all the famous authors who faced endless rejection until they were recognized." He's in his thirties. He has a wife to come home to. I'm in my eighties. I no longer have Mike to come home to. It's all isolation and rejection. No, not all, but the rejections outweigh the acceptances. The tolerable ratio of acceptance to rejection is the same as in any other social relationship. Anything under 5 to 1 or 7 to 1, with the positives outnumbering the negatives, is unbearable. It becomes too hard. Instead of working on the updates/blog, I turned to total avoidance. I played FreeCell. Is this going to be it for the rest of my life, endless games of FreeCell with intervals of Netflix or an Amazon Prime movie? It doesn't sound good. Something's going to have to give.

   I got to my feet and did some weeding along the fence on my neighbor's side. There are vines rooted on their side. I wanted to get to it before the fence went up, preventing easy access. They would help me get in, but it seemed easier to do it now. Working in the garden is working in a small world with limited impact. That's what I've been doing with my work for all these years, just doing a small action, just helping one more student; I've been happy with that and the occasional positive comment. Now, I've branched out. I've posted those videos and made myself available to the Step Up Tutors. The response to the videos is limited. The contrast between the number who have watched the Phase I video versus the Phase II. A hundred twenty-seven people have viewed the Phase I video, and only 43 Phase II. This suggests people weren't impressed enough with Phase I to bother watching Phase II. That being said, Isaac was very excited when he watched the video. Isaac had absolutely no training before he came here to volunteer in a small religious school. The principal is the one hired teacher there. She has no training and has done nothing to inform herself about good teaching practices.

   Teachers generally are not open to new, untested ideas. They're too steeped in what they already know. I understand that. I have been learning a new approach to teaching math that is radically different from what I learned. It's taken years for me to really get it. I do now, and I love it.

   I had one of my PT appointments with Terry. She does a fantastic job working on my body, releasing tight muscles. She commented on how far I had come since working with her. Everyone who works on me comments on how far I've come, but I'm still twisted.

     I wanted to stop off at Costco. I got as far as pulling into the parking lot. It was packed. The SNAP benefit checks must have come in. Besides the crowd, I was tired after the PT session. I turned around, went home, and took a nap.

   My friend Jean and I started exchanging film titles. We like things that emphasize kindness. She recommended The Fundamentals of Caring. It's about a man who becomes a teenager's professional caretaker after losing his son in a preventable car accident. It's filled with kindness and concern without being saccharin. The word ALOHA is used as an acronym for the principles of good caregiving. A-ask; l-listen, o-observe, h-help, a -ask again. Some people are uncomfortable asking questions. I'm not sure why.