Teaching is one of those things for which not everyone has the gift. It’s also not limited to the classroom.
Teaching can take place anytime and anywhere that someone is learning from another source, be that an actual person or just life in general.
Now, another thing to be clear on for how I’m answering this prompt. Being a GREAT teacher is not always the same as a SUCCESSFUL teacher. Success in teaching means that a lesson was adequately grasped by the learner, and you don’t have to be a great teacher for that to happen. Some students are just very quick on the uptake, which can compensate for a teacher’s lack of skills, while some students struggle no matter how skillful a teacher is or what they do to help them along.
To be a great teacher (in human terms) requires more. Patience. Compassion. Empathy. An eye for seeing through the fog of uncertainty in a students mind and being able to provide a spark of encouragement. To nurture that spark and keep it alive. Teachers inspire us to learn and be creative. They provide a piece of the foundation for future generations to grow and thrive, and without them we would be lost. No progress would be made and we would still be banging rocks and sticks together.
Teachers are undervalued in today’s society. They are so much more than just glorified babysitters for working parents. Remember that, and try to show some compassion towards them for the hard work they do.
For the time being, as I’m working on consistency in various areas, my daily habits are fairly simple.
I take meds in the morning and evening. The morning meds I take when I get up for work (during the week) or I make sure I wake up to take them before going back to sleep on the weekends (I like to sleep in unless I have something important going on.)
I try to answer the daily writing prompt every single day, but some days I skip it and just post something relevant to what I had going on that day. Today should mark 257 days in a row of writing a post for my blog.
I’ve also been working on learning French through Duolingo, and with using the streak freezes (I’m not perfect and have missed plenty of days) I’m well over 400 days of doing that.
The last thing I’ll mention that is a daily habit of mine is some of the New York Times games. I almost always play Wordle and Connections, but occasionally the daily mini crossword as well.
That’s it for my consistent daily habits right now, but I have other things I need to work on that should be daily as well.
I don’t really have a favorite historical figure. As much as I might find history fascinating from time to time, I tend not to think about it too much because I’m more focused on the present and the future.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head that I COULD say is a favorite. At least, not a real person, anyway. Given my love of fantasy, though, I could definitely settle on a mythological historical figure. Merlin came to mind when I started thinking about it from that angle.
What are the most important things needed to live a good life?
I feel like this prompt can lead to very subjective answers from people, and yet I’m sure there have been attempts at objective studies to determine something more accurate.
I’m on the subjective side of this, so maybe take what I say with a grain of salt.
To live a good life means being happy, healthy, safe, never needing anything we can’t have, and never having to go through significant or insurmountable hardship to get what we want.
Sounds rather like a Utopia.
Unfortunately, we can’t have all of that and will have to settle for just a few things.
Happiness is subjective and can be dependent on the latter two things I mentioned before.
So, let’s settle for healthy and safe.
Healthy being appropriately well-fed, access to clean water, not undernourished or sick, and receiving sufficient medical care when needed.
Safe has multiple layers. One is that we live without fear of pain or persecution stemming from hatred, racism, and bigotry. No acts of violence perpetrated against each other. No severely risky jobs just to make ends meet. Industries not cutting corners to keep costs down and profits up at the expense and well-being of the workers. (This last one overlaps with the healthy category.)
Beyond that is the happiness aspect supported by fulfilled needs and wants. That’s where the “good life” is.
What counts as “spending time with someone” these days? Do we just have to be in the same room/close proximity and not speaking to each other? Does it count if I’m spending a large chunk of my day at work in a cubicle and there are people around me that I may not talk to at all?
If that last bit counts, it’s definitely people at work, much to my dismay. I spend more time with my family on the weekends than I typically do with my roommates throughout the entire week because after work I spend maybe anywhere from a couple minutes to half an hour with my roommates before I retreat to my room or my computer setup in the basement.
The only instances of significant time spent with one of the roommates is when we play Magic with our friends. Those nights can run from as early as 5:00PM til Midnight (usually shorter) and only happen once a week or less. These days usually less.
Now, to change things up, could you count time spent in Discord voice calls with online friends as “spending time together”? If so, that can be significant time after work and on the weekends. We play lots of games together, so it would make sense to count it.
How do you know when it’s time to unplug? What do you do to make it happen?
Musically minded people probably read the title and think I’m going to play some kind of instrument. Sorry to say, but I don’t play anything.
Taking the time to “unplug” is easy enough to accomplish sometimes. To me, what matters is WHY are we unplugging and what from?
Am I unplugging from just social media? From messaging apps? TV, movies, and games? The internet as a whole?! Each thing has a similar impact but I have noticed subtle differences between their affects on my mind.
All of them are a form of consumption, of mental stimulation, so when you turn the faucet (or let’s be real, it’s more like a fire hose) of information off, you go through a few things. Somewhere in the beginning it’s like withdrawal, but pushing through you start becoming more productive. At least, that’s how I feel. I go from “consumer mode” to “creator mode”, and thanks to this daily blogging journey I make time for I now have a daily brief respite. I can’t consume and create at the same time, so that’s a kind of momentary unplugging.
Cutting out social media, especially Facebook, means less doom scrolling. My mental state improves each time I make that decision. How I go about it has been simple. Either I uninstalled the app or I’ve hidden it away from my phone’s home screen. I’ve hidden the bookmarks on my computer as well. Out of sight, out of mind.
Messaging apps like Discord I just mute every server I’m in so I don’t get bombarded with notifications (because that’s obnoxious) so I don’t have as much of an issue there, but I still have to disconnect/unplug from it for a while somehow. When I do that I just put my phone on Do Not Disturb.
TV, movies, and games are harder. In recent years I’ve just had to tell myself “no more, put it down for a while” and I can step away to focus on other things. If I do it long enough I can come back to the games part feeling a little refreshed, because honestly it can feel like a grind even in non-grindy games. I need those breaks.
I should unplug more often and find better ways to do it.
I have no intention of causing confusion or making anyone feel attacked for/doubt in their personal beliefs. They are yours, and these are mine.
That being said, to answer the prompt directly, do I PRACTICE religion? No. Practicing religion often requires active participation in a church and regularly reading the Bible and trying to live by the lessons written inside. I do neither of those things. If that’s all the information you care about, stop reading here. If you’re interested in reading more about how I see the world, read on at the risk of being upset.
The reason I do not practice can be boiled down to some simple sentiments, but this may require lots of explanation.
There’s nothing wrong with believing in something greater than yourself, something that is beyond you and your control. What IS wrong is accountability and blame in the world. This part is attributable to human leadership as much as spiritual beings of a higher nature. You cannot claim that someone’s vision is the reason that good things happen and reward them for it while also denying that anything wrong that happens is also their fault.
We also cannot sit on our hands, so to speak, and hope/wish/pray/gossip about something trying to get a better outcome without actively doing something to participate in the achievement of that outcome when there has been thousands of years of evidence that actions speak louder than words. However, the issue here isn’t just about “talking about something instead of doing something” and more about recognizing the fact that “talking about something IS doing something, but was talking really all that productive?” (Regardless of which branch of faith you prescribe to, if you say you are “the hands of God” then actually BE those hands doing something and not just acting like a mouth piece. That’s someone else’s job.)
I’ve more or less baked this all into my personal belief of “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” which I’ve talked about before. I would like to add more on top of that post as it relates to today’s prompt, as well as more detail to why I mentioned not going to church. I don’t like the idea that people can go to church one day a week for maybe an hour or two, pretending to be good and pious/devout individuals, and then go out into the world and be hateful, spiteful, greedy assholes. That’s not how it works. Unless I’m mistaken, attending church is not a free pass to sin the rest of the time.
We cannot claim to be good people while continuing to treat others with disdain and hate. No amount of fake piety makes up for the continued prejudice we have in the world today.
We cannot reward decision makers for their successes while turning a blind eye/assigning blame elsewhere for their failures. Accountability needs to be upheld at all levels, no matter how painful it may seem, because that’s the only way we can learn to be better than who we were yesterday.
What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
There are way too many jobs to choose from for this question…
I think I’ll settle for being the president of a AAA video game studio. Not on one of their easiest or average days, but one of their busiest or more challenging days just to see what they need to be prepared to do. What kinds of choices they have to make, the pressure they have to deal with, and so on.
The Dragon's Grove 