after a long day of explaining to teenagers the importance of media literacy and speaking about them behind their back to other teachers, referring to their cellphones as pacifists for overgrown babies, i am back home ready for my own pacifier. i am surprised that i am not yet tired or bored of teaching media studies. maybe it is because i feel like i am constantly playing catchup with current events and trying to find a way to make it digestible for my kids. there is a lot at stake, so i try to be the first person to reach them with a specific story or idea. my hope is that after a few months of my class, the cricket in their ear (me) will speak to them about all the media they come across.

i think it is always important to relate the subjects you are teaching to things happening in our lives and to include yourself as the teacher. i tell them that i am also a student of media studies, i also have to interface with thousands of messages per day and that none of us are immune to misinformation, bias, and error. i realized as i was prepping for the class that i use a lot of metaphors from movies to explain the importance of media literacy so this year i will be showing a lot of clips to help drive the main point of whatever topic we are discussing. for example, today i showed them the wizard of oz scene where the wizard gets uncovered. “pay no mind to the man behind the curtain.” i always think of that quote when it comes to understanding systems and media. i hope they understood what i was going for.

i will not go and let myself be consumed by the same thing i told the kids to watch out for. at least i am aware of my own demise. that must be worth something.

there is so much to do and i want to do none of it. maybe i want to do some of it. i am getting kind of stuck in doing the same things in the same ways. i have so many expectations for this site. it has to hold all of my ideas while also giving me a sense of self-directed purpose. i did not write as much as i wanted to this week, it still feels like i am trying to write. but that’s exactly what i need to do, just write and be ok with it being there. i will stop writing about my writing now.

this weekend had a lot of baldur’s gate 3 and i finally watched beau is afraid, which i really really loved. it demanded my attention when i was trying to do everything but sit down and focus on one thing. my favorite part of the movie while watching it was the sound and my favorite part to keep thinking about is about how there are three possibilities on what’s actually happening in beau’s world. either (1) it is all psychosis, all the horrors exist only in his head because the horrible things he grew up with shaped the trauma he continues to live with. it could also (2) be part psychosis and part orchestrated madness. or (3) all of the horrors in his life are orchestrated and he has had zero sense of the real world. i think the movies leans into 3 more than the others and i think i lean that way too.

i love when movies have me thinking about the format and the genre, it can really mess with your expectations. it can help directly explain bizarre themes through feeling and vibe, the type of things that might otherwise be lost through explanation.

i will watch weapons this week.

second day of school on my 8ish years teaching. i have not tried writting shit in that time. i need to find my writing voice, again. so i will just be word vomitting until it feels natural.

this was largely inspired by smile.rip, which also greatly inspired the website overall. i have a lot of plans for the website. primarily to be a hub for all the random shit i do. it all has some sort of digital component that can be uploaded and shared. the container being a website for all those projects also gives me more ways of seeing the project through by giving it a place where it'll feel like home.

i think setting intentions as my first post is the best way i can honor the beginning of a new school year. after a whole day of creating classroom agreements and goals for the year, it feels natural. i want to be able to feel ok about writing whatever. i want it to be it's own thing, not attached to any incentive other than the satisfaction of seeing a page full of my own words. i never could keep a livejournal or anything like that for longer than three 3 days, tumblr was the closest thing i've gotten to creating my own site since the geocities days. i obviously like sharing. i was an early adopter of all the social media apps, which has only taken me further away from my own space on the web. i want these writing to be an example, even if only for myself. i don't want this to feel weird or self-entitled. i have a lot to say. the biggest satisfaction that any creative projects of mine have brought is that it can only exist outside of any of the big websites. soundcloud and tumblr were the last time like i felt like i had total control of how i wanted to share a thought or a whole project. sometimes i have shit to say and pictures to share but i don't want to add the social media perception, all the individual baggage that we attach to each app. it changes the meaning too much. i want to have control over who is profiting over something i think is woth sharing. i want it to exist outside of any systems that only exist to use and hurt my peoples. that motivation is also what keeps me being a media studies teacher. the internet has not been ok for a long time. it hasn't transformed, it was tamed. seeing the internet as a place where i can just create things like this is a reminder that we have so many tools, so many systems that we can shape to work for us.

i hope to keep writting.