good morning, dear reader. i’m a little late, but that’s because it’s still friday, as far as i’m concerned. it’s almost morning and i am still wide, wide awake. that’s nothing new, i assure you, but tonight has been quite a time for me.

as you may already know, things have been both good and bad around here lately. one of my professors has decided that i am not good enough to continue in the education faculty and, as such, has decided to fail me in a required course. i have, of course, appealed this decision. the answer is still pending. christmas and new year’s have been tense, awaiting the result of whether i will, in fact, become a teacher or, conversely, be denied my only dream. i cannot speculate. i shall do that in a few days, once i have more information, post-resumption-of-class.

as a result, at least one of my very close friends, who knows how deeply i hold the ideal of being a teacher, became very frightened by the fact that it is falling apart before my eyes. more than one, i can guarantee. two, as a bare minimum. and almost two weeks ago, one of them informed the police, either directly or through the health services, that i was suicidal, resulting in what i would have to say was the most painful and frightening night of my life. i shall spare the general public the details but, just so you know, if you call the police and tell them that your friend is suicidal, please ensure that it is the case before doing so. they will come to that person’s house, drag them from it, handcuff them, bring them to hospital, and ensure that they are restrained for hours in a dangerous environment. it’s the law. i’m not saying that the police wanted to hurt me; far from it. they simply wanted to help. but i tell you again — do not do this lightly, as your friend may never forgive you for it.

in my case, i believe that friendship is the most important thing in life. if you are truly my friend, you will always be forgiven. i assure you, that is not an invitation to hurt me. if you want to hurt me, there is a good chance that you’re not my friend, anyway, so this doesn’t apply to you. and yes, indeed, i write papers this way, too.

i assume that this was done with the best of intentions. whomever was responsible for my subsequent pain and fear was simply trying to save my life. while i was not actually on the edge, about to kill myself, there was no way for them to be sure of that fact and i applaud the effort. for future reference, if i was ever to be in danger of killing myself imminently, which i do not predict to be the case, just so you know, i’d let you know. you wouldn’t have to guess. there’s something to this blatantness that i always get accused of that should come into play here.

that being said, it’s ok. it will take me a long time to recover from what happened, but it’s not the fault of anyone being malicious, only misguided. and that i can certainly forgive.

the first principle of friendship for me is trust. i believe that it is of paramount importance. i’m sure i will write more about this in the future, but let’s just leave it at that i think that it is vital for friends to tell each other everything of significance. that doesn’t mean that i need to know what time you got up in the morning today. or what you had for breakfast. or even who you slept with last night. what i’m getting at is that if it’s something that affects me, and you know it, and i don’t, you should tell me. and not when i ask. you should tell me when you realize that i don’t know and that i should. every time. and i don’t just mean this for me; i think this is the basic, fundamental truth for all friendship. if i know something that is important to you, i will tell you. immediately. you won’t have to pressure me, beat it out of me, beg, or ever wonder if i have told you everything. i have. period.

there’s a problem with this. ok, there are several. but the one that is important at the moment, early this morning, as dawn is creeping closer, is that i assume that all of my friends understand this. they don’t. i didn’t know that until a few hours ago. i have now discovered how the police were incited to come and take me away, temporarily. and i am displeased with the fact that it has taken almost two weeks for this information to be forthcoming. i don’t care why. and i’m not going to take anyone’s head off because of it. and i’m not going to throw away my friends because of it. but i am displeased. i trust my friends to the end of time; i don’t expect to be betrayed and i don’t expect to be lied to. my bad. i don’t know if i’m ever going to stop expecting it, now. but i can tell you that if i do, it will be a long time from now.

so you’ve had your daily dose of depressive friendship theory.

if you’re reading this at the moment, you either live a long way from here or you should be asleep. good night.

oh yes. tomorrow’s post shall be more uplifting. as if it could be anything else.

i made one new year’s resolution this year. reflection. reflection without a mirror, to be exact. every day, i have told myself that i am going to think about what happened that day, write about it, share about it. most significantly, though, think about it. but writing is a start.

let’s start at the very beginning. since it’s a family tradition to watch the sound of music on new year’s eve, every year, i figure this is a particularly appropriate way to begin.

two-thousand and eight was a particularly good and bad year. but things start before that. this will fall into the about category, yet i feel that i should put it here, simply for the sake of information. i am a writer, a photographer, and a consultant. i do all of those things at the same time. i take photographs and write for clients, for books, and for myself. but if you’re here, you likely already know this. the rest, you may not know.

the most important piece of background information is this — i am a teacher at heart. my parents are teachers. and like mother and father, like son. i could never imagine myself doing anything else. i am happy in front of a class. i assure you, i do not see the world of teaching through rose-colored glasses. i am even going to skip the typical rose-colored puns that follow from my name. i’ve been there. i know what it’s like. it’s not all good. but i love it more than life itself and i would never give up life as a teacher for anything in the world. yes, that’s sappy, sentimental, and emotional, three things that i detest. and that’s the only time that you will ever hear me become emotional about anything here. i’m not the most rational of people. but i assure you that i am anything but emotionally promiscuous.

i have been trying to become a full-time instructor for many years. since i was approximately four years old, to be precise. i wanted to be a teacher before that but it was around the age of four that i first put this thought solidly out into the world. i have never changed my mind. never even doubted it. so, once i graduated from high school, i thought that i was on my way to the life that my father led, the life that i always dreamed of and still do. university courses, both in the classes and in front of the classes, ensued. more than a decade of them. i have never really cared what i was teaching, as long as it was in english, to english-speaking students. and as often and for as long as possible. unions be damned, i want to teach longer hours for more days. and yes, if that makes me crazy, at least it’s my kind of crazy.

so i finally finished undergraduate school, graduate school, and moved on to a degree in education, which somehow is necessary to teach. i shall talk about that later, but we shall assume, for the moment, that this is all as it should be and move on to the rest of the story.

i’m all of the other things, too. but now i’m an education student at the university of british columbia. i graduate this year with a bachelor of education and a teaching certification and move on to teach english in a vancouver classroom. i hope.

in the last year, i have moved to vancouver. i have loved and been loved by a girl whom i shall miss for the rest of my life, who passed away in july and for whom i would give anything to have back, including my dream to teach; she is gone, though, and i am still here.

i have been accepted to the university that i would choose above any other in the country to attend and been given the opportunity to teach, temporarily, at vancouver technical secondary, an inner-city vancouver school, exactly what i dreamed of doing for the last twenty years. if i could spend the rest of my life doing that, i would be satisfied.

i have met many new friends. i say that with far more force than it feels to you. friendship for me is a sacred thing. it is a bond between people that can never be broken and flows vibrantly with trust, with openness, and with love. and i have made several new bonds, only one of which was shattered by death, and for this i can be thankful.

the new year is a time to be thankful and reflective. the tone of this entry is very different from that of the ones that will follow. at least, it is up to this point.

now for the story.

my parents came to visit me last week. they left this morning. i cannot tell you how sad i am about their departure. i don’t care how many dysfunctional families there are out there, where you all hate your parents and dread family events and the like. i wish my parents lived down the road. perhaps they will, at some point. but at the moment, my father teaches in a small middle-eastern country, qatar, so i don’t see my parents very often. i shall change that in the years to come, i hope, but for now it is the situation.

last night, i went to a party. the party was fun. as new year’s parties tend to be, it was late. and there were games. and great people. and it was on the mountain. my mistake. i drove to the party. it was nice when i left. it was relatively nice when i arrived. when i tried to leave for home, in the wee hours of the morning, nice wasn’t within driving distance, pardon the pun, of what it was.

before i get to that, i should mention to you the game munchkin. it’s hilarious. and fabu. at the same time. i lie not at all. if you have not, you need to play this game. with me, preferably.

having played this and other games, i left. got in my car. got a push to get started. and two hours later had traveled only a few feet. vancouver is famous for many things. it is not famous for snow-clearing. because there isn’t any here. which doesn’t bother me. i can tell you what does. they don’t believe in sand. they just don’t do it at all. sand belongs on slippery roads. here, sand belongs on beaches, they believe. so i didn’t get home, despite the efforts of some friends. and by efforts i mean torture. they absolutely killed themselves for a hugely long time trying to get me home so that i’d be there in the morning to take my parents to the airport.

a few hours later, i got home. almost six hours after i left. needless to say, i’m a little sleepy, at the moment. and my parents are gone. so that’s your story for the day.

oh yes. before i forget. capital letters bother me. i believe that they should be outlawed for many reasons. so you shan’t find any here. just so you know it’s not a glitch.

ta.