Today was a good day.

So, day six of my break is done, with essentially two to go before my retreat, and today shaped up quite nicely.

First thing I did was visit my old high school friends Mike & Joe. It was OK; they were playing a trading card game that I wasn't exactly familiar with. Although not all of you play them, I'm sure you've heard of some of them: Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon. My flavors in high school started with Magic and ended with Star Wars. This one they were playing was called ".hack//ENEMY", based on the video game series. I learned to play a bit, but I must admit that I felt a little more like the outsider. You see, games of this sort create a close knit community, which was why I was attracted to them in the first place, but being involved in that community, like any community for that matter, requires that you are familiar with the lingo and nuances of the game, so I was definitely out of the loop.

Afterward, I met up with another old friend, Reva, in Berkeley for late lunch. It's crazy 'cuz I really don't talk to her too much, but we ended up talking for hours about our days in St. Joe's! A lot of my other friends could care less about the folks not in our circle, but Reva brought up names I hadn't heard in years, and we definitely had a blast.

At the same time, it was kinduva tragic conversation because we talked alot about the fucked up shit that happened with our classmates. That's the way w/St. Joe's. Don't let the "St." fool you; just because it's a private school doesn't mean we don't have our problems. Sex, alcohol, drugs, that stuff is rampant in St. Joe's, but taboos, strict parents, a school that won't admit the issues in the open, and the lack of safe spaces for students to express themselves and deal with these issues allows this shit to continue. It's part of the reason why I want to come back to St. Joe's to teach, and breathe some fresh air into a system that's gone stagnant. But public schools have their needs as well, so it's tough to say where I belong, but there's no doubt that high school is a place that I need to be.

After walking Reva to the library, I drove back home, popped in a DVD, and watched A Beautiful Mind. I must say that I really enjoyed this film, and in particular, I felt connected with Russell Crowe's character, John Nash.

There was something about John Nash and how his schizophrenia created this internal world with vivid characters that hit me, 'cuz I kinda do the same thing too. There are times at night when I sit up in bed, and I think about all the people and events in my life, and I play them back in my mind, but they play out differently, to my ideal. That ideal makes me happy, but it's usually enough to pacify me, and so I don't try to work to change my real world situation into my ideal, and so things stay the same. I don't know if that made sense, but it made sense to me, kinda like John Nash. =P My personality profile says that I should learn to take in more objective information (i.e. check in with reality more often), so that's my goal for this next quarter; check-in w/reality more often (Yeah, that did sound really weird, didn't it).

So now I'm contemplating how I should spend my two other days of freedom. I was thinkin' of visiting the high school again, only for their musical practice, and maybe breaking in a new game of mine. But yeah, today was a good day.