Big Changes

You meet someone, you move in together, you get married, have kids.  You think you are going to be together forever.  You know that its going to be hard but you’re willing to put in the work to make it succeed.  Then it falls off the rails.

My chosen partner and I knew each other for years before we started dating and were great friends when we got together.  She is one of few people that challenges me in a positive way and makes me better in all the things I do.  Unfortunately, as a couple we didn’t have staying power.  We agree on all of the big decisions, we are a great team when something needs to be accomplished.  But we are no longer happy being together.

All of my life I have worked to not be a statistic and get divorced.  20 years ago I thought that I was done dating.  As a child of divorce, I know how hard it is to be a kid whose parents aren’t together.  I think that is one reason I had so much trouble finding a relationship I wanted to stay in, and was willing to commit to “forever”.  I believe that she was willing to commit as well.  We are both sad about how this part of lives has closed.

She and I are working hard to split amicably.  We want to remain friends.  We know that we need to be a team to raise our children.  We will always be in each others lives because of what we created together.  I will always love her like no one else.  But things will not be the same.  It kills me.

It’s really hard to break 20 years of habits.  I still want to take care of my ex, I reflexively step in to try to fix things and most of them are no longer mine to do.  Its getting better but well ingrained habits are hard to break. I am really glad I have a therapist that I like and trust.  She has been invaluable in helping me work through all of the things.

I’m worried about how this impacts the kids.  They will have 2 different homes.  They will need to deal with their parents not being together.  They are going to have drama that isn’t of their making.  In the long term it will be better than the tension that’s been going on in the house for a long time, but in the short term they are going to have challenges.  How will this impact their views on relationships going forward?

Things are much different from when I was a kid.  My mom had full custody and we visited my dad on the weekends.  That was the way it was done.  I still have issues that I’m dealing with because of that experience.  I’m not going to make the same mistakes as my parents.  I’ll find all new ways to screw up. LOL.

Now I’m dating again.  It’s hard. It is so different from 20 years ago.  The good thing is most people are more mature, get relationships, have been burned and we all recognize that everyone has their baggage.  It is refreshing to have real conversations about things that we want.

The one thing with dating that I’m most concerned about is how it impacts my children.  No one is going to meet the kids for quite a while.  I remember meeting a lot of people my dad was seeing and then they disappeared when he got bored.  You learned not to get attached.  I don’t want that for them.  This is hard enough anyway.  If they meet someone I’m dating I fully intend that it is someone that I plan on continuing to see.  Luckily their mother and I are on the same page with this.

I’m still trying to figure out what I want.  I know I am going to be guarded for along time because of how things played out with my marriage.  And I know that I can’t get into anything approaching serious because I’m still working through all of my emotions related to my marriage ending.  I’m already seeing that.  That’s going to take time.  On the upside, I get to figure out a lot about myself and where I want the next chapter of my life to be.

my journey with depression

I’ve struggled with depression & anxiety for a while.  It was definitely longer than I’ve been willing to admit.  I used to view it as a sign of weakness that I couldn’t just will my way out of it.  I avoided therapy, medical intervention, etc because of the stigma associated with it.

For a while I’ve been in and out of therapy while I tried to find someone that worked for me.  My latest therapist is great and she’s really helping.  Working through my issues and figuring out how to address the things that make my depression worse is valuable.  There are definitely some things I’m grappling with and having a safe environment to discuss them is invaluable.

We’ve been trying different anti-depressants.  We couldn’t find anything really great until after we did a genetic test and found that many of the things we’ve tried aren’t metabolized by my body well based on the gene polymorphisms I have.  We also found that I’m predisposed to a vitamin deficiency that we are addressing.  Modern medicine is great.  There are definitely side effects with any of these meds and we need to do a benefits vs. side effects assessment to make sure the benefits are worth the downside. Until we switched up my meds I didn’t realize how bad I felt on the old ones.  The new meds side effects also appear to be less severe so the benefit vs. side effects decision is easy.

Until I got over my hangups about going to therapy and medications I couldn’t get the help I needed.  As a society we need to figure out how to get rid of the stigma of mental illness.  its a medical issue like high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.  People resist getting help because of the way it is perceived in our society.  Many of us need help and aren’t getting it.  Therapy really does help.

I still struggle but I know that I have the means to make things better. Knowing I’m not alone with the challenges helps.  Being able to admit that I have difficulties and not resisting getting help is amazing.  It saddens me that people don’t realize they can make things better.

D&D revival

As a kid I got into D&D.  I started with the basic (red) box and got the expert (blue) box next.  Those were nice but I quickly decided I wanted to play AD&D.  I worked my butt off shoveling snow to earn the money to get the books.  One of my good friends and I would get together and try to figure out how we wanted to play.  I spent the better part of a year taking my D&D books everywhere I might have time to read. Yes, I was that nerd.

Back in the day, only nerds played D&D.  Often you were ridiculed for playing or talking about it.  Add it to the long list of nerd activities we participated in.  mostly we didn’t care and liked being nerds.  But you knew you were an outsider.

As I got older and had more friends, we moved into other role-playing systems because of what the group wanted to do.  Once we all got jobs and started actually hanging out with girls we were dating, we played less and less frequently. We stopped all together in our late 20s.  I missed revs 2 through 4.  From what I’ve heard it wasn’t a big loss.

When the new 5th edition came out I conveniently started to have more time.  The new rules are much simpler than AD&D and clarify a lot of things.  The modules are soooo much better than the old classics.  Those still hold a bit of nostalgic fondness but the new ones introduce a whole world and fleshed out scenarios to save time.  The old ones really were just dungeon crawls for the most part.

Today it seems that its cool to play.  Big Bang Theory, Stranger Things and the number of celebrities coming out that say they play has helped.  The marketing has been great.  The game stores hosting games makes it easier than ever to find a group to play with.  More people playing means that WoTC has more money and incentive to build great content.  You can get all kinds of new material on the Internet.  You can even find troves of videos on YouTube that teach you to play and you can even watch people play to get a feel for the game.

Every year we go to GenCon and maybe Origins; the big game fairs.  We get to see the new stuff coming out and hang out in a community of people that all love gaming.  Its still a big nerd-fest but the attendance by “non-nerds" is off the charts.  More and more people know about it and some are actually jealous when I tell them we are going.  The kids love it and I love sharing that with them.

Its easier to let your geek flag fly now than it ever was for me growing up.  Even in a school of smart, often nerdy, kids it was hard to really let it fly.  I spent a lot of time as a kid hanging by myself because it was easier than being the socially awkward kid that got picked on.  Its different now.  I’m glad that my kids don’t need to work to hide who they are.

D&D with the kids

When I was a kid I loved AD&D.  I’m glad that the kids are now old enough to play and they asked to be able to play.

I started a group with my 3 oldest, a couple of their friends and a couple of parents.  We get together every other week to play.  It’s awesome. Everyone is having a good time and we just hang out, eat pizza and have a blast for a couple of hours.  They are really starting to get it and gradually working into actually role playing their characters.

As a kid someone else was always the DM.  Now its my turn.  Its way more fun than I had thought as a kid.  Having a bit of maturity and experience definitely helps.

We are running into a point in our campaign where we are going to get to choose a couple of different ways to go.  I can’t wait to see what they do next.

my 40s

When I turned 40 I wrote about all of the things that happened during my 30s.  It was a great way to look back on the decade.  So much happened; not the least of which was getting married and becoming a father.
As I turn 49 and look back over my 40s, there is arguably more that happened:

• became a father for the 4th time
• became an uncle 5 times
• ran a 1/2 marathon
• cycling
• rode 1000s of miles
• rode on the Indy 500 track
• started racing bikes
• wrecked my bike at 40mph and spent 18 months dealing with a single tiny broken bone
• stoped racing bikes
• had surgery 4 times for various sports related injuries
• started wearing bi-focals
• changed jobs a couple of times
• went to India
• was best man for my friend
• presented at a conference
• had multiple op-eds published
• became much more involved with the kids school
• became a scout leader
• became disillusioned  about the state of politics, then
• ran for office and learned a ton
• became an activist
• was offered a position on the board of a non-profit
• spoke at a protest
• knocked 1000s of doors for various causes
• became a precinct executive
• ran a voter registration drive
• marched in a bunch of parades
• started going to GenCon again
• started playing D&D with my kids
• sold a house and bought a new one
• went to Disney World twice
• got to give Chewbacca a bro-hug
• attended my 30 year high school reunion
• kids started moving from elementary school into their high school
• reconnected with a lot of old classmates and friends
• accepted that I need to deal with my depression and sought professional help

I think that’s a pretty impressive list and it doesn’t even represent everything.  There is still one year left in my 40s and I need to figure out what isn’t on my list...

Once more blogging

I’ve decided to start up my blog again, this time on another platform.  We will see how long it lasts this time.

State report cards

It’s that season again.  State report cards for our schools were released.  If you look at them, you would think that our children are learning nothing, all of our schools are failing and the end is nigh.  Anyone that has walked into one of our schools knows this is not the case.  So, how do we reconcile this difference?  The fact is, these report cards aren’t an accurate measure of our schools since they don’t measure all schools the same way.  Districts with low poverty, stable populations and low minority populations look better due to skewed benchmarks.  Private schools that are not required to take all students look better.  We don’t have a level playing field.

For many parents, this is all they have to go on.  When newspapers pick the story up and tell us the schools are failing us, it’s no wonder that people are looking to private schools, charters, or moving to a suburban district.  No parent wants to make a decision thinking the education for their child is going to be worse. But, if you have bad information, you can make misinformed choices for your child.

Just one example of many is “K-3 reading improvement”.  It is intended to measure how many children are “on track” for reading goals and how children that are “not on track” improve.  The problem with the metric is it doesn’t measure improvement accurately.  At the beginning of the year the number of children “not on track” are identified. At the end of the year, a percentage is calculated based on the difference between the count at the beginning and end of the year.  If you find more children that need help mid-year, you are still measured against the initial count.  The score doesn’t reflect children helped, only a simple number of students that are “not on track”. Even if the teachers are doing everything right by identifying students having trouble and helping them improve, they can still be scored as failing.  This is not the way to help parents make informed choices about which schools actually help their K-3 students.

These report cards also rely heavily on extensive testing.  The argument is we need to measure the performance of our students, and by extension, our teachers.  The schools spend valuable instruction time on testing.  It also encourages treating the test as the goal instead of the minimum necessary.  We want our students to learn the subject, not how to take a test.

The report card is not reflective of what makes a school effective.  We can’t reduce our students and schools to over-simplified numbers.  I want us to make decisions based on evidence, but how you measure things influences behavior.  If you have bad measures you incentivize the wrong behaviors.  This is true in business and it is true in education, but our schools aren’t a business.  We shouldn’t use practices from manufacturing such as defect rates and quality scores; children aren’t interchangeable widgets.  If a company gets a bad batch of raw materials, they can send it back or not use it.  Private and charter schools shouldn’t be rewarded for doing essentially the same with our children.

We have the power to influence these measures.  Contact your state legislators (http://ohiohouse.gov and http://ohiosenate.gov) and our State Board of Education (http://education.ohio.gov/State-Board/State-Board-Members). Defining good measures will require identifying information that is useful to parents and educators and only then developing metrics that accurately reflect what is going on in our schools.  Let’s remember that we need to do what is best for our children.  We need to look at the whole student, the learning environment and if we are guiding the student to a lifelong love of learning.

Sure, there are areas for improvement in our schools.  However, these report cards do not point to the real opportunities.  CPS has great schools, dedicated teachers and amazing children who are working hard every day. We can help them be better. Let's focus on that instead of a broken report card.