Talking to Rocks and Strangers: PART TWO

Hopefully, my last blog left you feeling all the feels and fuzzies.  Maybe this one will too... :) I mean...look at all this lush sunshine!

 The hour after my near nirvana-like moment on the Cumbrian rocks was painful! I had lost the motivation to talk to rocks, the view was deteriorating as the clouds rolled in and I was getting cold.  Very cold.  You know the one...when you're mega hot and sweat through your clothes (particularly your bra), then get cold and you've not got extra clothes to change into....It's the worst!  OK, not the worst.  It is "first world problems" kind of bad though...And you can get ill from it if you're not careful (as my father would say).  Anyway, I was thinking, "Crap, I've been climbing, crawling, sprawling up rocks for nearly three hours!" Slate rocks, granite rocks, limestone rocks, and there was this one rock that looked like those giant sand eels from everyone's favourite Kevin Bacon movie, "Tremors". Check out the pic on the left....and here's one from google so you get where I was coming from.  I imagined this badboy was jumping out of the green grass, going straight for my face:

 Anyway, I knew it was time for lunch if I was thinking that the rocks were fictitious sand eels....I was knackered and hungry.  I had climbed up 222 floors, nearly 2,500 feet or about 850 metres.  I had actually only hiked 4.2 miles, but most of it was UP HILL.  My goal was to complete the 11 miles horseshoe and the 2,900 foot elevation gain, but I was spent. I was having lucid dreams for red wine and olives on the beach in Spain....Margaritas and nachos in Arizona...and yes. I was even dreaming of a pork pie covered in brown sauce! I was again...anywhere but on a mountain in the middle of the Lake District.

I got out my down jacket to protect me from the howling wind and I off-loaded my peasant lunch of rice cakes and a sandwich on dried-out, week-old bread. Not what I had been dreaming about, but hey, I was hangry!!  Here is where I wrote this blog, nestled between the butt-cheek of two giant rocks.  And YES! People still do write things down on paper with ink pens! I am not sure how long I sat writing and eating, but I was content.  I would periodically look up at the passing clouds and the littering of bright white snow, nestled just like I was between other random rock butt-cheeks.  It was beautiful. The sound of nothing but wind flowing over the grass was actually very fulfilling and made me again, stop to appreciate the grandeur of where I was.  It was now when I had to stop writing - I couldn't read what I was writing anymore! My hands were freezing!!  And...it had started to rain.

The weather had turned to crap, misty and gray, windy and cold.  And I wanted nothing more than to sit in an old pub and drink a glass of red by an open fire.  I set off now in three layers of clothes, a hat and gloves....maybe I should have put those on sooner! You can never trust the sun in the UK; it has a very short shelf-life. Anyway, I set off very quickly - I wanted that booze! And according to my Fitbit *product placement*, I was going 2/3 faster going down, than when I was going up! 

Well chaps....even though the rain fell harder with every passing minute, I was so happy.  I was yet again taken away from the side of a hill.  Maybe it was the rain on the grass or soil, or maybe it was the rain cooling the sun-warmed, 420 million year old rocks....but the smell...THAT SMELL!!  It was breathtaking and I was home.  I was sat on the front steps with my parents and my dog, in my hometown of Bennington.  We were watching the rain fall down and the squirrels gather their last bits of food before scrambling into their nests to wait out the storm.  I was, in all reality, 4,154 miles from that spot on my front steps.  And even though I wasn't near enough to my parents to hug them, it was enough for me to feel safe and happy.  I walked the last three miles in a happy daze with a giant smile on my face.  As much as I miss my family and my home, I know that I can summon feelings of comfort and love through nature.  And if mother nature has the power to take us away from reality, set us on an uplifting, safe path, we should be doing everything to protect her. xx

Talking to Rocks and Strangers: Part ONE

So....long time, no see. I really can't say I'm sorry. Cos if I said I was sorry about not writing, that would mean that I am sorry for feeling better....and that, sir, is not the case! I am not sorry for feeling mentally stable again! I am not sorry for fewer temper tantrums! And I am certainly not sorry for the lack of tears. So...sorry, not sorry. :)

Recently, I went for a hike in the Lake District.  For those of you unfamiliar with said part of England, please please please check it out. It's such a magical place. Mountains, lakes, green rolling hills, fuzzy cows (which we'll talk about later), 500 year old farm houses, sheep and cute baby lambs, 500 year old pubs, thousands of trails, and really really nice people. Everyone that lives there and visits there have one thing in common: a love of the great outdoors. It'd be hard to NOT have something in common with the person sat next to you at the pub, lemme tell you what!  Enter as strangers, leave as friends!  It feels homely and I can't get enough of the place. In fact, this is my second visit this year. I've recently bought a book of the top 10 ridge walks in the Lake District and before 2018 rolls around, I promise I will have completed them all (well, attempted to...). Anyway...

When I set off from Yorkshire, the weather wasn't great, but it wasn't raining.  By the time I got to the M6 (about 40 mins from my destination), the sun came out! Yee-haw! I was overjoyed!  Even in the bleakest mist and rain, the Lakes is a fantastic place, but IN SUNSHINE?!?! It's heaven on Earth!  I was so pleased with this rarity that I set off from the hostel with a spring in my step the size of Texas; I could not stop smiling.  Every person I passed had to endure this madness; I must've looked mental.  OH WELL, CHAPS! This rarely happens: 1) I rarely get time off to go to the Lakes on a weekday and 2) It's fricking sunny outside!  So, I got to Ambleside before noon and easily found the start of Hike Number 1 from the aforementioned book of Hikes: The Fairfield Horseshoe.  And so it began...the climb that could! I was going uphill from the moment "go!' and it was (dare I say it) HOT out! Like sweat-dripping-between-your-tits-and-also-into-your-eyes kinda hot.  And for my Arizona friends, no.  You're right.  It wasn't like hiking Camelback in Apr/May/June/July/Aug/Sept/Oct/Nov kind of hot...It was more like hiking South Mountain in December.  But I cannot say this enough....Sunshine and warmth are very rare in the North of England....I'm sure the sun only has a 5 day contract for this part of the island. So, we've got 4 days left in 2017....

Right, back to the hike.  Wait, no.  That's something I have always wondered about over here.  Why do the UK folk call hiking, "walking"?  I sure as shit wasn't just "walking" the other day up on that mountain! My piss-wrapped sports bra proved it....Ok, back to it.  As I went along, about 30 minutes in, I saw these shaggy, fuzzy, red-headed cows with long horns.  And I do mean LONG.  Kinda scared me....Ok, not kinda. Really scared me! I've been scared of cows ever since 2013 when I had a run in with some hungry dairy cows on a hike in Leeds; they all charged at me until I found myself climbing up a flipping high tension power line.  I stayed up there for about 30 minutes, until they realized I wasn't the one with the feed. So yeah, cows with massive horns scare me.  These fuzzy cows with red hair (apparently we have the same hairdresser), are known as Highland Cows and can weigh up to 1800 lbs (800kgs)!  Now, I know I have gained a bit of weight since moving to the home of the Pork Pie, but c'mon! I didn't gain enough weight to be brave enough to walk alongside one of these horned beasts! Not after the dairy cow/power line incident! As I cowardly walked as close as humanly possible to the dry stone wall marking the edge of the field, pulse raised, fight or flight kicking in....a very petite woman of about 5'1" popped over the crest of the hill, probably weighing no more that 100 lbs soaking wet. What did she do?? Walked straight up to the cow and tried to get a cuddle. I stopped "trying to take a really edgy picture" of the cows from the perspective of nearly the other side of the field when I saw this....I figured I was safe. My pulse calmed down but I still felt the need to speed walk to the next section of the hike, just in case.

About another 30 minutes had passed since I saw the cow-whisperer and I passed a couple that made me giggle.  The "Insta" couple, I have come to call them. Him, with is chiselled physique and Hugh Jackman Henley top (with all three buttons undone to show a bit of his gym gainz), her with her big fake boobies and perfectly straightened hair...each with a stereotypical dog by their side...he had a German Shepard and she had some little Terrier of sorts. I did the anti-British thing and said hi to them...He replied with a very British, "al'rite?".  Which I've mistakenly taken as a lazy way of saying, "Are you all right?" ....So I answered! "Yes, I'm good, thanks. How are you guys?"....No reply.  Well, at least not one with words.  He just laughed.  I sometimes forget that "al'rite?" is just the Northern way of saying hello.  No one ever answers....whoops. Silly American!  I know I said that people were nice in the Lakes....well, I'm sure these two are perfectly nice, I just threw them off guard by actually speaking to them on the side of a mountain!

For the next hour and a half, I didn't see anyone else on the trail.  And the trail was relentless - lots of scree, crags and pikes.  I was growing weary....So, I resorted to talking to rocks to keep myself going - no joke. My train of thought went like this....How lucky am I to be out in the sun? How lucky am I to have a car to drive me to the beautiful Lakes?  How lucky am I to have strong legs to carry me across these rocks up this mountain?  Huh, these rocks. They must be really old...."Hey mate, al'rite?", I said to a particularly poignant one that jutted out sideways from the Earth, proudly showing off all of its layers (and now I know he's not meant to answer. That's not what they do 'round these parts).  "How old are you?...Millions of years old?  Is that right?"....I was questioning from how deep within the Earth's core each one had come. I wondered how long each one been basking in the sun and rain in their own little spots in Cumbria?  Do they like it when they are stepped on? Do they feel fulfilled when that happens, or does it annoy them?....Well, I didn't get a single response.  I did however, get a very large feeling of insignificance.  And I love that feeling.  It's hard to describe....But I'll try....

Think about this, I've been alive for 34 years, the rocks I was walking on have existed in their little Cumbrian homes for about 420 million years.....My time on earth is 0.00000008095 of the lifetime of those rocks.  Mathematically insignificant.  Or to put it another way, I would have to live my life 12,352,941 times to catch up.....It makes me almost feel the need to bow down and worship those rocks and that land for staying put and never giving in to what the world throws at it; for millions of years.  Does that make sense?  It also gives me strength to try to be as unwavering as those rocks and that land....Got a cold in the dead of winter?  BAH!  How about a seeing a few ice ages come and go?  Traffic jam on the way to work?  HUH, volcanoes erupting all around you....It sounds really crazy, but I don't know....being outside in the bosom of our Earth is powerful.  Almost too powerful to put into words.  It makes this materialistic life laughable and it oftentimes saves me from myself.  Close your eyes and the wind is the wind, no matter what part of the world you are in.  The sun is the sun, and the stars shine the same no matter your latitude or longitude.

When I was up on that mountain, sweating my tits off in the sun, standing on a 420 million year old rock.....I was home.

Cognitive Dissonance = Tractor Pull of Emotions

Good Afternoon and Happy Friday, folks.

I hope you guys had a good week.  But before I write about  my basic life....Mr Trump - what a joke. I'm gonna quote someone very close to me, whom is unfortunately correct so far...."Trump's gonna run this country like a fucking reality TV show for us all to see." And again, it's unfortunate that mystery person said this as an argument in support of the giant cheeto....In other news, I've had a moment of genius....I think....

When I went out on Saturday night and thought that everyone was my mate (see last blog on HFF, which I confirmed with my Doc today AS A REAL THING!)...I actually engaged my thinky-piece for something useful. Bear with me....(and it is bear because the phrase comes from the word forbearance)

So here I am, pranging out like a mentalist; brain on overload thinking I know everyone and need to try to figure out from whence I know them....And my good friend's like, "Are you OK?".  I lied.  How was I supposed to explain I felt suffocated by the faces of the crowd?  Like a puppy sat in one of those glass kennels in the mall with every man, woman and child banging on the glass as they walked by?  She'd probably think I was losing it!  Anyway, more about this friend of mine.  I became friends with her waaaay too late in my time on this planet - she's a superstar and we get on like a house on fire. We were brought together in a strange way, but it's a connection that only we will ever know.  And I like that.

Anyway, we went to this night in Leeds that, as basic bitch as it sounds, was for charity.  HAHA, laugh all you want, but I'm fully on board....It's a charity for kids in Leeds whom can't really hack it in mainstream education (Those are the kids I've been blogging about, ya know. The ones that throw tables and act like crazies when asked to do simple instructions?!). This charity is called MAP, Music and Arts Production. It offers BTEC qualifications to pupils in media design, production and art....But more important than qualifications, I reckon it gives those kids a place to feel comfortable in their own skin. It gives them a place where who they are is enough, a place where they don't have to conform to the traditional rules of the school system. I wonder, could that be an answer to where I might find myself? Be more comfortable in my own skin?  Perhaps I am better suited to teach outside of the mainstream system.  Maybe that's why I feel this tractor pull of emotions all the time...I'm not focusing my work (hence my time) in the right place or with the right people; maybe I can use this cognitive dissonance as a motivator to make a positive change in my life.

I think I'm going to make some inquiries....and bake a cake.

Hyperfamiliarity??

Good day, folks.

As with anything in life, we try to do our best...well, most of us do. I am constantly striving to be good at stuff, just like the good little basic bitch I am.  That's normal, right?  Good at (vegan) cooking, baking, being a girlfriend, being fit and healthy, being a daughter, a friend, and yes....a teacher.  But when does all the stress of trying your best all the time finally get to you?  Some might say that being "yourself" is enough.  Is that where I am going wrong? Do I have an idea of "self"?  Am I not happy in my own skin?  Is that why I'm always trying hard to please? Is that why I am here, burnt out and off work?  Probably.  Help, send backup!  I'm suffering from Vegan, Basic Bitch-itus! All I can do is complain about my always warm, never hungry, first-world life!  Save me!  I need yoga, an ego boost and a pumpkin spice latte--STAT!

I promised I would write a positive note next....So here's something kinda funny, kinda weird, and pretty interesting....


Have you ever been out in the crowds and thought that everyone you looked at looked familiar?  Well I had that on Saturday night when I was out for a tipple. And no! It wasn't the booze, I was fairly sober!  And no, I wasn't tripping out!  I was fine, having a great time with a great friend....But, I had to do some digging because the feeling of knowing most of the crowd that night was overwhelming! I was actually freaking out!  I even went home early!

So, I have had a look online (again, using the internet for good!), and I have stumbled upon a journal entry from a peer-reviewed journal called Neurology.  This particular article is about case studies on HFF, hyperfamiliarity for faces. "The hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF) syndrome is a disorder in which unfamiliar people or faces appear familiar", Neurology. 2010 Mar 23; 74(12): 970–974.  Well, I was shocked to find out about one poor chap in particular; he was a seemingly normal bloke, no neurological disorders, no risk factors for epilepsy, then bang! Had a seizure and starting thinking everyone was his bloody mate! I suppose there are worse outcomes....Anyway, what's kinda scary is that in the lead-up to his seizure, he was having anxiety attacks (Me!), increased sadness (Me, just ask my BF!), inability to focus (Could be ADD...), and was crap at multitasking....Eeeerrrmmmm, hello! That's me, me, me!! I've been in that boat, buddy!  I'm the fucking captain of that shipwreck!  We can get through this together! We will eventually make all the familiar faces our friends - together!....All joking aside, I'm not 100% sure what that little episode was or if it's even the same thing this journal is talking about, but all I know is it was fucking weird.  Maybe I'm spending too much time inside and alone.....What a saddo.....Anyway, I'm a bit pissed off that the article doesn't say what happens next for us hyperfamiliarity sufferers. Maybe I should start a support group, meet up at the Bramley Park and try to make friends with everyone we already think we know..... PS--I hope this doesn't mean I've had or will have a seizure....yeeps. :-(

Until next time,
Sx

Let's Try It Again...

Hear ye, hear ye....

It's Sunday.

Sunday Funday to some; days where you go daytime drinking in a pub with your friends after having done a good ol' hike in the countryside. Or days where you chill by the beach/pool and finish off your relaxing weekend with a margarita at sunset.  For teachers, it's Sunday "Fuck-my-life-I-have-the-fear-of-Christ-inside-me-and-my-to-do-list-isn't-done" Doomsday.  My fellow teacher friends, you know the feeling.  The dread.  The tummy upset.  The lack of sleep. The pile of meaningless marking that you probably thought about all weekend but didn't do because, "the weekend is your time, dammit"....We try our hardest to partition work and home, we really do. It's just that our brains don't every really shut off when it comes to work. There's too much pressure.  Let me lay it down to you: if we don't keep on top of our work, doesn't matter what day of the week or year it is, we may screw something very serious up. Could be, we miss a meeting or deadline--meh.  Not so bad....We could even fall so behind we don't get a raise.....What's even scarier....if we royally cock up, we could mess up the education of hundreds of pupils. Then we've got major issues; from the school, the kids, the families of the kids, the city council, etc...Someone famous once wrote a song about pressure....

Anyway, last weekend I found a journal that I was writing in back in 2010. There are some GEMS in there, people!  Basic bitch alert!!  I found tearful notes about a boy and if he actually, really loves me (gag me with a spoon!)....Brilliant little notes I wrote to my future self about what was going on in my life, what I was hoping for in my future and mostly....to-do lists! I have always been a person who wants to be in control....Remember - I'm the biggest bossy cow you'll ever meet. (If you don't get that, read my other blogs.)  Anyway, these to-do lists from 2010, well, they had PRACTICAL SHIT IN THEM. Things about ME. Things that I needed to do to make MY LIFE better. Not crap that I needed to do because the Department for Education says these things are what's best for a child in secondary school. Not crap that I will do and not a single person will give a shit about. Not crap that I might see a return for.  Previously, I would have stuff like.... "mop the kitchen" or "go to the gym" on my to-do list! Very practical things! Never would like have a to-do list solely for getting things done for a job - for someone else.  And yes, I had a fucking job!  I had lists of things to do that improved MY life, made ME feel better, and yes. I am sounding very selfish. But I'm sick. Sick of living for the holidays, giving up my weekends, my evenings, my free time for kids that can't even be bothered to put their phones away, let alone try to learn maths.  I especially am tired of doing jobs last minute for people because they are too unorganised to give me due notice. But let me re-think that last sentence....The people I am doing things last minute for are just as fucking busy as me.  They are bogged down with the same set of soul-destroying tasks, so is it really their fault? I say no. It's the system. And I am bleeding sick of it. I'm going back to Sunday Funday and daytime boozing. Meet y'all there.

I wanted to write about something positive today, I promise! I sat down with the best intentions. Let's try it again, as the New Kids on the Block would say...

Peace on you.

If you can't beat them, join them...

Howdy Doody, y'all.

So, I've been reading more scientific articles online, for fear that Trumpfuck might take down all the educational sites in the whole of the internet before we can say "Make America Hate Again"....two things: 1) LSD stays in your serotonin receptors for 12-18 hours even though it is only recognisable in your blood for up to one hour after taking it! Mental. It gets stuck on the side of each receptor, basically lingering in there for hours like a 1990s Cranberries pop single! I mean, I didn't read this because I'm thinking about doing it...I'm Velcro-ed into the basic bitch constructs of this meagre dimension, and I'm way too fucking scared of that shit. Waaaay too scared. The other article the boy showed me was 2) Scientists have figured out how to transform hydrogen into metal. No. Fucking. Way. This could save the fucking planet, people. It could also devastate the steel industry. But overall, what a good day yesterday was for science, right?!

Hence my light-bulb moment of the day....

Whilst driving this morning in the cold, frosty morning fog...I thought: let's use the internet to educate not to numb the brains of future generations!! Just like I use it for!....You're all sat there going, "Derrrr, that's what I said, like, 5 years ago." And of course, that is absolutely the answer....but how do we do it with all the shite out there?? Ya know, sexual predators named Heather who are really 63 year old perverts called Frank, adverts for black magic pore masks (which I'm totally going to buy!), vloggers and tweeting fucktards like the Kardasians....How do we bypass the crap?!  But the even bigger snag is, ok...let's say we do use the internet/technology to educate, which a lot of great practitioners already do....how do we get young people to "buy in"?  How can I, a corn-fed, middle class, white chick from Nebraska, get masses of British-born, multi-cultural teenagers from all over the world to want to use the internet to promote good, to promote intellectual growth?  How can I make them understand that using the internet to educate yourself on worldly issues is useful for their lives?  How do I make them see that reading an article on LSD may one day help them integrate better into a social situation or make them sound really smart whilst they're blogging?  Maybe I tell them it could help you get really good a pub quizzes, because that's probably the only form of mental stimulation most of them will have in their unpersuadable, BREXIT lives.  I haven't a clue.....But, we know what we need to do....it's just never going to work unless this generation of young people see a need for it and "buy in".

So, what I'm really facing at school is this: children obsessed with their phones, the internet, gaming, and celebrities, living their lives "always on" and through an app...And when I'm challenging their behaviour (usually for disobeying the simplest of rules: put your phone away), they are seeing it as an attack on their lives. Because it's all they know.  They are taking it personally. You'd think that I trapped their pet hamster in an Asda bag and suffocated it to death!  This is then having a spiral down effect and they are losing the ability to be respectful....And never-mind being respectful, they struggle to be in most social situations and have conversations with people not of the same age as them! The relationships I'm trying to form with these young people do not stick. We have some good days, but mostly really bad days. Tables being flipped over, screaming, kicking in doors, and lots and lots of "fuck you" s being tossed around. Our relationships have life spans much like their attention spans.

There's loads of research out there about measuring the closeness of relationships, the different realms or levels of friendships people have in this day and age, as well as work done to categorise the types of internet users. Perhaps it's within research like this I can find my answers--Cos I know it ain't at the workplace!!  Everyone keeps saying to me at work, "Oh, it [the children's behaviour] doesn't even faze me anymore" or I'm hearing this, "Like water off a duck's back" and "If you can't beat them, join them."  I feel that statements like these make the teachers part of the problem; allowing young people to suck at holding real life conversations, not making them face consequences for misbehaving, and it's this complacency that's making me want to quit being a teacher...

I'm off to use the internet to make myself understand what the fuck is going on with this generation.

Happy Friday, bitches.

**Jesus Christ on a bike! I just tried to get a pic of water off a duck's back, thinking I'd get only pics of a duck....NOPE, just found out that a drag queen has tagged that as her bloody motto, hasn't she!! She's everywhere. The internet is fucking insane.

Chronic Complainer?

Morning, you lot.

Here's how I feel today:

Not sure what it is, but there's a bug inside me. Sucking the life out of me. Making me even more cynical and contemptuous. I actually had a really nice night last night; got a head and neck massage and then had friends over for dinner. I should be buzzing. But I'm feeling worse. I did all those things middle class people do - I made a nice vegan meal, showed my mates around my new house (they especially liked my office), we drank wine and bitched about our lives. Classic female, PMS-y behaviours. I had a chance to vent, to clear my thinky-space. But now, my head's in a thicker, much more London-like fog. The kind of fog that causes planes to reroute and land someplace sunny.....maybe that's it! Maybe I need to just get away from my rat race for a bit! Spain? Italy? France? I'll drink red wine until my lips become purple and gout sets in.

But before I do that, let's get down to it: you know that creepy video of the children "dancing" and dying off stage one-by-one? This is what I think is wrong with my career: kids are disappearing. I don't teach children anymore. I teach little mini-adult robots that try very hard to copy everything they see on youtube, twitter, insta-I-don't-give-a-fuck-gram. Their little souls aren't being fed by real stories of the past, they aren't being shown by their families how to appropriately put on makeup or how to cook a good meal.  They aren't playing on swing sets and eating mud pies with their friends.....Some stranger on the internet is showing them how to contour their faces and get to the next level on Gears of War.  Parents are sitting back and letting their kids grow up by "googling" it.  Look around! How many parents do you see on the bus or train or plane (on a phone) with kids on a tablet or smart phone or some kind of electronic device?  I once went to a fancy restaurant in Chamonix, France, right...I'm talking $130 for a meal for two type of nice.....and there was a family of four at the table next to me. THEY WERE ALL ON A TABLET. Every single one of them! I watched for nearly a half an hour in disgust. They played and tweeted whilst they ate, drank, etc. Less then 10 words shared amongst them!  I almost mounted my high horse, galloped over there and physically shook the shit out of those parents. That's no way to live. But alas, that's how most do.

That type of home life (or worse) is why I catch kids on snapchat or whatever the fuck it is they love wasting their lives on during EVERY lesson of EVERYDAY.  The generation of young people I teach are obsessed with being "plugged in" and having an "always on" feature. They probably don't know how to talk to their families and/or hate them and sit on their phones in their rooms all night, eat cheetos and drink vimto for dinner.  It's all they know.  That is what they love.  They probably can't make and/or keep friends in real life; their self-esteem is too low to be nice to themselves and others.  Their parents are blissfully unaware that they are creating anti-social, future mass-murderers. You cannot tell me that they haven't become dependent on their phones and social media.  You cannot tell me this isn't having an effect on their attention spans and their attitudes toward school.

 And here I am....with my "holier than thou" attitude about what should and shouldn't feature in a child's life, my demanding classroom routines, and bossy cow attitude toward learning....What's annoying is that I am the mad one here; I am the one telling them they don't need their phones, that what they are seeing is all bullshit, that they aren't experiencing real life.  I am telling these young people, most of whom are from very broken homes, that what they know, what they love, isn't necessary for life. But it is their life.  I'm fighting a losing battle against this generation.  It's like trying to climb K2 in a pair of M&S patent leather high heels.

Yours Truly,

Chronic Complainer