Going Out In Style

Lately I've been having an issue with motivation. It's getting colder here in Massachusetts, and the colder it gets, the less I want to get out from under my warm blankets in the morning. Whether it's going to work or school, I find that a little bit of music to pump me up gives me the boost that I need to start my day and keep it going for the duration. Since I'm in Boston, it seems only fitting that I go for one of my favorite bands of all time: The Dropkick Murphys.

Their album Going Out in Style is easily their best album so far. It's energetic, motivating, and at the risk or over using a word that has invaded our vernacular in recent years: it's pretty damn EPIC. There isn't a bad song on the whole album. From the rowdy, vengeance-fueled "Hang 'em High" to the slow and sweet "1953" this album has kept me going for weeks, maybe even months. It's not only my favorite album by DKM, it's one of my favorite albums of all time, and I can't wait for Signed and Sealed in Blood to be released this January. 

Kiss Me I'm Irish

I've always said I was Irish. I never knew it for certain, but in lieu of any other cultural identity, Irish seemed the most likely for me. Hale is a surname that originates from the British Isles, with roots in Celtic tradition. I have red hair in my beard, alluding to a recessive gene to a lost hair color that is dominant in Irish families. I have anger issues that I've been suppressing since childhood. And last but certainly not least, I like my whiskey. It all made sense to me, but when it came right down to it, I wasn't sure. My family has been here since America were British Colonies, and I have not hard evidence to illuminate my cultural lineage, and in 300 years, it's likely that I really do have a little of everything. As such I always just claimed to be an American of European descent. But when I moved to Boston and started work at an Irish Pub, that all changed.

One of my coworkers, himself a Boston Irish, immediately recognized me as being Irish based on my looks and actions. I was amazed. And kind of ecstatic. Here I'd had assumptions based on my heritage that were confirmed by a nearly complete stranger. I suddenly felt as if everything fell into place and I could embrace my issues rather than repress them further. I'm not saying that I'm going to go start a brawl or carry around a knife in my pocket just because I got recognized as Irish by a Bostonian. Nor am I going to start spending all my tips on whiskey and beer. But I feel like I am becoming more aware of myself and who I really am and I'm feeling better for it. I still feel weird saying I'm Irish out loud. I think that I fit into a plethora of categories in our American culture and claiming just one isn't fair to me or my family's history. My grandpa came from Missouri and played blue grass music. I was born in the South. I got told by my manager that I would fit right in at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert when having a conversation about how quickly some of the other bouncers would get jumped by the Skynyrd crowd.

I guess what I'm saying is that working at the Lansdowne Pub has helped me realize some things about myself and embrace more of who I am. When I come back to California I will be a stronger, harder, more confident person. I may get in some fights along the way. I will probably make some bad life choices. But I won't regret them. I love my job, and I love the guys I work with. I sent Veterans' Day with a Marine that works with me. I get bought drinks by my managers. I have long talks with the bouncers where we swap stories for hours while it's slow. It's a slow process, but I'm embracing my life here in Boston, and it's going to change me for the better.

October Update

It's been almost a month since my last post. Life got a little bit busy, both in my personal life and my academic life. But I've had a productive yet frustrating day today so I thought I would sit down for a little while and write an update about my life.

Currently my life is busy, but mostly good. My work study may be ending for the semester, or I may be able to keep working until my whole year's worth of funding is exhausted. I hope the latter is true, because it would be nice to have that little extra to help me survive until my Spring semester financial aid check, which SHOULD be significantly more than the $16 I received this semester. I don't have the ridiculous new student fees or health insurance fee to pay, so that should be quite a significant chunk of change to help me survive. I just have to get there. But I'm not too worried, between tips and saying yes to everything my bosses at the pub ask of me, I should be able to save the money necessary for two months of rent. I just can't afford pizza or beer or whiskey anymore (which I REALLY want some whiskey....it's Boston, after all). Also, Math is giving me a really hard time. I was understanding the reasoning before we started using spread sheets, and now I feel like I can only get the correct result half the time, and never when I'm outside of the class room. It's something that I want to be somewhat skilled at because it's useful reasoning that I can use when looking at lists and charts when studying history. The final down side to my life as it stands right now is that I'm constantly lonely. I'm beginning to make friends, but right now they are slightly more than acquaintances, and I'm not sure which ones will survive past this semester. I miss being in a band, and I miss partying with my friends. I miss feeling loved and welcome wherever I went. I know that this loneliness will fade in time, likely by the middle of next semester, but it's currently something I have to deal with on a virtual daily basis. But lately I have been having my days where I look out the window and I know that there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

The Boston Harbor Islands are gorgeous in the fall. Reds, yellows, oranges, browns.....the colors are splendid. The air is crisp and cool and the sunsets are magnificent. I look out the window or stand outside and look over the horizon to see all the colors and I know that I made the right choice and I feel as if I never want to leave New England. The history, the weather, the colors....I love everything this region has to offer.  I could make a life here eventually, but it'll take time and money. Mostly it will take friends and mobility. There's only so far I can go by T or commuter rail and I don't really want to buy a car at the moment. I've been losing a lot of weight and I want to keep it down. Having a car would cause all of that progress to begin reversing and I'm not comfortable with that idea.

I'm getting ahead of myself. I've only been in Boston for three and a half months. I'm at the transition between leaving my old life behind and fully embracing my new home. There's a lot out of this experience that I want and I'm not going to go back to California until I'm satisfied with the idea that I've gotten as much as I could out of the East Coast. I met with my advisor today and discussed my options for graduating with honors, travelling abroad, and grad school requirements. I am more or less satisfied with my course schedule for next semester, though it will again be demanding. Such is the life of a history major. As long as I pass math this semester I will be on track for a splendid GPA and I can begin the application process for my Semester at Sea, in which I will circumnavigate the world crossing both the International Dateline AND the Equator, visit five continents and twelve countries, travel overland from Yokohama to Kobe, Japan and Shanghai to Hong Kong, China. I have a lot of grand experiences ahead of me and I can't wait to live them. My life and plans will be in constant process for a while, so I can't tell with much certainty if or when I'll come back for good. But I will always visit the ones I love and I look forward to seeing the ones that love me come to visit me as well.

I'm now running out of things to talk about so I'm going to end by posting what my current desired schedule for next semester is, along with a current picture of me looking awesome.

English 262G - The Art of Literature
History 395   - The History of Boston
History 396   - America's Favorite Passtime: the History of Baseball
History 361L - The History of Modern China

I have to choose one more course, but it depends on a number of factors that have yet to be determined.

I have yet to weigh myself, but those are the smallest pants I've been able to wear in a decade

Living Physically and Mentally in Boston

Today has been amazing. My mind is bursting with ideas for this post. I realize that my last post sounded somewhat defeatist and I was ready to come back to California. The financial strains were weighing heavily on me, and the fact that I had two jobs but no place to live was almost too much to handle. But now that I have a roof over my head and my financial aid has been reevaluated I am in a much better position to think analytically and make the most of my education. I came to Boston for a reason. I got here early enough so that  I could handle the struggles of finding work and a place to live before school started, and that paid off, though I'm finding it difficult to eat at the moment, but in a few months, I should be okay. I owe this attitude today to a friend of mine who warned me not to live physically in Boston but mentally in Arcata because such a mentality would be severely detrimental to the productivity of my pursuit of history. After I heard her say that, I realized that I was indeed leaving much of myself in Arcata, anticipating the day I could go back to California rather than enjoying the days I have here in Boston, the city of my dreams. Taking her advice to heart, I spent most of that evening studying. I hit the math book and didn't stop until all my problems were done. When I finished, I read as much of the required readings for the next day as I could until I realized that I would only get about 3 hours of sleep before having to wake up to go to school. But this didn't discourage me. I have been sacrificing my studies in order to try and get enough sleep, but I realized that this was flawed logic. The only time I should be worried about getting enough sleep is on the weekends when I work late at the Pub and have plenty of time afterwards to do homework.

So I stayed up late to do my homework. And it felt good.

For the first time this semester I felt accomplished in my studies. I didn't feel like there was no way I could keep up with my studies and still make the money I needed to live while getting enough sleep. I realized rather casually that I just needed to cut back on sleep. Homework is more important. How many college students can say that they got a full eight hours of sleep every night the entire time they were in school? I dare you to give me even one. Staying up late and sleeping little are a necessary part of a college student's life, especially one who is putting himself through school. I felt good about myself. I woke up reciting passages from the book I read three hours before. My subconscious mind was working and I was learning even in my dreams and I loved this feeling. Sleep is nothing compared to the feeling of accomplishment that comes with actually completing as much homework as possible.

So I went to school tired but vitalized at the same time. I would stop living mentally in Arcata and focus my life and energies here in Boston. I'm here to learn about history and cultures and humanity and I'm not leaving until I do. Today was the perfect first day for my new mindset. It started off with some interesting history, I learned a little bit about math, then more history and the transition of humans from hunter-gatherers to sedentary agricultural communities and the importance of the command of fire to the survival of a tribe. One of the books I read last night is called Growing Up in the People's Republic and it's written my one of my college professors. It's a conversation between her and a colleague about their experiences growing up in the Generation of Mao's Communist China. Except for the fact that I had to sleep, I couldn't put the book down. It was captivating and helped me understand a lot about the mindsets of people of the time, as well as some unknown links between how a family conducts their home life and the development of independent thought. In my class we discussed this book a lot and next Tuesday we get to meet the author in person and have a class discussion with her about the book. I gained so much insight into why Chinese think and act the way they do and I would recommend this book to anyone. This course was the first of my really stimulating discussions today, but not my last.

Every Tuesday and Thursday evening I have a Native American Women Studies course in which the professor never uses the chalk board. It is a lecture/discussion only class with some videos and we have to take notes ourselves. Today very few notes were taken as the entire class room was involved deeply in the discussion at hand that covered many topics from the importance of ethnic studies as a lense through which to study history to the impact film has on enforcing and breaking stereotypes and influencing the thoughts and actions of the culture. My professor even said that in the ten years she's been teaching at UMass Boston, this was the best class session she's ever had. We were so engrossed in the conversation that we ran out of time too soon, but we did get to see one video that I have posted below: the first Native American to ever appear on a major TV entertainment show.

After class, I had a long discussion about a variety of topics with two of my class mates that was one of the best conversations I've had since arriving in Boston over two months ago. It helped me look at the world in a new light and I've realized some more things about life that I want to share, especially with my friends that are or want to be teachers. I am more determined than ever to teach and being at UMass Boston is giving me so much insight into the problems of the education system and ways in which it actually can be fixed on a classroom level by teachers willing to do so. I'm so stoked about life and teaching and learning that I can't wait to do homework!

Life Lessons Learned In Boston

I know that I just wrote recently, but I'm at an impasse that has provoked considerable thought during the last few days. I'm definitely soul searching as I wander the streets of this magnificent city trying to figure out what to do. Planning a course of action is made harder by the fact that I don't get off work until 3pm, and most things close at either 4 our 5pm, making it nearly impossible to get things done in an orderly fashion. It's disconcerting to know that there is the possibility that my education at UMass Boston will be over before it has had a chance to get off the ground. I need a place. That is priority one. But UMass Boston requires $1500 from me in about 8 days. If I didn't eat for two weeks and saved every penny that I had in an effort to meet this goal, I still wouldn't make it. I attempted to go to the Burser's Office today in an effort to find out what can be done about the fee and how I can pay it without getting charged. That proved a waste of energy as they closed at 4, the same time I got off the bust in front of the school. As I sat out in the lawn reflecting on this frustrating occurrence I realized that it was reasons such as this that had me fleeing so quickly from Humboldt County in the first place. Though not financial issues, the problems I had in Humboldt County had more to do with the individuals in charge. I was misinformed. I was made to run around in circles to try and find someone who knew something. Many times I was met with polite faces, but ignorant people. It was their  fault for not knowing how to do their jobs, and I was just a victim, but it was human error, and as humans, we all err.

You can't run away from your problems. The same problems will take on new shapes and follow you wherever you go. Running doesn't do any good. You have to take a stand, and face them head on, preferably on familiar ground. I realize now that I ran from Humboldt because I was tired, and I needed to see something new. I just had to get out for a while. I needed a vacation for vacation's sake. No band trips, no school. Just a trip for me. If I had known that, I would have asked for some friends to come along. But I didn't know that. Instead, I thought that my problems with school were because of the mistakes I made in California. I believed, honestly, but falsely, as it turns out, that those problems would stay in California when I came to Boston.

I have come to learn that those problems are at every school in every State in this Union. It doesn't matter if I'm going to school in Boston, Massachusetts or Arcata, California, I will meet with the same brand of incompetence, rudeness, erroneous administrating at both institutions. The difference is that I will pay twice as much to do it out of state. Boston is amazing. I will say it in every blog that I write because it needs to be known that I love this city more than anywhere I've ever been. But the people make the place. And Bostonians are some of the rudest people I've met. The most polite and helpful person I've met in the administration is from California. I had to see this place, and live here and work here and be more than a tourist here to truly understand all of this. I needed this experience because the school system is not designed to help students succeed as most schools would have you believe. And it is not confined to the States themselves, as some would think. It is a nationwide issue that takes educated people to figure out a way to fix it. People who have been through it. Who have seen it. Who have experienced the injustice of it. I've had people tell me that there's no future in academia, that there's no money to it. Bullshit. We can be the change we want to see in the world. By getting our degrees, and going into the administration, where the money is going, and donating portions of our too big to use ourselves paychecks, we can make a change. I will make that change. I will be that change.

I'm coming home guys. I don't know when. It could be in five days, five weeks, or five months. But I'm coming home to finish what I started and show the State of California that it's not going to chase me off because of it's bullshit. Then someday I'm coming back to Massachusetts and showing it that it's not going to fuck me over anymore. I will get my degree, and I will figure out how to fix our lopsided education, one state at a time.



Ahem. 

I realize now that I should wait until I calm down and proofread before publishing future blogs. After reading this one, I realize that it takes away and blemishes the image that I was running toward a dream and replaces it with one where I'm running from problems. That wasn't entirely my intent. Boston is my dream. I love this city, and I want to live near it someday. But it's expensive. I can't afford to go to school here, or live here right now. By getting an education, I'll be able to go to grad school, get a better paying job and will be able to afford to live in Boston without worrying about where I'm going to get $1500 in eight days. I am not giving up on this dream. Far from it. In my desperation and depression, I prattled on about running away. My point was more along the lines of problems being everywhere and the only way to get away from them is to deal with them. I do believe our education needs fixing. And all these problems I'm facing are preparing me for the challenges ahead. That last part of what I wrote before this addendum is true and from the heart. But I wasn't running from problems. I was running to a dream. A dream that I know I am unable to sustain financially. Unless something changes soon, I will be returning in January to take Math and stop trying to be the individual and be part of the mass so I can be individual when it matters. I hope now everything is clear. I'm not giving up my dream, I just can't afford it right now. I will be able to afford it by going back to California and paying 1/3 of the tuition I'd pay here, worrying only about poor advising and financial aid not giving me enough, but not turning me upside down and shaking out my pockets, either.

Reality Sinks In, But the Dream Doesn't Die

Well, my friends, I have come to a very important, but not discouraging, realization. I have been in Boston for over a month. I have a job, I have classes. I have made a friend, though I am still homeless. I have experienced Boston in a more intimate way that would not have been possible by a mere tourist trip. I have lived here, I have worked here, I will attend school here. I am rich in experience and covered in glory and a wealth of knowledge of one of the most historical cities this country has to offer.

But I'm poor as fuck.

I thought that by being 25 and financially independent, and being out of state (and thereby having a higher need, meaning more money) that I would be able to survive in Boston without much of a problem.

I was wrong.

The housing market is gruesome. The rent is 400-600 on the low end, and it only gets higher. Utilities can get up to $100 or more during the winter, and the wealthy extort the poor, even those they consider their friends. What about financial aid? Doesn't that give you plenty of dough since you're independent? Well.....no. Even though I'm getting $33000 in financial aid, that is split into two semesters, $5000 of that is work study, which I have to earn over time on a paycheck by paycheck basis.

I was able to quickly find a work study job, and not just any work study job. I work at the Brookline Public Library. Do you know who's from Brookline? And went to this library? These guys:

That's right. I work at the library that JFK and Conan O'Brian had their first library cards at. It's pretty awesome. But as awesome as my job is, and as many hours as I'm working, I've still had to max out my loans and grants, and pay $1,469 out of my work on top of it. And somehow find first and last month's rent for an apartment. And then pay for heat in the cold Massachusetts winter. And then do it all again every semester until I owe my soul and that of my first born child to the State of Massachusetts.

Don't get me wrong. I love this place, and I made the right decision. If I had made the prudent choice and stayed in California, I would have regretted not coming and hated California more, and always wondered what it would have been like if I just packed my bags and left. This is a grand experience and a greater adventure. I don't regret this for a moment. I've learned a lot about life, money, education, people, community, and culture, and I still have 4 and a half months to go. Boston is my favorite city, but the people make the place, and it's missing my favorite people.

It's not over though. I will still be getting an awesome education here, even if it is only for a semester. If I can make it longer you better believe I'll stay. But if not....if I have to return to California to pay a reasonable fee for a reasonable, but not as awesome, education, then I will do so, and I will have the unforgettable experience of having lived in one of America's greatest cities, and studied history in one of the best places for it. I love Boston. I love it more than any place I've ever been. But I'm not willing to sell my soul for it. Instead, I will earn my degree, go to grad school, and someday apply for jobs in the Commonwealth. Get paid to live here rather than pay to live here. So I hope you guys don't think ill of me for accepting the reality of my situation. But I have a proposal for you. I will live up my time here as best as I can. I'll get to know the best restaurants, museums, pubs, taverns, wenches, parks, and activities, and then next summer, I'm coming back. I hope some of you will come with me and let me share with you my favorite city in the way that I know it. Would you rather see it in a group of tourists, or would you rather see it with a friend who's spent 6 months here? Let me know who wants to come with me, because the only thing missing from this city is someone to share it with.

I'll see you guys again soon. Sooner than any of us thought, but I hope you don't hold that against me. I'd rather be able to save money and come stay in a hotel with you guys than stay here and sleep in a park. I got the taste I wanted, and I'll have months more of it. And one day I'll come back, better prepared, and more stable. And hopefully some of you will come with me.

Quarter Century Turning Point

The year is 2012 and today I'm twenty-five years old. Twenty five never seemed that old to me before, until it was pointed out that I'm a quarter of a century old. That's still not bad and I bet that in another quarter century I'd be glad to be back here on this day. It's been a full and rewarding 25 years, though. Sure I'm still in college, unmarried, and childless when many of my friends have their degrees, are married or engaged, and  a few have begun raising a family of their own. But over the last quarter century I have seen much of the United States, fallen in love with history and music, traveled the whole length of the American West Coast numerous times,  and lived life to the fullest of my abilities. I have experienced amazing adventures, and tragic loss. And it has all brought me to where I am at the dawn of this new quarter.

Here I sit in the public library in Brookline Massachusetts, where for the next two and a half years I will be dedicating my existence to the astute and noble study of history. Before the decade of my roaring twenties is out I will have my bachelors degree and an acceptance into a graduate school of study. I will find the woman with whom I wish to begin a family and settle into that life whilst working to provide for that family and enriching myself through education. I do not in the least bit regret my roaring twenties, but the sun has set on the first quarter century, (and hopefully, I'm only a quarter of the way through my lifespan), and with the dawn of this new quarter brings a more responsible, rounded individual with goals and aspirations and the tenacity and wherewithal to achieve them in swift and efficient timing. Now, I'm off to buy a hat and some Boston clam chowder for my birthday gift and feast.