The internet is abuzz with Game of Thrones and whether or not Season 8’s fifth episode works. It’s getting quite vehement out there with digital-finger pointing and much crayness times a good and solid number upwards of two. I get it. We love stories, and when our stories are under assault, we respond. So, here…
Author: Thomas Joseph Wilson
Ads and My Shifting Baseline Syndrome
Context: The Times A couple weekends ago, I deactivated my Facebook account. It was tough. Kind of. I was there in the beginning, so there was some nostalgic reckoning there. Like in the old days when you have to get a new phone number and are faced with so many unhinged connections. But the “why”…
Story Versus the Internet
The first time I voted, I researched candidates, trying to get down to the nitty gritty. Soaking in the issues and what was at stake. Reaffirming or discarding suppositions of the world. That kind of stuff. You know, democracy stuff. I very much remember that getting past the public relations simplification aspect of policy was…
The English Teacher Black Hole
I hope I’m not alone in thinking, basically all the time, that I’m just not very good at what I do. I am speaking of a very special imposter syndrome: I’m a high school English teacher. When I was young, I was lackluster in reading the classics or writing essays. I excelled in trying to…
The Writing Tick Psychoanalysis
I have a tick in my writing that has followed me for years. Maybe writing about it will be like when people who fear snakes do that process where they slowly acclimatize themselves to snake nearness and, baring no tragedy, lose the fear. When I write for my students, I hear murmurs. Someone will eventually…
A Regular Consumer Protects his Sleep?
I have two books in my personal library that are begging to be read. They have been perused though. Taken off the shelf, taken stock of, and then put back on the shelf. One because of regular I’ll-get-to-you-later book overloadness and the other due to a healthy amount of anxiety. Regardless, I feel like I’ve…
Learning to Rock Climb
Wherein the Author Describes the Beginning “Let me down,” I said. “Are you sure?” “Yes.” “But you are almost there.” “Let me down,” I said again, this time with the loud but hushed quality of a seriously perturbed person feigning composure. Nothing matters when you have climbed, with you hands and legs, like childhood days,…
Writing to an Algorithmic Audience
When you are an English teacher, there are too many ways to teach. In the public view, you are teaching two really important skills: writing and reading. That’s a simplification. Teaching Language Arts is the cornerstone of being thoughtful, creative, patient, empathetic, revision/editing-oriented, network-seeking, analytical, open-minded, reflective, and well-spoken (or at least confident enough to…
Practicality Versus the Human Element; Or Why We Are Not Vulcans
I have been using a fictional race of human beings as an adjective lately. Because with technology where it is, we have more and more distinguished ourselves from a Vulcan lifestyle of logic. Let us pretend, by some trick of the universe, Vulcans replaced us right at this moment. It is night, and you climb…
Falling Back on Cereal
Before college, my life was littered with empty cereal bowls. This was largely the fault, and perhaps the triumph, of my mother. I ate cereal like one greedily gasps for air after running 1,000 miles per hour. Instead of lungs and air, it was cereal and stomach. Growing up, there was never any soda in…