Occupation: Dreamer

Ignore it at your Peril Reflecting on my post-elementary and high school educational experiences, I recognize that there were influential teachers who had a profound impact on me. However, the people who exerted far more influence on me were my peers; friends, classmates, and, particularly, older students and kids. When I look at what's missing in education today - really, the education crisis - the gap is how the system focuses on the negative aspects of peer pressure while completely ignoring its potential for positive behavior.  When I got into trouble, it was usually because someone brought me into it. Drugs, alcohol, skipping school, mean pranks, and general sneaky disobedience. Except for driving cars before I had a driver's license,  I got introduced to  every one  of my bad behaviors  by one of my friends or schoolmates. It would never have occurred to me to scratch the paint on someone's car until a friend keyed a car and stole hood ornaments. I never ...

My friend Kent died last week. He'd been sick for a little more than a year. Before he died, he wrote me a really touching note about how my friendship had given him a real opportunity to enjoy having a simple connection with another human being. It made me think about how grateful I am that I don't drink anymore because I could make him a priority - reach out to him, check in regularly, and get his other friends to reach out to him, too. That's something I wouldn't have thought about while drinking because my primary goal in life was holding things together and trying to keep the world - bills, marriage, kids, business - from imploding. I wouldn't say that I wasn't a good friend, but I couldn't think about what other people were going through daily. I was self-centered. This was complicated because drinking - whether a little or a lot - meant some of my time was spent inebriated, and some time was spent recovering from it. I already didn't have enough t...