I'm part of a group of volunteers working on the Carbon Almanac.

This is a complex project in which the very procedures we follow are changing frequently.

Under some circumstances, the continual changes would be a concern. In a large corporation, it might indicate instability or signal that the people in charge aren't sure what they're doing.

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Off and on, I experience a sense of being unfulfilled.

I know exactly where it comes from, too. I’m not playing enough music.

For years, I played open mics and in bands. I started a music school and played and taught music for hours every day. Then I played music with the students of The Little Middle School every morning, everything from Lead Belly to The Magnetic Fields.

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“Everything is falling apart, and I can’t hold on.”

“I find myself being a collector of other people’s bad feelings.”

“I worry about being invisible.”

These statements are all metaphorical. The circumstances they are describing cannot be literally true (except that the first one could perhaps be true in an earthquake or tornado).

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Many struggling math students hate word problems. The well-written ones require you to demonstrate an understanding of what you’re doing instead of simply carrying out the procedure that you’re clinging onto for dear life. The struggling math students don’t believe that they have this understanding, so they shut down.

To trick them into discovering their competence, we substitute easier numbers.

Maybe my student can’t figure out how many jelly beans are left if Chen gave Chamari 2/3 of her 645 jelly beans and then gave Chester 1/5 of the rest. He claims that he doesn’t even know where to begin.

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When I was running operations at my music school, I would often get a panicked calls from one of the many teachers.

“Did you change the key?” they would ask. “I can’t get my key to work. I’ve been trying for like ten minutes — I’ve tried every key I have.”

After I reassured them that I hadn’t changed the locks without telling them, they would usually make their key work within a minute. The seemingly impenetrable mechanism would now suddenly give way. The only thing that had changed was that now they knew that they had the right key. That gave them the fortitude necessary to succeed in unlocking the door.

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