the what

I like to write stuff and pretend I am a writer. Sometimes I share what I write here.
I also take photos and pretend I am a photographer. I usually post those things HERE.

What I share are flash fictions, strange philosophical observations, embarrassing anecdotes, bad poetry, and sometimes my words form a freakish amalgamation of all four. I meditate at a keyboard in an attempt to manifest sense and order from the chaos of a cold, dark universe. I seek to create moving and masterful works of literature from the ether of my own psyche, a task on par with producing gold nuggets from a burning pile of dog poop. When it works it feels more supernatural than anything else. Alchemy. Magic. Sorcery. A psychotic break. It is all these things and more.

In my spare time I teach middle school science, which equates to an unexpected and never ending repetition of the lowest point of my personal development. Middle School is fraught with emotion, comedy, the dramas of adolescent struggle, and all the lowest common denominators of human existence. I have concluded that seventh grade is without a doubt the lowest point of physical and emotional development of the human species. It is a little know fact that the book Lord of the Flies is actually a thinly veiled metaphor for life in middle school, and I’m pretty sure all those characters were seventh graders.

In my spare spare time I also run a school garden, where I pass the hours poking sticks in the dirt and planting seeds, and sometimes beautiful things actually grow from those muddy little holes in the Earth. This is a thinly veiled metaphor for middle school also.

Thanks for stopping by. Please return for more fun and fanfare in the future.

– J.D.H.

Most Likely to Succeed

(top ten in mathematical order)

9 – 7 = Letter to My Future Self

2 + 3 = Hating Life

3 + 3² = Reflections

-5 + √172 = Bend with the Wind

(x – 8)(5 + 7) = Inside the Cal Academy

137 ± 5 = Memories of Mom’s Memories

144 ÷ ϖ³ = Juxtaposition

72(11² + 8) – 52 = Dirt is My Religion

0 + 0² = Selfies

∞ + 1 = Stoic Abandon

All written words © J.D. Hager, 2014

5 comments

I think people like you who are creative and hysterically funny and then turn around and teach science in the next breath, are amazing! I am sooooooo not left-brained, it’s not even funny. Where can I read some of your Flash Fiction? I adore that genre. I already think your Blog name is clever as all hell! Thanks for finding me so I could follow the breadcrumb trail back to all of – – this magnificence? Yeah, I was read Hansel and Gretel one too many times in my youth. 😉

J. D. Hager says:

February 19, 2014 at 6:24 am

Thanks for the follow. I’ve seen some of your comments around and love a good laugh. If anyone had told me I was going to be a middle school teacher 10 years ago I probably would have laughed at them. Teaching middle school is one of those things that can be incredibly rewarding while its making your hair turn gray and abandon ship. I get to take all that immature humor I love and use it in my classroom to really capture kids attention. I was a biology major in college because I wanted to challenge myself for some reason, but I was hands down the worst scientist in the lab. I also had awful science teachers throughout my life, which was my true motivation for wanting to teach science in the first place. I’ve only recently rediscovered my love of writing and decided to make it more of a priority in my life. Ironically I studied animal behavior in college, which perfectly prepared me for teaching middle school. Someday I’ll write a post about that.

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