My life in Quotes

  As I wake up with tear-stained cheeks I am grateful that my Mom is in heaven. She's not suffering anymore, she's not enduring this pandemic, and she's surrounded by family. She struggled with her health through the years that I was growing up. I remember when she passed out in the kitchen and Reedy Creek Park. She developed diabetes from Pretisone and she had fibromyalgia. When she was in the hospital she had been misdiagnosed for an infection that ended spreading. it affected her mind as well. She was on and off the ventilator, and at one point she was making a turn for the better. She always asked Dad when can she go home but that was not the plan to be had. She became addicted to the pain meds in the hospital. The doctors were doing procedures behind my dad's back then the nurses would tell him. I visited when she had been placed into the hospital and she didn't look at all like my mom. I didn't even talk when I was in the room. I was in great shock but I w...

  Friends,      It's been a while since we've spoken. The semester is at a close, with 2 weeks left and I've put in almost 2 years into my attempt to break what I thought would be a curse. I struggle with money, social cues, dating, being shy, (believe it or not), and asking for help. I'm proud of myself for maintaining friendships and creating new ones. I'm proud of my courage to sing karaoke without liquid courage. I'm proud of my grades. I am proud of myself in that I have made some friends in my program which has made school easier. This semester I ran for student government and I have an upcoming interview for The Student Advisory Board for the disability department at UNCC. I've come a long way in that I have constant anxiety that three strikes and I'm out. That's the negative side of my brain. In reality, it should be, Third times the charm.      Having friends on campus and wanting to do big things in the campus community has helped me even...

  Joshua Harke’s Teaching Philosophy Introduction In 2019, I decided to go back to Central Piedmont Community College to get a transfer degree so I could return to UNC Charlotte as a pre-teaching student. I chose teaching because my marketing associate degree wasn’t cutting it as a career. I want to be a teacher because I want to give back to the community and be an advocate for the voiceless. I decided that I would like to become a teacher, in high school. I wanted to be a history teacher or a physical therapist and those are very different professions. I was a teacher aid for the PE teacher for 2 nd and 3 rd graders and 7 th and 8 th graders. I was a natural with the elementary kids. My family has an abundance of teachers in the lines of the Harke’s and Hughson’s. My mom was a teacher/administrator of a preschool up in Syracuse, New York called Little Lamb. She would read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess, and they would serve green eggs and ham to the kids that day. I wa...

 I wrote an entry that spoke to Amazon being the savior of retail. Not only was I wrong in regards to people having to work more on Thanksgiving but it made people crazier. The giant known as Amazon treats its employees with an unbiased and shitty disdain and I have friends that have worked or work for Amazon. The real savior of the holiday season/Black Friday is Covid and the Great Resignation. I never thought I would see stores like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Belk, and so on be closed on the eve of Black Friday. I love it. My retail friends actually got to spend time with their families and that means more than angsty customers shopping for a deal and forgetting to treat workers with dignity and respect that they were there being mistreated by bad customers for longer shifts than normal. What a magical time to be alive.  I hope that the job market learns from this holiday season and as people return back to work during the pandemic that employees get treated better than ever...

 Originally when I titled this entry I was obsessed with death or my own death. I wished I was dead and boy did I ever. I would think about getting t-boned by a tractor-trailer or flipping my car off the embankment. I am sober because of health reasons and that I would kill myself with alcohol and pills. It's a somber thought to think about. I also titled this entry because I binged "The Good Place" and it resonated with me as did it make me happy. “Come on, you know how this works. You fail and then you try something else. And you fail again and again, and you fail a thousand times, and you keep trying because maybe the 1,001st idea might work. Now, I’m gonna and try to find our 1,001st idea.” – Michael,  The Good Place I take a cocktail of meds and I haven't been thinking about death nearly as much. I feel like I'm winning and that possibly I'm in a good place. I take Vraylar, Lamictal, Zoloft, and Trazadone for sleep. They seem to be working together very w...

I've realized by me wanting to be a father and a husband that I need to let go of the past. "Let go of the past, but keep the lessons it taught you. "–Chiara Gizzi – Something that the past cannot give me is love, especially since my memories revolve around pain and suffering. There are so many positive events with people that love me or loved me. Sometimes you just need to let go. I've been working so hard to let go of the hurt that was inflicted by people whom I thought loved me. I'm making one more declaration. I will let go of past romantic relationships for good or bad. "The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward." -Steve Maraboli I have to let go of anyone I've ever given my heart to romantically. It's hard to let go of the pain and pleasure that was a part of those relationships. None of them from the past can give me...

Happy Father's day to the biggest influence in my life. It's not because you adopted me. It's because you cultivated what was in me. You told me if you want to play ice hockey, you need to learn to skate... I was a natural because I needed the basic fundamentals I learned. My dad assistant coached a few years of baseball. I was that typical daisy picking kid in center field but we stuck it out and I became a great catcher and center fielder.  When I got very ill in my freshman year he was like... I wish you didn't live on campus but he still let me come home. You are the honest reason I want to be a Dad. Through all the ups and downs life has thrown me, you are always there. I don't enjoy politics but I still let you ramble on. You may not be Mom but you're what I need in a Dad.  Whenever there are dads playing silly games with their kids I'm like I want that. I want to be like him. I understand it costs a lot of time and money to adopt me but I'm glad y...