Just keeping the streak alive

On November 8, 2023November 8, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

The boy had a field trip to Chicago today, and we had more parent-teacher conferences somehow, and work was exhausting, and now it’s 7:45 and everything is pulled together for tomorrow and I’m going to go hang out with my family for a bit. Enjoy the large-format astronomy picture that has absolutely nothing to do with this post and the excerpt that will likely use most of it. 🙂

(Discovers he can limit the length of the excerpt)

(Hits publish, discovers that feature doesn’t seem to work)

(Figures it out)

Well, enjoy the picture, anyway.

Okay, one more thing: I like the idea of a “trending” set of posts on the front page, but right now it’s just displaying my last four posts? I had the idea that maybe after a few days it would figure out what the most “trending” posts were, but … not so much. Anybody know enough about the theme editor to have any suggestions at all? Because I cannot figure this shit out to save my life.

Four more

On October 18, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I made it through my first real day of teaching six straight classes plus advisory with no breaks, and while I’ve definitely had better days, I’ve also had way way worse. Today’s real problem was a persistent brain fog that I couldn’t snap out of; I kept getting kids’ names slightly wrong and I couldn’t hear a Goddamn thing to save my life, plus a lot of sitting down at my computer with a specific task in mind and then immediately forgetting the specific task. Now, these things happen to me at home all the Goddamn time, but normally the amount of focus I have to keep up at work keeps them from happening there. Not so damn much today, apparently. All that said, I got through the day, and I’ll get through the next four. There’s a contract ratification meeting tomorrow evening, and I’ve heard rumors that it’s going to make everyone happy, so hopefully that’ll be all true.

The boy had a drama class presentation thing after school today. It was fine, although I feel like the teacher for his drama classes (it’s an actual class and not a club) maybe has a slightly more, uh, grandiose idea of what her position is than I might in the same situation, and there’s some inherent silliness to watching 12-year-olds reciting memorized speeches no matter what, but if those speeches are supposed to be especially profound or tear-jerking or, well, dramatic, the silliness is going to be intensified and not the other way around. He got to use his saxophone to literally play some of the kids off stage, and I think that was his favorite part of the evening, honestly. I had a weirdly strong moment of damn, he’s growing up too fast at one point during his monologue, but I fought it off as quickly as I could because the last thing I need to do is make this lady think she’s doing a good job by getting all maudlin while my kid’s up there giving his speech.

Off to bed. I finally started Adrian Tchaikovsky’s magnum opus, a ten-book series called Shadows of the Apt, and … well, I’m not surprised that it’s going well and I’m racing through the first book. I ordered the next two today. We’ll see how long it takes me to read all six or seven thousand pages of it. By then he’ll probably have released another three trilogies. I will never get caught up to this dude’s productivity, I swear.

I’m awake and I don’t like it

On October 11, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I didn’t post on Monday because I wanted to give the Israel post a little bit of time to simmer, and truth be told I’ve almost deleted it a couple of times since writing it. That would be the first time in over ten years that I’ve deleted a post, or at least deleted a post that didn’t include subsequently-published fiction. I didn’t post yesterday because I got home from work and went more or less directly to bed. I was in bed before seven yesterday evening. I’m not sick, I’m just tired as hell, and as I’m writing this it’s 7:40 PM and I’m pretty sure I can go straight to bed once I’m done and not feel bad about it at all.

This has been another week of Always Thursday, and I’m pretty sure (again) that tomorrow is Actual Thursday, which is generally followed by Friday, although I’m not convinced that’s actually going to happen. At least seven of the last fourteen days have been Thursday so I really don’t think there’s any chance that Friday will follow Actual Thursday like it’s supposed to this week. We’ll see, I guess.

There is probably another Israel post coming once my brain settles down and I get home not so exhausted that I can’t think. It’s been amazing how tired everyone has been lately; I think if the building dropped fourth hour in favor of Nap Time it would be the quietest place on the planet for those 55 minutes.

Happy Birthday

On October 3, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Mom would have been 72 today.

I somehow don’t have any pictures of the two of us together on my phone, and that is cracking me open right now.

Mental health note

On September 27, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

I alluded the other day to realizing that you’ve grown tired of a long-term hobby, and it’s floated through my head several times recently (and, I think, was also suggested by someone here, although I’m not about to go looking through comments) that if I described what I’ve been like lately to a third party and especially if I didn’t tell them I was talking about myself, they’d describe me as clinically depressed. My anhedonia is through the roof lately; I don’t enjoy much of anything that I used to enjoy, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.

I’ve effectively stopped watching all things that can be watched. I have a probably month-high stack of comic books sitting next to me that I bought and actively don’t want to read. I’m ready to clear all of my superhero memorabilia out of the house, and that’s a lot of stuff. Even video games have been sources of more stress than stress relief yesterday; I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate III pretty consistently for a few weeks and I had a moment the other day where I realized I was getting tired of it. I’m … maybe a third of the way in? And my backlog is like six or seven games deep right now. If I hadn’t already shut down the YouTube channel (which is another thing I used to enjoy that I’ve stopped doing) I’d have to at this point, just because I can’t fucking finish anything.

I’m still reading, but nothing’s set the world on fire recently. I don’t know what the shit I’m going to do if I lose interest in reading. It’s unimaginable. And, well, y’all can bear witness to the amount of time I’ve spent writing recently. The weird thing is that I don’t feel like I’m unhappy; I just … feel like I don’t really enjoy anything lately. A bunch of perfectly cromulent geek hobbies have been tossed aside in favor of the fucking NYT crossword and Spelling Bee and I refuse to be that person.

I’ve been on brain meds long enough that I’m used to sort of monitoring my mental status from a distance. I’ll get in touch with my doctor if I start feeling like this is getting genuinely alarming, or if my wife comes to me after reading this and says she’s noticed something different. It may just be that I’m finally aging out of my juvenile bullshit; who knows. I just … really miss liking things, that’s all, and I don’t feel like that’s something I do any longer.

Blech.

Still good

On September 19, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn life, Music1 Comment

It was eight years and some change ago the last time I posted this song, and it’s crossed my radar again due to an a capella group on TikTok popping up on my For You page. I had honestly completely forgotten it existed, but seeing the TikTok video led to me finding the song on my phone, and that led to finding the video on YouTube, which reminded me just how much I love the video to Andy Grammer’s “Honey I’m Good.” So you get to watch it again. If you’re like me, you’ll watch it a few times.

(Bek and I will hit sixteen years in February, by the way. I’d love to know how many of these couples are still together.)

(Also, my relationship goals couple is the pair in the car who are 26 years in, at 1:47.)

Let’s try this again

On September 10, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I am caught up on my grading, and lesson plans are done through Tuesday. This is actually pretty good; any time I’m planned more than a day out is a feat. My goal is to go to work every day this week and to keep my fucking mask on all day tomorrow when I’m around people. I’m bad at this; even after all these years masks can make me panicky, which I recognize as a me problem so I try to power through it anyway, but I do hate the damned things so very much.

That said, in terms of the number of people I actually know who either have the ‘vid right now or are recovering from it, it’s literally the worst it’s been since all of this started. And that’s people who know they have it, because a world where I didn’t bother to take a test is really easy to imagine– as I said, this felt like every beginning-of-the-school-year cold I’ve ever gotten, and my son’s never progressed past a rough throat. But yeah. I’m caught up, and I’m ready for this week, and we’re going to pretend last week never happened, and it’ll all be fine.