Tag: anxiety

Excellent

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

At least, I hope so, although we may be in a good-news-and-bad-news situation. I had six kids today, and they were all nice kids, and they were willing to participate, although a couple of them have insanely quiet voices, and my two Hispanic girls who are good friends and look enough alike that they could be sisters have names that are only different by a few letters, which in a class of six is not fair. I should not be having to worry about mixing up names in a class of six.

Hopefully we’ll get more kids tomorrow, and (this is the maybe bad news part) hopefully they won’t decide that my attendance is so low that they need to combine my section with someone else’s. I’m a little worried about getting booted out of my cushy high-paying job early, now that I’m done worrying about it being horrible.

Anyway, I have reading to do, so I’m going to go do that. Hopefully the booing from Madison Square Garden will be loud enough that I can hear it in Indiana. We’ll see.

Here we go again

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

Tried to find an appropriate image for summer school and couldn’t find anything I really liked, so feel free to enjoy this ultra-rare photo of two of my three cats sharing my lap. It could have been better if one of them was looking at the camera or both of them were in focus, but I was worried that any movement at all might cause one or both of them to bolt, so I took what I could get.

Anyway, summer school, or, sorry, the Summer Learning Program, since technically I’m not employed by any school district for the next several weeks, starts tomorrow. I have to be there at 8:00, have an entire hour of prep, then three hours of teaching, then I do that 21 more times and then I’m done. I have ten kids on one roster and twelve at another, so we’ll see how many actually show up. I know one of them already and she’s awesome. Tomorrow is a survey and a pre-test and some getting to know you activities. Tomorrow there’s a different pre-test. Actual regular day stuff starts Wednesday. The curriculum is all pre-baked. There’s literally no accountability for anyone involved. This should be easy as hell.

Please, let this be easy as hell.

Wheel of Time fans can’t be real

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, TeachingLeave a comment

Come on, guys. It’s okay. It’s your old pal Luther, here. You can admit it. This is all one giant, decades-long piss-take, right?

I finished Book Eight of this nonsense last night, nearly seven hundred pages in which absolutely nothing happens until the last twenty pages and then not much happens in the climax. I am going to finish this series this year, powered by pure spite and nothing else, and you should all be very proud of me for how little whining I have done about it here. Even if you feel like I’ve complained about these books a lot, you have no idea how much I have held back. Book Eight begins what even fans of the series call “The Slog.” Or maybe it’s Book Seven! They can’t agree.

I owe the publishers of the book I’m reading now a review, and I’m really wondering if I’m not being fair to the new book by putting it after a WoT book. Because oh man did I go straight to I Bet It Would Be Fun to Annotate This and Rip It to Shreds mode.

Anyway. For the record, I genuinely don’t care if you’ve enjoyed these books or not, and there are multiple people I really respect (such as, for example, my actual wife) who are fans of them, I just … I don’t get it, and I don’t think I ever will at this point. I’m still finishing the God damned things one way or another, though.

Had a weird moment during my prep/lunch period at work today, where a whole bunch of shit all piled up on me at once and I damn near had a meltdown over a bizarre assortment of objectively minor inconveniences. I’m still not used to the new glasses. I made bad lunch decisions, and on top of that I was given a Diet Coke instead of a Coke, or maybe it was just super low on syrup. I’ve bitten my lower lip in the exact same spot roughly seventy times in the last few days. My classroom hasn’t been vacuumed in several days, and the cruft that is still on the floor is resistant to my broom. And the anxiety over this summer school thing continues to ramp up; I looked a little bit more closely at what little information I have and I’m now definitively convinced they’ve handed me two grades at the same time.(*) And probably a few other things that I’m not remembering at the moment. And … man. I managed to work my way out of it before the kids showed up, which was good, especially since I had to double up my advisory again. Nobody wants Mr. Siler to lose his mind and go home early during the last week of school, especially since I just remembered another one of those little inconveniences and it was being handed yet another piece of essential paperwork that I needed to do about taking the last day of school off– which, remember, I told my boss about in January.

One good thing is I do think I’ve actually convinced myself that next year’s eighth graders should be fine. There’s still a billion ways that could go wrong, and my partner teacher continues to stubbornly refuse to admit that she’s jumping to the high school next year.

I would appreciate knowing something about anything involving the next few months within the next couple of days, thanks.

(*) Does this mean that both groups are tiny, and I’ll have a tiny group? Or are both groups normal sized, and I’ll have a huge group? What even is a huge group in this context, since they’ve told us nothing about the kids we have coming? Am I doing math and reading for both groups– so four preps in three hours? Is anyone ever going to respond to any of my emails?

AYFKM?

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading3 Comments

Authors, I thought we discussed this last week, but somehow today’s is worse; of the three highly anticipated books I got last Tuesday, I’ve finished one of them (The Last Contract of Isako, which I enjoyed but did not, sadly, set my world on fire) and now you’ve hit me with not only a new Dungeon Crawler Carl but also the second Amina al-Sirafi book and the new Bobiverse? Get your shit together, damn it, and come up with a release schedule. This is nonsense. Have you seen my Unread Shelf?

The good news, I suppose, is I don’t have anything else on pre-order until late June, but still. Damn.

Also, I definitely read the first 100 pages of Horribles before posting this.

This again

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

It was sixty degrees outside last week, so naturally this morning I woke up to, depending on where I measured, between ten and eighteen inches of snow on my driveway and front lawn. The driveway was still so warm that once the sun came out it completely dried off; there’s not a spot of snow or ice on my driveway right now. Despite that, my mailbox is still annoyingly inaccessible; the battery on the blower died before I got to it and I never went back out after charging it. Hopefully the mailman forgives me tomorrow.

Anyway, I taught from home today for the first time in a few years. I haven’t missed it.

I’ve been weirdly jumpy and out of sorts all evening, for no clear reason. I’m pretty sure we’re going to have a regular school day tomorrow– it’s 7:30 and none of the nearby districts have so much as called a delay yet– so I probably ought to get on putting together some sort of lesson plan. Maybe then I’ll go to bed early; it feels super late for some reason and there’s no reason to sit around and kvetch all night.

Keep on trying me

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I am bored and kvetchy and it’s making my anxiety act up something fierce. I actually got quite a lot done today– no big projects, but a ton of little jobs around the house and I got the oil changed on the car– but since the sun went down I’ve turned into a mess, and I can’t concentrate well enough to read.

That part’s the alarming part, honestly. It’s rare that I can’t focus enough to read. I’m watching someone else play a video game while I’m writing this, and I’m starting to think I need to dive back into Skyrim or something like that; I simultaneously need something new to do and am kind of aching for something familiar and comfortable I can just fall into.

I’m also, for the first time in several years, pretty excited (or at least not actively dreading) Christmas, mostly because I feel like I definitely won Christmas this year. I don’t know if other families do this thing, where they’re competitive about who gets each other the best gifts– hell, I don’t know if my family does this thing or if it’s just me– but one way or another it’s me, hi, I won Christmas, it’s me.

Anyway, I’m going to go take down the wallpaper in the library or something.

Not a good day

On By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

This has been a massive mess of a mental health day. It started off absolutely wonderfully, with the literal first thing I was greeted with upon turning my phone on being that Dick Cheney had died, but then featured a lunchtime panic attack that led to me calling off for the rest of the afternoon (it was all meetings, not teaching, but still,) getting home all full of piss and vinegar about getting a couple of things done while everyone else was out of the house, then doing none of that, and ending with one of my more unshakable depressive episodes lately, as I sit here watching election returns and dealing with a shitton of possibly-misplaced family and work-related guilt.

Part of me is blaming DST again. It was pitch-black before 6 PM and my mood just fell apart. Seasonal affective disorder is not usually a problem I have, and it’s worth pointing out that my day was shit when the sun was out too, but I’ve had a hard time this week for some reason.

Heh. “This week.”

It’s only fucking Tuesday.

Third verse, same as the first

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I woke up this morning fully intending to go to work and was immediately hit with a wave of nausea so potent that I had to lie back down again before I fell down. If anything, I’ve felt sicker today than I did yesterday, and everyone in the house stayed home from work/school today. My wife suspects food poisoning as all four of us had Burger King on Sunday night; I’m a little skeptical as we didn’t all eat the same thing, but whatever it is, I’m fucking tired of it, and while I’ll still maintain that the symptoms (and the timing) are overlapping pretty damn well with panic attacks, those aren’t contagious.

I am going to work tomorrow if I’m not in the hospital. If I have to throw up out the window of the car on the way there, so fucking be it. I’ve already missed five days out of the last two weeks and I refuse to miss any more between now and Christmas, damn it.