Tag: depression

Can’t do it tonight

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

Having a weird and kind of upsetting mental health day, so I’m taking the day off from the blog. Go do something fun.

In which I must be sick

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, video games2 Comments

I haven’t ordered the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC yet.

I … what?

I put something like 130 hours into Elden Ring. My Let’s Play series is a hundred and ten episodes long. I completed every mission I could find, got the Platinum trophy, all of the endings, everything. Played the absolute ever-loving shit out of that game and enjoyed Goddamn near every second of it.

And they’re releasing a lengthy DLC on the 21st, which by all indications is amazing. And I haven’t bought it, I don’t think I’m going to buy it, and I’m not excited about it. Right now I should be planning on staying up late on Thursday night so that I can get started immediately, just like I did with the actual game. I stayed up late to record the demo, for God’s sake.

What the hell is wrong with me?

There’s been a consistent theme in my life over the last several years of this creeping anhedonia, where I just … stop doing things I used to really love doing, or stop enjoying things I used to enjoy. I effectively don’t watch anything any longer. No movies, no TV, nothing streaming. There’s a new season of The Boys, which I’ve enjoyed. Not gonna watch it. The Acolyte? Not gonna watch it. I’m done with Star Wars. I’m done with Marvel. I’m only still buying comic books because my weekly trip to the comic shop is my only reliable in-person interaction with human beings I’m not related to or work with; I can’t stop shopping there unless I move or die. I could literally just come home and put them in a box and never read them and I wouldn’t miss a thing.

You’re never going to catch me complaining about reading, but it’s literally the only thing I do for fun. That’s weird, right? I read books and I write here. Dassit. Those are my hobbies. The honest truth is I think I could sell my PS5 and my Xbox and I wouldn’t miss them. And I’ve been a gamer my entire life.

I don’t fucking get it, and I don’t like it.

(And, to forestall this: Yes, I recognize that I’m basically describing a textbook case of clinical depression here. And while I’m on Effexor, that’s an anti-anxiety med, not an antidepressant, and I don’t think the two overlap much. But I have no other symptoms of depression, including the not exactly minor detail that I’m rarely actually feeling depressed. This is a mental health issue, don’t misunderstand me, but I feel like the most obvious answer is not the right one.)

Mental health note

On 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.

Blech

On By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

Is boredom a symptom of depression? I mean, it can be, right? I don’t think I’m clinically depressed because I’m too functional for too much of the time, but these brief twelve-hour funks where I don’t want to do anything could stop anytime and I’d be fine with it.

I’m OK

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching, Work1 Comment

My last post, or perhaps a combination of the last several, appears to have unintentionally set several of you to worrying about me. I’m fine, I promise, or at least I’m as close to fine as I’ve been at any other point during the last few years. I’m “fine” by post-2016 standards, whatever that means.

And, honestly, there was no good reason to be secretive about what I needed luck for other than pure superstition, so: despite having made the decision to stay at my current school back in early June, now that we’ve got a principal and assistant principal named, along with a couple of articles in the local paper about recent school board meetings, I have become fully convinced that the district has entirely given up on our school and that we are being set up to continue to fail. I do not know my new principal very well but what I have witnessed thus far has not been good, and while I haven’t even met the new AP yet he has “pushover” tattooed on his forehead. We have a new dean of students as well. None of the three have any experience in their jobs. Our principal has never been a principal and has never been a middle school administrator at all; our new AP has never been an administrator, and our new Dean has not only never held that job she’s never worked in a middle school.

Oh, and I found out that literally two 8th graders passed the math ILEARN. Two. One point five percent. I don’t know which two. I suspect I can guess on at least one of them, but I don’t have names yet. So, I dunno, probably I suck at my job or something.

Anyway. Long story short, based on all that, despite my promise in May, I’ve applied for a few jobs at another district and if I get a chance I’m splitting.. One particular school has four jobs open and I’m qualified for three of them. I formally applied for two of the three (I really don’t want to be a Language Arts teacher despite technically being certified for it) and sent the principal an email with my resume attached as well. I was hoping, what with school starting in 2 1/2 weeks, that I’d hear from the principal yesterday or today; that has not happened.

I can think of a hundred thousand reasons why no one has called me yet; I am, nonetheless, assuming that I am blacklisted for some reason. At this point I have been applying for jobs since March and have not received a single call-back from anything other than a couple of purely lateral moves within the same organization. It’s not like these folks have access to my current test scores or anything, but … fuck, people, school starts August 17. I’m perfectly fucking willing and ready to move over to your building. What the fuck are you waiting for?

Hm. This post may not have done quite the job I wanted in reassuring people that I’m all right.

Oh, okay, this again

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I have said this so many times that even I am bored with it, so feel free to ignore this post as you see fit: my inability to “relax” amazes me, and the surest way to guarantee that I’m going to be in a shitty mood is to put me in a situation where I’m not “getting anything done.” I did basically nothing over the last couple of days other than marinate in front of Twitter and fall into bleak fucking despair at the fact that literally everything gets worse every single day.

Today, I have done the following:

  • Successfully sold the 3D printer
  • Deposited a bunch of change at the bank
  • Contested the $100 bill I got from a lab for a Covid test; those motherfuckers had better go talk to my fucking insurance because there’s no universe where they’re getting $100 from me for a test that I had no choice in taking
  • Paid my car registration and remembered to put the receipt in my car, and did it early enough that I probably won’t even get pulled over and need the receipt
  • Mowed the fucking lawn
  • Murdered weeds
  • Went swimming (this counts!)
  • Went to the comic shop and engaged in capitalism
  • Bought my wife a present
  • Some light cleaning and organization

And I am in a much better mood than I have been for several days now, simply by virtue of having kept busy today. I mean, if I get stupid and start paying attention to the news again I’m sure I’ll go right back to being fucked, but at least I feel like I did something today. And my wife is about to leave town for a week, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be busy for the next several days. Maybe I’ll even write a compelling blog post sometime between now and then! The possibilities are endless.

In search of serotonin

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

I want a Goddamn flumph.

Please understand the following about my relationship with Dungeons & Dragons:

  • That, first of all, I have never been the type to use miniatures when playing D&D. I started playing 35 years ago, so this is a well-ingrained habit by now.
  • That, second, I have nowhere to put a collection of D&D miniatures.
  • That, third, I have played D&D maybe twice in the last year and while I think about it a lot it has not become something that I do a lot recently. If it did, I would talk about it more!

Now understand something about how WizKids does their miniature booster packs:

  • They’re blind boxes, so you have no idea what is inside other than that there are going to be four things, and therefore the more you purchase the more you are guaranteed to have repeats of some figures while you are still missing others, and that short of buying them on eBay or some shit there is no way to ensure that anything in particular is in the box.
  • That they are fucking expensive. Like, $5 a figure unless you get them at a steep discount. Some of them are pretty large, so it evens out, but some of them are tiny. Witness the little frog-thing on the right side of the box there.
  • That they are not generally packaged well, and lots of times things like weapons are bent or broken out of the box. This is just … tolerated, apparently.

Now understand the following about my social media habit:

  • I follow two– two!!— different TikTok accounts whose main function appears to be to open one of these fucking blind boxes every day, searching for a specific figure. One account has gone through thirty boxes looking for a goblin cart. $400 is not an unreasonable estimate for what those boxes cost. In fact, it’s probably low. Another lady is looking for a tyrannosaurus zombie– which, okay, who can blame her– and she’s on, like, box #21.
  • That the main reason I put TikTok back on my phone was because I wanted to know if that lady had found the goblin cart yet.

Understand also that:

  • I understand that all of this makes purchasing these Goddamned things a terrible fucking idea.
  • That nonetheless I have a brick– a fucking brick, eight Goddamned boxes– showing up at my house tomorrow, because I want a fucking flumph.
  • That despite the flumph being listed as a “common” figure, there isn’t going to be a fucking flumph in the boxes.

My ability to adult is simply gone this week, and I don’t know what the fuck to do about it.

Shit.

Nope, not tonight

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

There is a post coming about this week, one that isn’t a movie review, a picture of a bookshelf, or a single sentence, but I just don’t have the emotional energy for it right now. I have to write lesson plans for tomorrow and I think I’d rather throw myself off a bridge; dealing with that and a blog post is simply too goddamn much. I’ll come out of the hole in the ground I’ve dug myself sooner or later but it’s not gonna be tonight.