Tag: mental health

Same, Charles Darwin. Same.

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

It’s been a weird damn day. I’m definitely in Okay School Can Start Now mode, and as of right now I basically have two more weeks of break. I’m going to try to not live at work during the week before school starts like I usually do, and I’m going to try to not spend much, if any, money on my classroom in the next couple of weeks either. I’ve spent most of the day obsessing about money and trying to figure out the best way to get rid of lots of my possessions. I’ll spare you the details; bog-standard Anxiety Brain at work, and for no good reason. There’s nothing bad going on; I’m genuinely in the best financial shape of my life right now (knocks on wood) but I’m going through another one of those occasional phases where I’m obsessing about The Next Car, and I accidentally figured out yesterday that I can technically afford The Next Car right now, which is not part of the plan, and I’m sticking to the Goddamned plan, which is to wait until the boy gets his license, give him the Kia, and then either lease or buy myself a new car.(*) That’s a little over a year away. I have a target in mind for my down payment; I’m halfway there, and I don’t think pulling together the other half in the time I have will be difficult– and even if it doesn’t happen, it’s not like there’s a hard deadline for something like give my son my car.

Further complicating things: he’s commented more than once that he’s not sure he wants his drivers license, which is a startlingly common affliction for kids of his generation. God could not have stopped me from taking my driving test on the first day I was legally able to. Also a potential complication: I think my dad’s car is probably on its last legs. It might turn out to be more sensible to give him my car, but that’s not something that’s going to happen on my timetable.

Forgive me; I’m thinking out loud, obviously, but hopefully typing this out will calm my brain down a little bit. I got a few things done around the house, took a shower in the new shower finally (it works!) and read about a third of the thousand-page book I started yesterday with the parts of my day that weren’t dedicated to kvetching. Tomorrow I plan on fixing the toilet and a ceiling light in the other bathroom, and hopefully I can get that done without electrocuting myself (unlikely, as I know how to turn the power off to the bathroom) or breaking the shutoff valve for the toilet … which is a bit more of a concern. I’m perfectly capable of swapping out the guts of a slow toilet, but our shutoff valves are, by and large, Not Good, and replacing those is beyond my skill. So if that fucker snaps off in my hand we’re going to have to cut off the water to the whole house and call an emergency plumber.

Cross your fingers for me, will you?

(*) Spare me, for now, any opinions on which is a better idea, although keep them in your back pocket for the inevitable moment when I have to actually make that decision, because we all know I’m going to ask for advice. It’s kind of a pointless conversation until I know what loan rates are looking like when I actually get the car.

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?

I need everyone to understand this

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

It is snowing again.

I do not think that losing school again tomorrow is likely, but if it does happen, I will lose my shit.

I will then go hunting, and rob many other people of their shit.

Which I will then also lose.

I require some normalcy, and I require it right now.

(Wow. Do not use DuckDuckGo.com to search for “fuck snow” if you have the explicit image filter turned off. Jesus.)

Anyway.

Today was, honestly, a pretty decent day– the kids were a little wild after a surprise week off, but not mean wild, just talky and silly– and there’s a new Iron Man #1 out (I didn’t make it to the comic shop yesterday), and I got three books delivered that I’ve been looking forward to, and there’s a new demo out for Nioh 3. So I’ve got a whole lot of media consumin’ heading my way.

Anyway. Everybody cross your fingers and, against all sense, hope for no snow tonight, so that we can keep the Western Hemisphere.

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.

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.

Ugh

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Spent the evening beating my head against a bad book, and now I’ve gotten some grading done, gotten frustrated by that, and now I’m going to spend an hour beating my head against a bad game. Then maybe I’ll take a handful of ibuprofen and go to bed early.

Solar systematic reach for celestials

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I dunno what the headline means either, but a new Atmosphere album just came out and I’m listening to it and that lyric from “Neptune” stood out for some reason(*). I have been playing Silksong for several hours, hating most of it, and I still stand by my thorough review from the other day. The game’s fucking masochistic; it’s not fun-hard, it’s bang your head against the wall until the pain stops hard, and I can’t explain why I’m still playing the fucking thing. I’m not relaxed when I’m playing, I’m stressed out and angry, and that’s … not only kind of shockingly immature for a motherfucker who is going to be fifty in less than a year, it’s also not really a good use for leisure time? Like, there are other things I could be doing. There are even any number of other unpleasant things I could be doing that would at least result in, say, the house being cleaner or some sort of shit like that.

It is possible that I spend too much of my leisure time doing things that actively make me unhappy. I should find a therapist and have a conversation about that.

(*) Also don’t know why the album is called “Jestures,” but I’m on my first listen so it might become apparent eventually. There’s no title track.

On my inner magpie, and other thoughts

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Teaching1 Comment

So, um, these showed up today. They are hand-numbered, 41/199. When I die, my wife can sell them to pay for my funeral. They will make me happy every time I walk past my bookshelves for the rest of my life.

Have I read the books yet? Nope. Although now I kind of have to. We’ll make it a summer project.

Teachers complain a lot, right? The understatement of the decade, surely. Like, read the site for five minutes. Teachers complain a lot. But one thing I feel like doesn’t get discussed enough is how emotionally fucked up the end of the school year can be, and now that I’m down to the last three days I’m starting to really have to stare that in the face. This has, on the balance, not been a bad year– there have certainly been moments, there always are, but in the main it’s been a pretty good year. Top half, let’s say.

Some years aren’t all that bad– last year comes to mind. But this year there are a good half dozen kids who I really, really like, who I’ve grown pretty close to over the course of the year … and I get to see them three more times and that’s it. They’re gone. And because I teach 8th grade, it’s worse, because they’re not just no longer in my class, they’re gone entirely. Like, maybe I’ll see them when they do their grad walk in four years, but that barely counts? And even if they do stay in touch, and some of them do, of course, it’s not like this is the kind of relationship where I can drag somebody out to lunch or go see a movie or some shit like that. Like, not even in a “that’s kinda weird” sorta way! A “people are going to assume terrible crimes are happening!” sort of way!

I don’t want to commit crimes! I just think your kid is cool and I would like to keep them in my life after seeing them nearly every fucking day for a year.

Next Thursday is going to really suck, is what I’m saying.

Related, but not really: I had a parent email me about a concern over the final, which in and of itself is just fine, but in the middle of the message she threw in “as you know, he tried taking his life a little over a month ago,” and NO THE MERRY FUCK I DID NOT, MA’AM. I thought for a minute she had mentioned it and I had forgotten, somehow, and looked through every previous email I’ve gotten from her, and … NOPE. There very much was no message about it.

And, like, how do you respond to that? Do I just pretend she told me? I ended up not directly addressing it one way or another and answering the substance of the email, which feels … weirdly flippant, somehow? I feel like I’m yadda-yaddaing a suicide attempt, but I also really don’t want to correct her on it. I may contact our social worker and see if he knew about it, but that potentially opens up an entire different can of worms if he didn’t.

Mental note, don’t put the question in writing.