Tag: mental health

On alternate universes

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching, Work4 Comments

I have spent the last couple of days working on the graduation video– or, at least, the “celebration” video, since technically we’re not supposed to call it a graduation (or use Pomp and Circumstance) if it’s not high school. One way or another, though, I’ve been working on it. The final project is going to end up being somewhere in the 35-minute range.

I used to do quite a lot of this type of work at a previous school, when I was one of the folks responsible for the morning announcements. The announcements themselves were no big deal, but we’d shoot commercials and little skits and stuff like that all the time to keep the kids paying attention, and it turned out that I wasn’t terrible at video editing, or at least the type of video editing you can do with a cheap camera (or, now, a smartphone) and iMovie. In an entirely alternate world, I can see a version of me that does this sort of thing for a living. There’s something very satisfying about it, honestly. There’s no world where I’m contemplating a career change or anything like that– if for no better reason than I don’t actually have any idea how you break into that field, and “I’m good at iMovie” probably isn’t going to be enough to get me any interviews.

The bike has finally shipped, and is currently slated to arrive on Tuesday, although I suspect it might arrive a bit quicker. This means that I now get to start obsessing about bike helmets, which is going to be extra special fun because I have an enormous head– seriously, I can’t ever find hats that fit– and therefore bike helmets that 1) fit me 2) I can afford and 3) I am willing to wear are going to, simultaneously, not exist and be sold out everywhere.

My wife’s foot remains in a boot, and I’ll need her to go with me the first time I ride anywhere so she can call the police when I crash and die, so I’ve got time to … I dunno, build one, I guess.

(Oh, also: bike helmets are not built for bald dudes? I have done a little looking around and I feel like any helmet that has actual holes in it is going to be fodder for the weirdest sunburn of all time, and I am not looking forward to that.)

I am beginning to be concerned about this fall. If we are back in class, we, or at least the adults, are probably going to be mandated to wear masks. I have not, to date, been able to spend more than about fifteen minutes in a mask without panic attacks becoming a real problem, so eight hours— to say nothing of eight hours where I’m expected to do something other than curl up into a fetal position and concentrate on not thinking about my breathing– is gonna be … let’s say troublesome.

I have a couple of surgical masks on hand, and I’m going to try one of those the next time I have to go anywhere, because getting cat food at Target (which, apparently, doesn’t actually sell pet supplies any longer, or at least ours doesn’t, or at least they’ve hidden them well enough that I couldn’t find them anywhere?) damn near killed me tonight. It was bad, y’all.

It still, despite the video and despite the fact that I haven’t actually been in my classroom since the middle of March, not quite hit me that the school year is basically over. I finished my grading today; I will finish my actual grades this weekend at some point, and Monday is some staff meeting types of things, and … that’s it. I’ll have survived (more or less) my first year back in the classroom in a while. More thoughts on this later, I imagine, once it actually manages to wash over me and it feels like it means something.

8:05 PM, Friday, May 29: 1,745,606 confirmed cases and 102,798 dead Americans.

OK I’m done now

On By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

I made an attempt to leave the house today– we have something we need to pick up from the post office, and my wife is home today too so we’re not abandoning the boy to his own devices all day, and I thought I’d go ahead and take the hit and go pick up the thing at the post office and maybe hit up Target or something for some printer paper, which we also need to print out his thousands of e-learning assignments.

We have two aging N-95 masks in the house, and my wife has been wearing one of them during grocery trips. I checked out the other one and decided that the elastic didn’t seem likely to hold up for the duration of my trip, so I grabbed one of my bandanas, which, folded properly, makes an acceptable mask– I couldn’t blow any air through it, which, I understand, is the standard to look for for these things.

Turns out that the line at the post office was long, reaching to the door, which got me a dirty look from the dude who I came within six feet of while attempting to actually enter the lobby in the first place. Then I forgot the number for my damn PO Box (I need to write it on the key; this is not the first time this has happened) and while I was putting my key in the wrong box I got hit with a full-fledged nope nope nope nope nope get this thing off your face off off NOW panic attack.

So, no standing in line, no even finding the right box– I hightailed it back to the car and sat there for ten minutes or so, trying to get my heart rate back to something approximating normal and looking up my damn PO Box on my website (PO Box 2663, South Bend, IN 46618! Send me stuff! I’ll never actually pick it up!) and it never actually happened so eventually I just went home. It was a good 10 minutes after I got home that I started feeling normal, too.

This has happened once before while trying to wear a mask– those of you who have been around a while and have really good memories might recall me trying to wear a faceless mirror mask for Halloween one year, and that was before I was actually on anti-anxiety meds.

I guess I’m just gonna stay on quarantine for a while longer, then.

2:28 PM, Monday April 20th: 766,212 confirmed infections and 40,905 deaths.

Mental health update

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy10 Comments

The portion of my brain that is able to view the rest of me dispassionately would like to report that it is fascinated at how much legit fucking emotional stress I am experiencing at the idea that Bernie Sanders might be the Democratic nominee for President, an experience that I’m pretty certain I’ve never had during a Democratic primary before, and I’ve been paying attention to these things for a minute now.

The rest of me … well, it’s glad that that one part is fascinated, I suppose. It would also appreciate it if it could motivate me to grade something or take a shower, now that it’s 4:30 in the God damn afternoon.

Nope

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I wasn’t feeling well yesterday– had a one-day case of the stomach flu that’s been going around for the last couple of weeks, I think– and I was in bed for the night by six, so I didn’t post. Today I have been in a simmering rage for the entire day for no clear reason that I can identify. In a few minutes I’m going to take one of my “only on really bad days” brain pills and try and get an assignment pulled together for my 7th graders tomorrow and I think that’s going to be all I can accomplish for the day.

Something more normal tomorrow, I hope.

In which you should read this book

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, ReadingLeave a comment

Today was a bad day, probably the worst mental health day I’ve had since … well, since before Mom died, honestly, because for most of the time since then I’ve been busy and it’s been keeping the demons away, so to speak. But everything hit me like a ton of bricks this morning as I was getting ready for work and I just couldn’t cope today. I’ve spent most of the day either asleep or staring mindlessly at TikTok, which isn’t something I should ever be doing.

I don’t have the headspace for a full review right now, but if you’ve been paying attention you know what a fan of Adrian Tchaikovsky I’ve become since discovering his work last year. I finished his book Spiderlight (dude loves his spiders) yesterday. It’s high fantasy as opposed to the hard sci-fi of Children of Time and Children of Ruin, and it’s … really different. Bits of it almost come off as parody, particularly chapter titles, but there is some really interesting character work and examination of the typical fantasy dark vs. light trope going on in there that makes the whole book absolutely worth checking out. This is going to start off looking really straightforward and then by the end of it is something very different, and I liked it a lot, but not for the same reasons I liked his other books. I know he has a several-book megaseries out there somewhere; I should probably get around to reading that soon. The guy’s the real deal.

In which I’m not here right now

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, TeachingLeave a comment
This song has nothing to do with the post.

I slept last night, at least in the technical sense, and I vaguely remember even being pretty comfortable, so it wasn’t a tossy-turny sort of night, but hell if I didn’t spend the entire night having constant, vivid anxiety dreams of the sort of “I’m late for work/unprepared for class/can’t find my clothes/everything is going wrong” sort of genre, along with a handful of actual nightmares that I don’t remember as specifically. I still owe you guys a post about the training last week and I want to review a game called Salt and Sanctuary that ate a large chunk of my free time last week (and is about to eat an hour of tonight) but I’m going to bed early tonight and I’m going to hope I’m more of a human being at work tomorrow than I was today.

That said, briefly: I’ve had a couple of days recently where I know good and goddamned well that I’d have come home from work and immediately spent the entire evening stressing out and looking at want ads, and since I’ve been on the Effexor … well, the job and the kids aren’t better, but my reactions to them have been a hell of a lot healthier. Like, I can have a bad day at work now and come home and just lay the shit aside and have a nice night with my family. This shit is a miracle drug, which is not something I’d ever have said about Lexapro. I could be writing more fiction, but … well, that’s never not true, so meh.

I’ll try and be more productive tomorrow.

Mental health check

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

We’re at … three weeks? A month? Let’s say three weeks– on the Effexor, and other than the nightmare week of constant sleep and side effects, I gotta say I’m feeling like I’m for it, all told. My wife remarked yesterday that she felt like I’ve been in a much better mood lately, and while I’m not going to pretend that the occasional urge to quit my job and go live in the woods doesn’t continue to strike me, I think that the fact that I teach middle school means that it’s perfectly reasonable that the occasional urge to quit my job and go live in the woods strikes me.

A couple of things that may or may not be side effects: I feel like my appetite has been suppressed a bit, although given my weight problem that’s not something I’m complaining about, and I think I’ve dropped some pounds since I started the drug but I’m not about to ruin it by weighing myself to check. I’m also sleeping better, which is good and bad, because getting up in the morning has been more difficult lately– and while that’s also a typical reaction to cooler weather setting in, the drive to work has been brutal, and I’ve needed caffeine to reach basic humanity more in the last few weeks than I ever have before. In other words, it being harder to get up isn’t atypical for fall, but this is worse than it usually is, which may or may not be the drug. I’m convinced about the appetite suppression. I’m less so about the sleepiness.

But one way or another, I feel like I’m experiencing more or less normal moods given my lifestyle and circumstances– I don’t feel like the drug has me in a haze or locked in a box, and I’m also not having to keep close tabs on my mood to note when it just might be anxiety and depression fucking me up worse than normal. Things have been better for the last couple of weeks, which is what this shit is supposed to be for. And I’m pretty sure it’s not fully kicked in yet, so hopefully I’m leading to more improvement and not overmedication. We’ll see, I guess? Sure.

I’m (still) alive

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

And I went to work today! And I haven’t had a nap, and my wife said I was being normal! Hooray!

Seriously though everybody who told me that there weren’t going to be bad side effects from Effexor? I’m gonna need y’all to get in a line and then I’m going to get into a whole bunch of fights, because that was every bit as bad as getting used to Lexapro. The good news is that I appear to be over the hump, and while I’m not certain that the drug is making me better yet it certainly seems to be done making things worse.

But hey. Whatever. I survived. I’ll take it.

Also, there’s an update on Patreon, if you’re into that.