Tag: mental-health

PRODUCTIVITY!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing3 Comments

Malumba print cover full resolution

I went to bed Monday night around 11:00 PM.  Maybe a bit before; that’s probably around when I fell asleep.  I got up at 6:20, normal time, went to take a piss– which is also normal– and the world went away, which is not normal.  I went back to bed and spent a solid 20 minutes shivering despite the presence of wifely body heat, an extra blanket, and a fricking heating pad turned up to full power, and at that point it became real clear that I wasn’t going to work.  Again.

I’ve missed, at this point, 10 of the last 13 days of school.  I proceeded to sleep until 4:30, when my wife and son got home, got up until around 10, then went back to sleep, meaning that I got eighteen and a half hours of sleep yesterday.

Not normal.

I didn’t go to work today either, because when you sleep 18 1/2 hours on Tuesday, you don’t go to work on Wednesday, because who the hell knows what could happen if you go to work.

Last night, I didn’t take my Lexapro, because fuck it, that’s why.  And would you like to know what I got done today?  I got the ebook edition of Searching for Malumba finished with the possible exception of a couple of edits if my wife demands them, the entire print edition ready to go from scratch, and the cover, from start to finish.  This is, in case you’re wondering, more productivity in about six hours than in the entire three weeks that I was on Lexapro.

Fuck Lexapro, is what I’m getting at here.

I haven’t wanted to/been able to do anything other than sleep for the last three weeks, and the intermittent bouts of insane dizziness haven’t helped with anything either.  I had an episode last week that was attributed to dehydration despite the fact that I drink enormous amounts of water and I piss like a racehorse to prove it.  I’m at the point where the anxiety was better than not being able to do anything, and I cannot afford to keep missing work like this– in the most literal sense imaginable, since I’d run out of sick days before this week’s nonsense.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to ask my doctor to find me something else to take or if I’m just going to go with the non-medication suggestions my therapist made.  One way or another, I’m not dealing with Lexapro any longer.  It’s not worth it.

(But hey!  Searching for Malumba is coming out on time after all!  I was seriously starting to worry about that!  Pre-order it, dammit, and reward my productivity!)

Last Patrick McLaw update

On By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

So, one more thing, because I just noticed it– if you go to the article I linked the other day, and you actually play the video, which I almost never do on news articles, they actually show two shots of the letter itself that got him noticed by law enforcement– apparently because some of the people he sent it to turned it in.  The first picture is insanely blurry but you can read bits of it in motion and, I dunno, maybe some of you are graphics wizards and can sharpen this or something:

Screen Shot 2014-09-11 at 4.34.08 PM

The second shot is from the last page, and is much clearer, and gives just enough detail to make it clear why people read the letter and called the cops.  Weird thing about suicide letters:  saying “This is not a suicide letter!” is actually not very convincing.

Screen Shot 2014-09-11 at 4.31.18 PM

Definitely a case of shitty initial reporting here, folks.

Parenting fail of the day

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Parenting, Politics, Reading1 Comment

ghwbwedding

True fact:  George H. W. Bush is my favorite Republican president of my lifetime.  Which, I admit, isn’t saying a whole lot, but unlike Ford, Reagan, and Bush II I at least feel like the evil old nut-cutting CIA sumbitch had a little bit of a soul.    (Well, OK, I’ve got nothing against Ford.  But he was only president for a couple of months of my life anyway so I can safely disregard him.)  “George H. W. Bush is witness at gay wedding” means precisely nothing meaningful to anybody who wasn’t at the wedding.  It doesn’t really signal any change in the zeitgeist that wasn’t already happening no matter how much I want it to– Republicans have always been for rights for their people, and some of them– like, say, Satan— are pro gay marriage because there are acknowledged gay people in their family.  This has been true for a while.

I really only posted the picture because I want someone to explain the socks.  There is no way the former President of the United States leaves the house in mismatched socks unless he wants to, and I want to know why. Someone tell me.

Long intro to a very short anecdote, but I think it’s funny anyway:  I had to put the boy in his high chair earlier, and decided before I did so that I would lift him way above my head.  He loves this, like all little kids do.  I’m never doing it again, because this time he chose to take advantage of his added height by kicking me in the chest with both feet.  For which he was nearly dropped on his head.  Which would somehow have been my fault.  I think I have bruises.

Pointless griping time– As anyone who knows me IRL is already aware, I started a stupid little project on January 1 where I decided to keep track of all the books I read for a year.  I’m using Facebook to track everything– in fact, book posts are the only thing that I let stick around on Facebook for more than a couple of days.  I’m also keeping track in a spreadsheet, which you would think would make Facebook irrelevant but it’s not.

You knew I was a data nerd, right?  So of course I have numbers.  I have, as of right now, September 26th, reading my 145th book of the year.  That’s not a typo.  145 books, at an average of 336 pages each.  Sometime in the next few weeks I’ll cross 50,000 pages on the year; I read approximately 175 pages a day.  This does not count comic books (at least four or five a week, sometimes more) or anything online, although it’s included a handful of ebooks.  That’s every day.

I’m not bragging.  I suspect this may qualify as mental illness.

At some point, it became clear that it was within the realm of possibility for me to read 200 books in 2013.  I am, right now, five books off that pace– I’d need to have read 150 by the end of September; there are four days left to read those five books– which is actually possible if I’m careful about what books I choose, but probably won’t happen.

Here’s the problem:  As soon as I realized I could conceivably read 200 books in a year, the list became about reading 200 books in a year, and despite my respectable per-book average, I’m really starting to tilt my reading toward shorter books and rereads that I can get through quickly so that I can get “caught up” to this meaningless goal that only I know about and absolutely no one cares about so that at the end of the year I can brag to no one at all about how I read 200 books a year.  This even though I could easily justify telling people I read 175 books a year without fear of contradiction and without altering my reading habits.  The median number of books read by Americans?  Six.  The average is twelve, but that’s inflated by psychotics like myself.  Either way, right now I’ve squared the number of books the average American read last year and I still have three months left in 2013.  200 is not more impressive than 175; it’s just rounder.

I have a problem.  I have four or five hefty nonfiction books and Gone with the Wind (did you know that book is a thousand goddamn pages long?) on my shelf waiting for me and I’m not reading them because I know I can’t finish them in a day or two.  That’s fucked up, and the fact that I want to do something about it but apparently can’t is weird even for me.

tl;don’t r

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching, Uncategorized1 Comment

In accordance with prophecy, the post that instructed you to not read it if you respect me (which, in case it isn’t obvious, I wrote last night and delayed until noon today) has received a full day’s worth of traffic already.  I hate you all.

I spent all day today putting out fires, and right now I’m split between basically writing a short-ish “YAAR EXHAUSTION” type of post or going exhaustive and giving you a moment-by-moment breakdown of the horror that was my day.  I think I’m leaning toward exhaustive– after all, I’m at OtherJob, my lesson plans are already done, most of my grading is already done, and it’s been raining all day so there really isn’t much else to do.

It is entirely possible that this post will end abruptly with “fuck this, you get the idea” or something similar; please don’t hold it against me.  After all, you already got a post today, right?

BEFORE SCHOOL:  I wake up on time, but somehow going into the office to check and see if my paycheck came in and my union dues got paid takes half an hour.  I have no idea where the time went; I rush through my shower and manage to forget to eat breakfast before leaving the house.  I do manage to pack a lunch, which is an unimportant detail except insofar as it indicates that I was in the kitchen while I was forgetting to eat.  I manage to make it to work on time.

AT SCHOOL, BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS:  As I’ve mentioned previously I cover the gym in the morning.  There are a couple of other adults in there with me by the time the lion’s share of the kids are at school but it’s not uncommon for it to be me and two hundred kids.  Today, our assistant principal (new to the building this year) comes in and asks me in a rather pointed fashion what the building policy is on cell phones.  Note: she is fully aware of the answer to this question, which is that the kids basically aren’t supposed to have them, ever, and if they do they’re to remain in backpacks until such time as they are placed in lockers, and at all times they are to be off.

I explain to her that my policy on cell phones is You Don’t Want None There Won’t Be None; I ignore anything that is plainly related to listening to music, force phones to be put away when anything that could involve taking pictures is taking place, and tend to react reasonably, but harshly, to kids who are actually talking on them– which is rare.  The main reason is that every second kid in the gym has a cell phone with them and if I start taking cell phones away (which I am fully empowered to do by district policy) I will do nothing but take phones away and fight with kids every morning, all morning.  I fully understand why this is the policy in class but it is virtually unenforceable when the ratio of kids with cellphones to teachers doing something about them is literally a hundred to one.  I am not interested in that fight every day, and kids who are being reasonably discreet are going to be ignored.

She does not appear happy with this explanation until I look around and find five kids who are quietly listening to music and ask her which one she’d like me to take a phone away from first; that child will immediately find the other four and ask why I’m not taking their phones away instead of whoever I’m talking to.  They will then report to their parents that I’m picking on them.  No thank you.  This appears to clear the fog a bit and the conversation ends with no directive to change my policy.

The kids are on edge in a weird sort of way but there aren’t any fights or any real threats of one.  But there’s a weird vibe in the gym that I don’t like.

HOMEROOM:  The bright spot of my day, once the girls are done screaming about another spider in the hallway, which is quickly becoming the theme around here lately.  We do a Word of the Week; this week’s word was “ration.”  The kids are supposed to write a sentence for me; I select the best two or three and send them to the librarian, and he names a victor for each grade level.  One of my girls wins today.  If my name were Mr. Smith and her name were Charlie, this would be the sentence:  “Mr. Smith told me that he has a ration of Charlie that he is allowed every day, and I don’t get to talk to him again until tomorrow.”

I am beloved, obviously.

SUCCESS:  (It’s between homeroom and first hour, I didn’t name it, shut up.)  I’m ten minutes into my lesson when the teacher next door asks if she can borrow me for “a minute.”  There are two teachers in the room for Success so I have the other one take over and go into the hall.  There is an eighth grade girl who I only know by sight (new to the building this year) pacing and muttering angrily in the hallway with her fists clenched and tears in her eyes.  I get over my initial why the hell is this my problem bewilderment and ask her what’s wrong.

Here’s a thing:  Seventh and eighth grade girls are really fucking easy to manipulate.  I don’t know if you knew that but holy Christ is it true.  Some fifth grader– a fucking fifth grader— on the bus asked her if she thought she could beat up some other student, and now she’s angry because she has to fight this other student.  Who, as it turns out (and unbeknownst to the teacher next door) happens to be in my room at that very moment.  I spend a few minutes trying to calm her down and then call the other student into the hallway.  They are both saying stupid shit like “I don’t wanna fight her, but if she hits me I’m gonna kick her ass,” and pointing out that both of them are starting their sentences with saying that they do not want to fight is not doing the job it should of convincing them that, no, nobody’s actually going to fight here.

This conversation literally costs me the rest of the period.  By the end of it I’m reasonably convinced that I’m not going to have to break the two of them up at any point today and I’m ready to break the fifth grader’s head myself.  Then the teacher pulls another student out of her classroom who I have to convince that none of this shit was his business and he doesn’t need to threaten the first girl because nobody wants to fucking fight here so stop being a damn asshole.  I make a mental note to have a stern word with the fifth grader and bemoan the critical thinking skills of everyone under 30.  I do virtually no teaching in my first class of the day.

FIRST AND SECOND HOUR I have to spend keeping an eye on one of my autistic kids because he’s making his para insane and in general the kids are being weirdly dependent and pretending to not be as bright as they are.  This is an affliction that is not at all specific to them but they’re bad about it; I need to break them of this habit.  I have deliberately put a review packet together for my kids today because I have a crapton of desk work that must get done by the end of the day and my prep period was full before I even walked into the building.

(Note: this is something that most people don’t realize about teaching.  I have virtually no time to do anything during my day that isn’t teaching.  Any paperwork of any kind, including all of my grading, gets done on my own time.  It had piled up too much by this point.  It was time to have a work day.)

At any rate, this plan didn’t work out, because the kids had way too many questions.  I got a bit done but not as much as I wanted.

THIRD AND FOURTH HOUR was when all hell broke loose.  Third and fourth hour contain The Twins, who are several posts unto themselves and who I will talk about in more detail when I have the mental energy.  And if I’m being honest this is already a fourteen hundred word post and I haven’t even gotten to the stressful part.

So, yeah: I’m gonna abbreviate.  A lot.  The twins are, very soon, gonna get the shit kicked out of them, and it’s going to be their own damn fault– and that is not something I am prone to say about my students, particularly students who have obvious developmental issues (I suspect fetal alcohol syndrome; this is unconfirmed.)  But they piss off everyone they come into contact with, more or less deliberately, and then they tattle on the kids they’ve pissed off.

For example: if walking past the desk of the biggest gangbanger in the building, a kid who was in jail before he got expelled from his previous school and sent to us, maybe you don’t knock his shit on the floor on purpose.  Because he might literally kill you.

It’s happened twice.

The kids nearly caused two different fights today, and that’s not counting the number of students they got pissed off at them.  I ended up sending them out of my room with my coteacher for their own safety and not only arranged for them to not be in the halls during passing period for the rest of the day but literally created a security detail to get them to their buses at the end of the day so that they didn’t have to be in the gym with the rest of the kids.

I fully expect to find another article in the paper in a few months about how I didn’t do anything about the way they were mercilessly bullied, by the way.  I’m at 1700 words; this post would be twice as long if I actually talked about all the nonsense they created today.

And that was before my fifth and sixth hour got into my room.

God, I’m tired.

On venturing into public

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

My belly is full of pizza and my brain is full of nonsense. At the moment I prefer the contents of my belly; ultimately the pizza will cost me less. That said, it’s been a very long time since I was getting any kind of exercise regularly– and, despite my near-permanent status as a professional fat dude, I actually enjoy exercise. I got a weird little thrill when my wife pointed out that the current bathroom mirror (which is six feet wide and about four high, with no borders– just a big piece of mirrored glass) ought to go down into the basement as part of our as-yet nonexistent home gym. I was actually angry with myself that I hadn’t thought of it on my own.

I ran into three different families’ worth of students during the ten minutes that I was buying pizza, by the way, which makes me think maybe living in more or less the same neighborhood as my school isn’t that much of an advantage.

One of them asked me what I was doing there, which tells you the caliber of kids I’m dealing with. (Yes, this is an unfair thing to say. No student anywhere thinks his teachers are real people, and running into us in public, thus confirming the unwelcome truth that we exist outside of our classrooms, is always an occasion for wonder and mystery. But it’s still funny.)

“I’m here for pizza,” I told her.

“Really?” she asked.

I leaned forward.

“I actually live here,” I whispered, and pointed under one of the chairs by the door. “I slept there last night. Don’t tell anybody.”

Her eyes tripled in size. Her mother got their pizza (I was waiting for a Deep Dish pizza, which takes longer even though it’s more of a Deep Ish pizza) and shot me a weird look as they left.

By the time the third family said hello and left, I think the employees thought I was some sort of rock star.

The pudgy, bald, talentless kind, of course.

I tried to spend part of last night applying for a field trip grant through Target. Have I mentioned the DC trip yet? I take a group of seventh and eighth graders to Washington, D.C. every two years, and this year is a travel year. The trip is hella expensive so we’re trying to find a good way to pay for it that doesn’t involve me having to run a fundraiser. First it took twenty minutes and two changes of my password to log into the site, which is justweird, and then after taking three thousand or so characters to say I want to take my kids to DC so they can lern history gud, it lost my entire application except for the biographical part at the beginning. Frustrated, I tried to flip to the last section of the application, which asks me to break the trip cost down in ways that are frankly impossible (it costs, roughly, $800 per kid, but that’s a flat fee– they don’t break it down by transportation or food or lodging or whatever. It’s just $800. Target wants everything broken down specifically– I can’t even realistically estimate those numbers– and I doubt they’ll like it very much if I just put $32,000 HOLY FUCKING HELL ARE WE SERIOUSLY PAYING THEM THIRTY-TWO GRAND into one of the boxes.

Holy shit. How the hell are they making thirty-two thousand dollars off of us? That’s fucking insane. Mental note: redouble plans to become a DC tour guide once I decide I can’t teach any longer.

Jesus.

Going to bed early.

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

My uncle died this morning, my morning class was assholey enough that it made my whole day worse, I ducked out of work early because I didn’t feel emotionally up to dealing with bus nonsense at the end of the day, then I made dinner for my whole family because apparently that’s what I do now.

Tilapia is good.

Oh, and the tile guy came out to measure.  That’s good too.

That said:  today sucked, and I’m not in the mood for this right now.

G’night.

Okay NOW I’m ready for summer

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Seriously– how is it that I started getting my classroom ready in July and here we are a week before school starts and I’m so far behind I can’t believe it?

Long day today– union thing starts in an hour and I’m not showered yet, that’s supposed to last until 1:00, then over to school for as long as they’ll let me stay there and get stuff done, then back home.  I really want to go shopping for some stuff tonight but I’m also broke as hell and have to stretch my current money out for an extra week to account for the fact that I’m not getting paid again until September 6.

So, yeah, don’t expect anything terribly erudite or fascinating around here.  I may try and get a real post up later but don’t hold your breath.

Three is still my limit

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

…except in this case I’m referring to days in a row in which I’m willing to have nothing useful to say.  This weekend has been good for nothing but inexplicable exhaustion and pointless crabbiness; I’m pretty sure I’m the only living thing in the house right now who is actually awake, and I’m certain I’m the only human.  I’ve been trying to get useful things done every once in a while– I cleaned up my living room and spent some time practicing my ukulele in between bouts of lying on the couch and moaning– but that’s about it.

This afternoon, I will see a movie where giant robots beat up giant monsters.  It is a sign of just how deep the rot in my brain has gotten that I’m not looking forward to it.

Blech.  Something interesting happen, please.

Well, this counts for something, I guess:  the six tags on this post?  Were suggested by WordPress after I dared to put a post up that I hadn’t bothered to add any tags to yet.  I’ll let you decide what relevance any of those six words have to anything I wrote.  At the moment we have not the slightest idea.

Prediction: at least one of those will get me a follow from one of the legions of WordPress SEO spambots that appear to do nothing but follow tags and like posts with those tags in them.  The longer I spend on this site the more I become convinced that I’m the only actual human being writing here.