I gotta move out of this neighborhood

On December 12, 2018December 12, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching4 Comments

(That’s a BB King song)

Today was fucking awful.

We had … I dunno, six fights in the building today? Let’s say six, it was close to that one way or another. One kid caught what I think is probably the worst ass-whipping I’ve ever seen short of Rodney King. I hope to hell the other kid is in jail right now. I don’t know why they don’t take you to jail when you attack someone at school; school is the only place you can just beat the shit out of someone and then expect to go home afterwards like nothing happened. This kid should be in jail. He should be there until he turns 18, frankly. But he’s not, because he attacked someone at school and not out on the street.

Go ahead; there’s six plus years of damn near daily blog posts around here. Hell, the running average is probably still more than one a day. I wrote a whole-ass book about teaching that you can look through too if you like. See if you can find another post where this kid needs to be in jail for what he just did is the topic. I can’t think of one. That rough of a day.

And I do not have a hard job, guys. I really don’t. There’s a lot of moving parts but I don’t have a hard job, not compared to what everyone else in the building is doing. And today was damn near too much for me anyway. I don’t know how the hell any of these people get up and go to work every day. I do know that there’s no way in hell I return to this building next year. Not if my life depended on it. Which means I get to start jobhunting again. There’s a chance to do the same job just in some other school but for various reasons (which I’ll probably get into eventually, but not now) is not as likely as I’d like it to be, so the best move is to start looking for alternatives now. Because I can’t be in a place with this rotted a culture any longer. I’ve never worked in a school this bad. Not even close. And I’ll make it to June, but I need to be gone after that, and if something good turns up before then I’ll jump ship. I’ll be burning this bridge for the last time, but I think it needs to be done.

(Then again, for fun, especially if you know me in the real world, think back over my life since graduating in high school and count the good decisions. Other than marrying my wife, there aren’t as many as I used to think there are. I’m actually not very good at this being an adult nonsense. I remember when I thought I was good at stuff; it was a while ago.)

And tomorrow I’ll get up and do it all over again. Six more days with the kids and then I get a couple of weeks off. I can manage this, I think. I don’t have much of a choice, one way or another.

In which I ask the hivemind

On December 7, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing4 Comments

I need some more conventions, y’all. Right now I think the next con I’m actually signed up to attend is the next Indy Pop Con in June. I’m registered for Kokomo-Con again. And … I think that’s it? I’ve had a little bit of a run of being turned down by juried cons (I tried to get into both ConFusion in Detroit this January and a February comic convention) and I’ve decided to not apply to the Fort Wayne PopCon in between Christmas and New Year’s, mostly because … well, it’s between Christmas and New Year’s, and it’s a first-year con, and that strikes me as vaguely insane. I hope they’re successful, don’t get me wrong, and if they are I’ll be there next year, but they’re charging PopCon prices for what I’m pretty certain isn’t gonna be close to PopCon attendance and right now it’s not worth the risk.

Plus, well, check the posts at the end of December around here for any of the last six years. The weather tends to not lend itself to long road trips.

So. Anyway. If you happen to know of any science fiction conventions, comic book shows, or genre/author events in the next six months within, say, a three- or four- hour drive of northern Indiana, let me know. I’m looking at one in Louisville over Easter weekend, too, but it’s over Easter, which has its own set of complications to it.

I’ve finished a story over at Patreon, called The Caretaker, and I’m really fond of it. The story is posted in five parts and in first-draft form (I literally wrote it straight into the Patreon website; it’s not copy-pasted) and it will be posted again in .mobi and .epub form once it’s cleaned up a touch, but I like it and I think you will too. Just $1 a month gets you access to a bunch of microfictions and three or four short stories, and $2 a month gets you an entire exclusive novel. Next Patron is #15! That’s a great number! Join us!

Two weeks to winter break, y’all. There will be Christmas shopping this weekend. I can do this.

Everything is cool when you’re part of a team!

On December 6, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Today was pretty much a Day of Dreadful Meetings from start to finish, mostly of either the I Can’t Talk About It or I Don’t Wanna Talk About It variety, and the bits that weren’t Dreadful Meetings were mostly Unwise Acts Leading to Expulsions. I am pretty sure that my building put more kids up for expulsion today alone than most schools do in a semester, if not a year.

So it was kinda a rough day, and yesterday was a rough day, and Monday and Tuesday weren’t exactly great, and fuck it tomorrow’s payday and then I’ll have survived my first five-day week in a while so bring it on Friday, I ain’t skurred.

Hopefully at some point in the next couple of days I’ll find something worth writing about. Because it ain’t been happening much this week.

In which I can’t really cope today

On November 12, 2018November 12, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn life5 Comments

CR-Health-AH-Supplements_ss-Drugs-11-15 I mentioned a few days ago that I took a Clonazepam the night of the election because the stress had gotten too thick to operate through, and after not touching the stuff for a couple of years it’s not impossible that I’ll decide to take another tonight. The event didn’t go well yesterday at all — or, at least, was a crashing financial disaster, although some good things are going to end up coming from it, there were literally more authors present than there were people who wanted to buy books. I’m not mad about it, necessarily, but it was a long damn weekend. Today was an immensely stressful day at work, and the majority of that stress was due to various acts of incompetence on my part that I can’t even pretend to lay at anyone else’s feet. And the rest of it, that isn’t part of that majority … well, it’s bad, and I can’t fucking talk about it right now for a variety of reasons.

The books still haven’t shipped, by the way, so Amazon’s blown past the most recent of their guarantees as of today. The site now says I’ll get them on Friday, which will be six days shy of a month since these books– which are print-on-demand, remember– were ordered.

And Stan Lee died. And … I just can’t. The guy was 95 and he’s been in poor health for a long time but Stan Lee cannot be dead right now. The last few days have been too fucking exhausting; I can’t process it.

So, yeah. It may be time for another Clonazepam tonight. After I finish typing this I plan to spend at least an hour with a kitten sleeping on my chest; we’ll see if that works first. But if not? Yeah, bring the brain pills on.

In which I’m a bit of a dick

On October 9, 2018October 9, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

I accidentally said “Have a nice weekend!” to at least two or three different people today at various points, confusing the hell out of at least one student, and when I skipped out of the office (more or less literally) saying “See you Monday!” to everyone, I did it knowing full well that because I am going to be out of the building for three days I will probably end up with six days’ worth of catching up to do once I come back. So the last laugh is sure as hell gonna be on me.

It’s been a hellishly busy couple of days, but busy is all it has been, and busy I don’t really mind. I’m good at busy. Of course, I’m gonna stay that way for good chunks of the next several days, and they seriously think I’m gonna be in Indianapolis at 8:00 in the morning tomorrow, too, which would be a hilarious joke if motherfuckers weren’t serious. So things might be a little light around here for the back half of the week, but I’ll make up for it with cosplay pictures after the con.

My copies of CLICK are supposed to show up tomorrow, which is good, because tomorrow is pretty definitively before the con, but it’s also bad because I’ll already be gone before they get here and I won’t get to hold or touch the precious before I see them when my wife brings them to me Friday night. I’ll need to decide how much I’m selling them for, too, once I actually see them.

…damn, I need a new price board.

More to do! Hooray!

I’ll post a hotel view picture tomorrow. Behave, y’all.

In which I’ve made a terrible mistake

On October 8, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

I should never have been allowed anywhere near Bitmoji, and now that I’ve succumbed, getting text messages from me will never not be annoying again. It’s going to be legitimately goddamn difficult to not print this out and leave it on my office door while I’m out of town later this week:

Speaking of, I was out Friday, and I spent the entire day today running to catch up from the carnage created by being out of the office for one day. It wasn’t a stressful day, necessarily, but it was one of those days where I say to someone “let me go drop this off in my office and I’ll take care of that,” and six people grab me on the way to my office, four people call while I’m in my office, and two more grab me on the way back and what should have been five minutes turns into an hour. Just busy as hell.

I will be out three days this week, and I don’t know how the hell I will ever recover from it. But hey: that’s next week Luther’s problem! This week Luther only has to go to work two days this week and then gets to take a road trip.