blugh (mostly written yesterday)

I am very sick. It's some sort of cold-like thing: very achey, very brain-fogged, mild sore throat, very mild sinus-mucus (but high and headache inducing sinus-ache). Generally exhausted, at a time where I can't really afford it (but isn't that always the case?).

I took a day off of work Thursday, which basically never happens. On the one hand, the whole point of a strong union is to protect worker's rights. I am actively deprogramming myself from my father's insistence that the world is a meritocracy¹, and a lot of that is reminding myself that we live in a world where the boss is an enemy, and yeah it's paranoid, but you also can't ever really let go of that.

Which means that if I'm sick, and I have sick days available, then I should absolutely use them because it's not like I get to keep them forever² if I don't.

But on the other hand...anti-capitalism praxis gets wonky when you're a schoolteacher. First of all, it's nearly as much work to take a day off as it is to not. Oh sure, I don't have to do the actual literal standing up in front of teenagers and teaching...but gods, that's the *easy* part. I can teach an already planned and prepped lesson when I'm so fatiguey that I have to sit and rest after climbing a flight of steps³. I just can't much create good and inspiring lessons for those teens. But in order to take a day off, I have to create sub plans regardless, and trust me, hitting the balance between "relevant practice" and "not busywork" is _hard_. The world would be much easier if we just assumed and accepted that when a teacher was absent, their students wouldn't learn for a day and it's okay.

Also there's the idea of keeping my different classes in sync with each other. I teach three different preps, and it is annoying as hell to have one class be ahead of its fellow. For this reason, the only easy day I can take off in a week is Monday --every other day, I'm losing one (but not the other) of one of my pairs of classes. It's maddening! And absolutely no, you cannot sufficiently cover it with sub work, unless you have a ridiculously well motivated class (hahaha) and even then, you still have to trust the sub not to randomly lose the assignment somehow.

So I was in Friday, despite feeling exhausted and like my brain was wrapped in wool. I just...couldn't bear to let my classes get more out of sync, and at least this way I could throw some supervised practice at them, at the least. I promise you, it's not nobility that keeps me coming in, or some great loyalty to this job⁴, it's just the mind-numbing fact that if I don't come in, I'm only making a quickly increasing amount of work for FutureKat, and fucking up my unit plans for weeks to come. And that, I _really_ can't bear.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I mostly get along with my da, but wow does this particular thread cause some major eyerolling amongst his millenial-aged children. He's not quite full-republican "bootstraps!" but there's definitely this weird thread sometimes where I just...don't think he remotely remembers what it was like to be poor(er).

2: Actually, maybe I do? I need to find my contract and look this up. I know my personal days get burned, so the fact that I never got around to using the one last year is an Active Bad and I should Feel Bad, but also like...let's be real, I spent most of the end of last school year playing multiple hours a day of Bloons Tower Defense, SOOOO...

3: ...hypothetically. I definitely didn't accidentally scare my other-boss by coming into her room on the fourth floor and immediately putting my head onto the desk because I was so tired or nothin'.

4: Although I do love this particular job more than almost any I've had, and I do feel some sense of loyalty to the place.

(no subject)

Yesterday, I didn't write my words, breaking a twelve day streak. Which was the longest I'd had since...June? No, sorry, since OCTOBER 2016. It had been more than two years since I'd had a continuous run on 750words that long. damn.

My punishment, because yes actually, I am going to punish myself for this¹, is that I'm not allowed to use electronics today, with a very small list of exceptions (one of which was writing my words for today). I think that's going to continue to be the punishment moving forward --if I miss a day of writing, I don't get to play with my toys the next. We'll see how long this pattern lasts. Hopefully, it will turn into just...me writing my words as part of my existence, rather than a weird yo-yoing back-and-forth of days where I can and can't log on.

(On the plus side, if it does turn into the second, days where I'm not allowed screen time are GOOD FOR ME, OKAY!? Work on the physical world for a while, kiddo.)

A brief list of things that are allowed today²:

• Harassing mama over text about arranging my flight to Dallas for winter break


• Checking my email for the express and sole purpose of checking in about my Unit Four lesson plans, which I sent to Scotland yesterday, and am very terrified are going to be fucked up somehow.


• Using my phone to check the weather and the time, but *not* to play Pokemon or do anything else.


• Okay, I guess I'm also allowed to answer incoming texts if not answering them would be Rude As Fuck. But I shouldn't be doing social texting, and certainly not initiating social texting.


• I can write my words for today! Huzzah! I did it! Day 1!


• I can actively use twitter and dreamwidth as an output form only. Which is to say that I can post, but I can't read. I can't even go look at notifications to see if people have responded to me, which let me tell you, is The Worst. Please respond to me anyways, I am, as always, desperate for attention.


• I can take pictures of stuff


• I can call the post office about my missing package and be Very Sad at them

That's gonna be it for me today. There's grading to do, and a theatre show to go see, and a party in the evening and it's not like I'm suffering or without joy or sociability or nothin'. But from now on, if I miss a day of writing, I don't get to keep swanning about playing video games like I didn't fuck up.

So written, so true³.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: "Kat, punishing yourself is not an appropriate thing to d-" fuck that. I am extremely self-assured, I know a lot more than you do about who and what I am, and while I recognize that in general we should be kind to ourselves, I also fully recognize that I am a being who sometimes requires harshness to operate. There's a reason my second denizen⁴ is explicitly a "guardian bitch", and it's because I respond *really well* to an internal voice that is not actually gentle. And yeah, if it's something that's important to me -like writing- and important for my overall mental health --like writing-- then I am allowed to say that fucking it up brings consequences, and absolutely they're gonna be things that make me sad because otherwise they don't count as a punishment!

Also seriously seriously, it is good for me to have less screen time in my life, always.

2: Future days will have different lists. But basically I am always allowed to check the weather, write my words, publish content, take photos, and do real live Adulting and Paid Work.

3: Hey, I cast a spell! That's neat, I don't do that publicly very often. I actively don't seek out magic type blogs most of the time, because the way magic works for me is exactly identical to the way religion/prayer works for me: Completely privately and driven by the impulse of how to build This Moment into a ritual. I have a lot of faith for someone who probably comes across as largely atheistic, but I'm a pretty deep stickler on the idea of "that's mine, it's not for you to see or share". I should write more about this sometime.

4: Other things I should write more about sometime...