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sorcyressThe last year of my life has been amazing.
Oh, don't get me wrong, the political situation is a fucking nightmare, and my brain is still as weasled as ever. But the weekend directly before my birthday last year, I started a new job, a new relationship, and a new hobby and all of them are really wonderfully fulfilling and lovely. More importantly, here we are, ten months later, and all three of them are still mine.
The Job:
I am working at a high school, teaching math, just a few miles from my house. I did well enough in my first year that they hired me back, making this the first summer in eight (MY ENTIRE ADULT LIFE) that I'm not doing any job-hunting.
I am, frankly, ecstatic.
The job eats up _so much_ of my brain and energy --ten hour days are not uncommon-- but I've got the same preps1 as I did last year, and for one of them I've got a shiny new co-teacher to help me out and hopefully this year is going to be so! much! easier!.
I've also got special dispensation from my department head to work up to 24 hours this summer (paid!) specifically on that course with the co-teacher, so here's a great opportunity to make some extra cash doing something I really need to do anyways. Today has been full of syllabus creation and curriculum mapping. And if I do this right, then next year I will have to do SUBSTANTIALLY LESS prep for at least this class, and that'll be _awesome_.
The Relationship:
He's still tall dark and handsome, and he still gets super excited about trains, but now his hair is super poofy and actively approaching "longish" --I've been practicing my french braiding on him.
I dunno. I mostly don't talk about relationships on here, because it's...I dunno. I just don't. But I'm happy to have Austin in my life, and I'm also happy that all the rest of his extended polycule has tumbled into my flirt-o-sphere to varying strong degrees.
I'm also happy that my other relationships have been Getting Work, because like the fifth rule of polyam is "relationship broken - add more people" doesn't work. So part of dating a certified cutie is making sure I'm square with the loved ones, and I'm sure as hell not doing a good enough job, but I'm doing a job, and I'm trying and maybe I'm slowly getting better at not being subsumed with NRE?
The Hobby:
SO LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT ENGLISH CHANGE RINGING! Especially because I did a quick scan of recent posts and I apparently...haven't.
Anywho, despite having known Cally for like eight years now, and lived with Genni for two, I've never actually gone bell ringing. I've done the smallest amount at EastHill and found it weird and difficult. Then up strolls aforementioned tall dark and handsome and Let Me Tell You, weird and difficult is really fucking appealing when it comes wrapped in several flights of stairs and VERY LOUD NOISES.
It's permutations and group theory suspended at the end of a rope. It's volume high enough to seep into your bones and make your heart ring, sometimes with the benefit of going up *past* the belfry and looking out over the streets of Boston. It's difficult like juggling is difficult, like Highland is difficult, like Scottish is difficult, and yes, I'm good at that now, but it took ten years of practice didn't it?
Practicing things is not bad. Practicing things is, in fact, really good for my weird perfectionist brain, that panics when I'm not instantly expert at all that I touch. Calvin's dad would call it "building character", but I think the thing to really remember is that being shitty at things is usually the way you stop being shitty at things, and just because my body is often an exception2 does not mean I should be complacent.
Anywho, for the last ten months, averaging probably at least once a week, I've been going across the river3 and into the two churches where practice is held and carefully pulling on a very long rope to make a very loud "BONG". In ten months, I have gotten to the point where sometimes, I can ring plain hunt _on as many as six bells_.
(I assure you, that's not impressive).
As you get better, and start to have good control over when exactly the bell goes "BONG", you can begin ringing methods, which are these clever patterns where bells ring slightly sooner or later and move around each other and make these beautiful patterns of noise. If you're very very good, all the bells move around each other and get back into place without repeating the order at any point. I like very much to draw all these methods, but again, I really can't ring them yet.
If you're Boston based and like any of the following topics below, you should hitmeup about dragging you to practice. Wednesday evenings and Saturday morning/early afternoon, and totally beginner friendly. It's all done little-red-schoolhouse style, where we rapidly swap between various skill levels to make sure everyone gets challenged at some point or another.
the following: old churches, climbing lots of stairs, loud noises, dexterity challenges, permutations, the cacophony of church bells4, being patient, eating Thai food, mathematics, or post-minimalism percussion music.
Other Good Stuff
There's lots of it, but I need to do at least a little more work-work this afternoon, and then I've therapy and squares and wheeeeee! Hope y'all are well.
~Sor
MOOP!
PostScript: The Rules are going very well, but it's only been three days, and we all know that that's about my limit for actually following gamification. Anywho, yesterday I went over my free time by about ten minutes, which led to the new rule that I can't access regular time until I've paid it back double in earned time. Luckily, I've done all my habitica dailies for two days in a row, so extra time was available for me today and I could spend the morning playing video games, as has become my wont.
Also, it is amazing how a mere _three fucking days_ of doing 20 minutes of cleaning has had an active affect on my room. This is dumb. If I manage to keep this up all summer, I might actually have a useable workspace!
1: It is very annoying that "prep" refers to both "separate classes you have to create lesson plans for" and "period of time in which you're not actively teaching". In this case, I mean that I've got the same courseload -- Discrete and Data, Calculus, and Algebra 1 for emergent bilinguals-- as I did last year.
2: G'wan, ask me how long it took to learn how to walk on stilts.
3: I continue to maintain that the Charles River is _deeply_ powerful and you simply cannot cross it. Cambervillians simply do not interact with Bostonians, okay?
4: This right here is the most astonishing reason I didn't get into bell ringing earlier. I've wanted to live close enough to a tower that chimes the hours for...maybe longer than I've been an adult. I _love_ church bells and clock towers, and no, this isn't quite the same thing but it's just as loud and wonderful.
Oh, don't get me wrong, the political situation is a fucking nightmare, and my brain is still as weasled as ever. But the weekend directly before my birthday last year, I started a new job, a new relationship, and a new hobby and all of them are really wonderfully fulfilling and lovely. More importantly, here we are, ten months later, and all three of them are still mine.
The Job:
I am working at a high school, teaching math, just a few miles from my house. I did well enough in my first year that they hired me back, making this the first summer in eight (MY ENTIRE ADULT LIFE) that I'm not doing any job-hunting.
I am, frankly, ecstatic.
The job eats up _so much_ of my brain and energy --ten hour days are not uncommon-- but I've got the same preps1 as I did last year, and for one of them I've got a shiny new co-teacher to help me out and hopefully this year is going to be so! much! easier!.
I've also got special dispensation from my department head to work up to 24 hours this summer (paid!) specifically on that course with the co-teacher, so here's a great opportunity to make some extra cash doing something I really need to do anyways. Today has been full of syllabus creation and curriculum mapping. And if I do this right, then next year I will have to do SUBSTANTIALLY LESS prep for at least this class, and that'll be _awesome_.
The Relationship:
He's still tall dark and handsome, and he still gets super excited about trains, but now his hair is super poofy and actively approaching "longish" --I've been practicing my french braiding on him.
I dunno. I mostly don't talk about relationships on here, because it's...I dunno. I just don't. But I'm happy to have Austin in my life, and I'm also happy that all the rest of his extended polycule has tumbled into my flirt-o-sphere to varying strong degrees.
I'm also happy that my other relationships have been Getting Work, because like the fifth rule of polyam is "relationship broken - add more people" doesn't work. So part of dating a certified cutie is making sure I'm square with the loved ones, and I'm sure as hell not doing a good enough job, but I'm doing a job, and I'm trying and maybe I'm slowly getting better at not being subsumed with NRE?
The Hobby:
SO LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT ENGLISH CHANGE RINGING! Especially because I did a quick scan of recent posts and I apparently...haven't.
Anywho, despite having known Cally for like eight years now, and lived with Genni for two, I've never actually gone bell ringing. I've done the smallest amount at EastHill and found it weird and difficult. Then up strolls aforementioned tall dark and handsome and Let Me Tell You, weird and difficult is really fucking appealing when it comes wrapped in several flights of stairs and VERY LOUD NOISES.
It's permutations and group theory suspended at the end of a rope. It's volume high enough to seep into your bones and make your heart ring, sometimes with the benefit of going up *past* the belfry and looking out over the streets of Boston. It's difficult like juggling is difficult, like Highland is difficult, like Scottish is difficult, and yes, I'm good at that now, but it took ten years of practice didn't it?
Practicing things is not bad. Practicing things is, in fact, really good for my weird perfectionist brain, that panics when I'm not instantly expert at all that I touch. Calvin's dad would call it "building character", but I think the thing to really remember is that being shitty at things is usually the way you stop being shitty at things, and just because my body is often an exception2 does not mean I should be complacent.
Anywho, for the last ten months, averaging probably at least once a week, I've been going across the river3 and into the two churches where practice is held and carefully pulling on a very long rope to make a very loud "BONG". In ten months, I have gotten to the point where sometimes, I can ring plain hunt _on as many as six bells_.
(I assure you, that's not impressive).
As you get better, and start to have good control over when exactly the bell goes "BONG", you can begin ringing methods, which are these clever patterns where bells ring slightly sooner or later and move around each other and make these beautiful patterns of noise. If you're very very good, all the bells move around each other and get back into place without repeating the order at any point. I like very much to draw all these methods, but again, I really can't ring them yet.
If you're Boston based and like any of the following topics below, you should hitmeup about dragging you to practice. Wednesday evenings and Saturday morning/early afternoon, and totally beginner friendly. It's all done little-red-schoolhouse style, where we rapidly swap between various skill levels to make sure everyone gets challenged at some point or another.
the following: old churches, climbing lots of stairs, loud noises, dexterity challenges, permutations, the cacophony of church bells4, being patient, eating Thai food, mathematics, or post-minimalism percussion music.
Other Good Stuff
There's lots of it, but I need to do at least a little more work-work this afternoon, and then I've therapy and squares and wheeeeee! Hope y'all are well.
~Sor
MOOP!
PostScript: The Rules are going very well, but it's only been three days, and we all know that that's about my limit for actually following gamification. Anywho, yesterday I went over my free time by about ten minutes, which led to the new rule that I can't access regular time until I've paid it back double in earned time. Luckily, I've done all my habitica dailies for two days in a row, so extra time was available for me today and I could spend the morning playing video games, as has become my wont.
Also, it is amazing how a mere _three fucking days_ of doing 20 minutes of cleaning has had an active affect on my room. This is dumb. If I manage to keep this up all summer, I might actually have a useable workspace!
1: It is very annoying that "prep" refers to both "separate classes you have to create lesson plans for" and "period of time in which you're not actively teaching". In this case, I mean that I've got the same courseload -- Discrete and Data, Calculus, and Algebra 1 for emergent bilinguals-- as I did last year.
2: G'wan, ask me how long it took to learn how to walk on stilts.
3: I continue to maintain that the Charles River is _deeply_ powerful and you simply cannot cross it. Cambervillians simply do not interact with Bostonians, okay?
4: This right here is the most astonishing reason I didn't get into bell ringing earlier. I've wanted to live close enough to a tower that chimes the hours for...maybe longer than I've been an adult. I _love_ church bells and clock towers, and no, this isn't quite the same thing but it's just as loud and wonderful.
no subject
on 2018-06-26 08:13 pm (UTC)Also, yay train-loving boyfriend! *Still kind of wants to meet him because trains.*
no subject
on 2018-06-27 06:50 pm (UTC)Trains!!
no subject
on 2018-06-26 11:53 pm (UTC)And you are 100% percent correct on the power of the Charles. I cross it on the regular (previously, this was "live in Boston & do literally everything else north of the river"; now it's "live in Medford & work in Boston"), and fully seriously do I say that a decent chunk of the reason I'm looking for a new job is so I can live in Cambervilleford and not have to cross the river anymore.
no subject
on 2018-06-27 06:51 pm (UTC)The Charles is a wicked magic. I still don't get it.
no subject
on 2018-06-27 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2018-06-27 06:53 pm (UTC)I do _much less_ handbells, mostly because the local group meets on Scottish-dance nights. I've managed to get good enough on them that I was able to ring my first quarter-peal a couple weeks ago, so, there we go. Moving bodies with them is the most fun though, and the easiest way to see the patterns.
~Sor
no subject
on 2018-06-30 08:44 pm (UTC)footnote 4
on 2018-12-17 03:06 pm (UTC)Re: footnote 4
on 2018-12-17 03:07 pm (UTC)