(no subject)
Nov. 8th, 2022 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressThe thing I kept circling back to, in therapy today, was the idea of just...it is so hard to be getting things done right now, and my mind really doesn't want to do _anything_.
And if I step back and look at all the things that are happening in my life, it makes total goddamn sense. Like...Global Pandemic. World-Ending Climate Change. Fall of Democracy. Rampant Transphobia. Rampant Misogyny. Gun Violence. Oh, and last Friday I found out that one of the members of the village what helped raise me has serious stage 4 colon cancer, and has entered end-of-life planning.
So you know. There's...there's a lot occupying the back of my head, and forcing its way in at odd moments. Or not so odd moments. But I am so goddamn tired of feeling tired and burnt out and useless and like I've wasted another day doing nothing but playing stupid phone games.
(And the reason I feel burnt out is definitely not "we've entered the third school year of teaching in a pandemic and none of them have been good". Like...I am trying so hard, but there's this hideous background radiation in which I look around my classroom every period and every day and notice just how badly in the minority I am for still wearing a high-filtration mask every fucking day.)
It's really _really_ hard for me to find focus or organization or motivation or executive gorram functioning. But that makes feedback loops --now I am living in a catastrophe garbage-heap of a bedroom, with things all over every surface making it impossible to do much of anything. Now I am weeks behind on grading or tracking unexcused absences or finishing my PD work. Now I am guilty because I haven't washed the dishes and I haven't bought groceries and Ezri and Rey are still holding up their ends of the household bargain, to keep things running and everyone fed and happy.
Today feels like a small-scale version of the last few months. I genuinely got some good things done! I washed and put away three loads of laundry (everything except the line-dry stuff which is still damp --which includes the closet stuff, which usually takes an extra 1-7 days to put away because I hate hanging it all up!). I made my bed proper, and also slid it away from the window a bit and put up a heavy blanket-as-curtain to see if that helps with the fact that my room gets wicked cold. I cleaned off my desk, and the top of my filing cabinet, which means I _could_ be sitting over there to write this, but am sitting on the bed anyways out of habit.
I started the day by making pancakes, at Ezri's request, and cleaning up the kitchen a bit, at my own desire. It was a nice way to begin things, and resulted in pancakes which was pretty good. Then I got the laundry started and went out to vote, early enough that there was still sunshine and I was not walking in the too-early-dark. Damn this time change, it's just one more thing for the pile.
After returning home was when I first fell apart, and did nothing much at all until therapy (though I at least ate some lunch.) Some nostalging, some phone games, mostly not anything useful, except theoretically letting my brain rest is useful? Except I'm not processing and I'm not emoting and I'm not really healing --maybe because you can't really heal while the trauma is still ongoing, and like I said, it's the third straight year of teaching in a pandemic.
Today was the first day I went "ah right, this time of year is really hard for me" and I wish I were better at documenting/logging when I have this moment. This year marks fifteen years since kSatyr and I broke up, and I hardly think of him every day anymore. Maybe every week? I still have three years until I'm as old as he was when we dated. I don't know how to celebrate, but I've got time to figure it out.
(because the back-parts of my Self remembers how bad this leadup was, the dread and depression and exhaustion and fight, it is always a very hard time of year, made double-so by everything else that is wrong right now. No more light and memories of abuse and a pandemic that hasn't ended even if people pretend it has. And of course, that's something that compounds too, so that it's hard to have a good and normal November because I'm so caught up in the pain of the memory.)
It is the first day in fifteen that I am going to earn a die, and there's still a bunch of work-work that needs doing before I sleep (sigh), or at least before I get to work. Grades are due tomorrow at 10:30, and also I have to prepare three lessons, due to the ways the classes mis-align. If I'd been smarter, I'd have put all the tests tomorrow and the extra lessons for the classes who got them on the day after. C'est la vie. (la vie. Nice. Quality joke.)
I wish I were less hard on myself, or I wish I got more things done. It's hard to balance both these wishes at once.
Love to you and yours.
~Sor
MOOP!
And if I step back and look at all the things that are happening in my life, it makes total goddamn sense. Like...Global Pandemic. World-Ending Climate Change. Fall of Democracy. Rampant Transphobia. Rampant Misogyny. Gun Violence. Oh, and last Friday I found out that one of the members of the village what helped raise me has serious stage 4 colon cancer, and has entered end-of-life planning.
So you know. There's...there's a lot occupying the back of my head, and forcing its way in at odd moments. Or not so odd moments. But I am so goddamn tired of feeling tired and burnt out and useless and like I've wasted another day doing nothing but playing stupid phone games.
(And the reason I feel burnt out is definitely not "we've entered the third school year of teaching in a pandemic and none of them have been good". Like...I am trying so hard, but there's this hideous background radiation in which I look around my classroom every period and every day and notice just how badly in the minority I am for still wearing a high-filtration mask every fucking day.)
It's really _really_ hard for me to find focus or organization or motivation or executive gorram functioning. But that makes feedback loops --now I am living in a catastrophe garbage-heap of a bedroom, with things all over every surface making it impossible to do much of anything. Now I am weeks behind on grading or tracking unexcused absences or finishing my PD work. Now I am guilty because I haven't washed the dishes and I haven't bought groceries and Ezri and Rey are still holding up their ends of the household bargain, to keep things running and everyone fed and happy.
Today feels like a small-scale version of the last few months. I genuinely got some good things done! I washed and put away three loads of laundry (everything except the line-dry stuff which is still damp --which includes the closet stuff, which usually takes an extra 1-7 days to put away because I hate hanging it all up!). I made my bed proper, and also slid it away from the window a bit and put up a heavy blanket-as-curtain to see if that helps with the fact that my room gets wicked cold. I cleaned off my desk, and the top of my filing cabinet, which means I _could_ be sitting over there to write this, but am sitting on the bed anyways out of habit.
I started the day by making pancakes, at Ezri's request, and cleaning up the kitchen a bit, at my own desire. It was a nice way to begin things, and resulted in pancakes which was pretty good. Then I got the laundry started and went out to vote, early enough that there was still sunshine and I was not walking in the too-early-dark. Damn this time change, it's just one more thing for the pile.
After returning home was when I first fell apart, and did nothing much at all until therapy (though I at least ate some lunch.) Some nostalging, some phone games, mostly not anything useful, except theoretically letting my brain rest is useful? Except I'm not processing and I'm not emoting and I'm not really healing --maybe because you can't really heal while the trauma is still ongoing, and like I said, it's the third straight year of teaching in a pandemic.
Today was the first day I went "ah right, this time of year is really hard for me" and I wish I were better at documenting/logging when I have this moment. This year marks fifteen years since kSatyr and I broke up, and I hardly think of him every day anymore. Maybe every week? I still have three years until I'm as old as he was when we dated. I don't know how to celebrate, but I've got time to figure it out.
(because the back-parts of my Self remembers how bad this leadup was, the dread and depression and exhaustion and fight, it is always a very hard time of year, made double-so by everything else that is wrong right now. No more light and memories of abuse and a pandemic that hasn't ended even if people pretend it has. And of course, that's something that compounds too, so that it's hard to have a good and normal November because I'm so caught up in the pain of the memory.)
It is the first day in fifteen that I am going to earn a die, and there's still a bunch of work-work that needs doing before I sleep (sigh), or at least before I get to work. Grades are due tomorrow at 10:30, and also I have to prepare three lessons, due to the ways the classes mis-align. If I'd been smarter, I'd have put all the tests tomorrow and the extra lessons for the classes who got them on the day after. C'est la vie. (la vie. Nice. Quality joke.)
I wish I were less hard on myself, or I wish I got more things done. It's hard to balance both these wishes at once.
Love to you and yours.
~Sor
MOOP!
no subject
on 2022-11-09 12:03 pm (UTC)"This is a song about the rear-view mirror: which is a weird place to hang out..."
no subject
on 2022-11-09 02:12 pm (UTC)I hear you and I get it
on 2022-11-09 06:58 pm (UTC)Unsolicited Advice Follows - ignore if you wish: Have you considered getting therapy lights and/or a "sunrise" style alarm? Considering light is one of the issues, it might downgrade one factor that arrives with this season.
Good Luck.
no subject
on 2022-11-09 10:23 pm (UTC)https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2211029?query=featured_home